Comment by ethanbond | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ethanbond | Hacker News Reader

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Videos are considered one of the more authoritative sources of factual information. E.g. Imagine how disruptive it’d be if a deepfake of Biden announcing support for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine were to circulate during those first hours of the invasion? Sure, there are other communications channels that would be able to dispute the authenticity of that video, but would those channels be as fast and as (apparently) authoritative as video of Biden “himself” declaring his support?

Now consider a few months after this hypothetical fake-and-refutation, what if Biden actually does announce an emergency threat to America, and people end up waiting a few days (or weeks, or months) for the refutation to come.

The “no such thing as trust” is not coming from this innovation in particular but rather the confluence of two general trends: 1) heavy reliance on digital media and 2) ever-increasing ability to fake digital media.

Note that you don’t even need large, successful falsified media campaigns to create distrust. All you need is for people to know that the capability exists, and trust is immediately damaged. Even trivially-detectable falsifications can end up being difficult to sort through if there are a billion fake pieces of information crowding out a hundred real pieces of information. This is true even if all billion fakes are trivially detectable by a human (which they won’t be).

All of this is not "no such thing as trust".

I too dread a little all the mischief that's going to happen while the world learns about this. But people don't have to uncritically believe "the evidence of their own eyes", even though that has been very useful corrective to many mistakes, and will I guess be less so now. Evidence doesn't work that way: people always have to interpret everything in terms of their understanding of the world, and they can get better at that in response to changes like this.

I agree. I don't think this in particular will land us in "land of no trust." I think it, and innovations like it, move us clearly towards that land though.

The advent of widespread photo/video evidence was a big help for people trying to interpret was real and what wasn't. Then photography was knocked out of service by e.g. Photoshop (generally "easy photo manipulation"). Now video is getting knocked out of service as well. So, yes, it removes a useful tool in interpreting the world's evidence, and it's not clear what will replace that tool (if anything).

To be clear, the "no such thing as trust" was specifically a response to GP's assertion that people will "have to unlearn that seeing is believing." Okay, fine, but then what can you believe if you not even what you see? Again this specific tech doesn't get us all the way there, but it gets us closer.

Trusting photos wasn't destroyed by the advent of photoshop, same with videos.

There are ways to prove authenticity, e.g. with cryptographic signing.

Why weren't people this concerned about the existence of photoshop? To this day people continue to try to fool and manipulate others by using it. You don't even need video or photos to trick someone. Plenty of people lie in text, but text editors aren't considered dangerous tools.

People have been aware that lies can be typed for as long as we've had typing, but it still works. The fact that it still works a lot of the time hasn't ended the world. People are more aware that they can't trust a photo, yet people still fall for edited photos, and the world still turns. I don't think deep fakes are any different. Videos were not very trust worthy before deep fakes. Special effects have been a thing for many many decades. The world is still learning exactly how untrustworthy video is and there will always be people who fall for tricks and manipulations, but eventually the majority will adjust and society won't crumble.

We'll put our trust in what we see with our own eyes and in people and organizations who have proven themselves to be trustworthy. We'll worry about how real something is in proportion to what it would mean to us if it were real. When it really matters we'll trust experts to authenticate a photo or video as legitimate just like we do currently. If the world becomes less dependent on information presented in formats that can we know can be convincingly manipulated we'll all be better off. History tells us technology like this in the hands of the public won't cause people to abandon faith in everything and anything they see, or destroy civilization. We all just get a little more savvy, more industries will take advantage of the cool tech, lots of people will have fun and games with it, not much really changes for most people.

Really really knocking down these straw men one by one eh? Anyway, people do complain about Photoshopping, e.g. the psychological effects of digitally-generated beauty standards. No, photography isn't broken, but yes there is less trust in what a photograph is saying. No, this won't "break" video, whatever that means, but yes of course it will mean people will be less trusting of video.

No one said it'll destroy civilization, don't worry.

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