SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
You can’t automate the truth.
This week, two projects were unveiled that are intended to act as buffers between the world and fake news. The first, SurfSafe, was created by a pair of UC Berkley undergrads, Ash Bhat and Rohan Phadte. The second, Reality Defender, is the work of the AI Foundation, a startup founded in 2017 that has yet to release a commercial product. Both projects are browser plug-ins that will alert users to misinformation by scanning images and videos on the webpages they’re looking at and flagging any doctored content.
Lars Buttler, CEO of AI Foundation, tells The Verge that his team was motivated to create the plug-in because of escalating fears over misinformation, including AI-generated fakes. “We felt we were at the threshold of something that could be very powerful but also very dangerous,” says Buttler. “You can use these tools in a positive way, for entertainment and fun. But a free society depends on people having some sort of agreement on what objective reality is, so I do think we should be scared about this.”
[...] Of the two plug-ins, SurfSafe’s approach is simpler. Once installed, users can click on pictures, and the software will perform something like a reverse-image search. It will look for the same content that appears on trusted “source” sites and flag well-known doctored images. Reality Defender promises to do the same (the plug-in has yet to launch fully), but in a more technologically advanced manner, using machine learning to verify whether or not an image has been tinkered with. Both plug-ins also encourage users to help out with this process, identifying pictures that have been manipulated or so-called “propaganda.”
The two approaches are very different. SurfSafe’s leans heavily on the expertise of established media outlets. Its reverse-image search is basically sending readers to look at other sites’ coverage in the hope that they have spotted the fake. “We think there are groups doing a great job of [fact-checking content], but we want users to get that information at the click a mouse,” says SurfSafe’s Ash Bhat. Reality Defender, meanwhile, wants to use technology to automate this process.
So, just iterate your fakes until they "pass" both of them?
Source: https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/23/17383912/fake-news-browser-plug-ins-ai-information-apocalypse
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 29 2018, @08:00AM (1 child)
The objective truth (cue the quantic relativists) is not reachable by the most honest and dedicated reporter. Everything else is fake news. So why should somebody prefer the official fake news, where all the propaganda efforts go, from random fake news? All of this movement is just censorship masqueraded.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Wednesday August 29 2018, @07:05PM
Exactly. When the NYT was beating the drum for war in Iraq and publishing lies in support of that drumbeat, were they "fake news"? Undoubtedly, but NYT will never labeled as such by the tech industry, who when they say "fake" mean "not in line with official propaganda". This isn't to say that alternative news sites don't also post fake news, of course they do because it is a problem endemic to all press, but in order to not present fake data, these apps should categorize along the lines of "Establishment" and "Nonestablishment", and basically leave it there. Even that might be a bit much.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 29 2018, @10:55AM
If these plugins scan the images and videos in my browser looking for altered content they are going to flag almost everything I see. Very few natural assets out there ;-)
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 29 2018, @11:19AM
they know its dangerous and yet believe themselves to be above reality
while thinking they could also profit from their imagined superiority.
we all know how that will end: 99% ungoood.
society depends on interior transcendental values.
machine gods are no substitute.
"So, just iterate your fakes until they "pass" both of them?"
yes. with the usual foreseeable consequences.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Wednesday August 29 2018, @01:01PM
There is no device, no mechanism, no simple hard-and-fast rule that will always correctly separate truth from fiction. If you try to devise one, the fakers can and will figure out how to make their stuff look like truth. Or, if they can't do that, they'll make up a fake mechanism that looks like the real mechanism to only show their fakes as "truth".
Propagandists are relentless, and well-funded, and act accordingly.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 29 2018, @02:39PM (4 children)
Only 3 payments of 19.95. But don't wait. This offer is only available now! /sarc
The most effective propaganda miscontextualizes the truth rather than lying. There are maybe half a dozen algo's out there for determining the effective grade level of the composition. The more correct solution might be write a plugin that simply displays that number in the upper right hand corner for every page so you can choose before reading.
Most propaganda is targeted at morons. Solution to not being swayed by propaganda: don't read content targeted at morons. Which frankly I've already admitted I do, by commenting on an article that presumes to tout technologies that are mathematically improbable, certainly unmaintainable, and almost assuredly bullshit.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 29 2018, @03:27PM
This is why public schools train people to be morons
(Score: 0, Troll) by jmorris on Wednesday August 29 2018, @04:50PM (1 child)
These are impossible products only if you make the assumption the goal is the stated one. OBEY. Consume only the approved mainstream news. Or else. Now they will only insert browser plugins to nag when you wander out of the approved channels. But if you think it ends there you have not been paying attention. Hillary Clinton lost an election she was supposed to win; and that sort of thing is not going to be permitted to happen again.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 29 2018, @05:37PM
You see! If I had that little number I'd not have read that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 29 2018, @10:16PM
Most propaganda is targeted at morons
I would say you are wrong.
I work with some very smart people along the lines of why are you not working at one of the FANG companies smart. They eat that junk up.
Con men *love* smart people. They are actually easiest to subvert. They fall into the smart people trap of "I am smart therefor I can not do anything wrong". They are dead easy to manipulate. You stroke their ego.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Thursday August 30 2018, @12:42AM
They're called Dan Scavino, Sarah Sanders and Kellyanne Conway.