Posted on 08/23/2019 12:42:37 PM PDT by ransomnote
Something very strange and disturbing happened to me recently. If it was just relevant to me, it wouldn’t be that important (except perhaps to me), and I wouldn’t be writing this column. But it’s something that is likely more important and more ominous than we can even imagine.
There are already common fraudulent schemes being perpetrated by both telephone and internet. One known as the “Grandparent Scam” is particularly reprehensible, first because it is perpetrated on elderly people who are, in general, more susceptible to tech-savvy criminals and second because it is based on the manipulation of familial love, trust and compassion. The criminal running the Grandparent Scam calls, or emails the victim, pretending to represent a grandchild who is now in trouble with the law or who needs money for a hospital bill for an injury that can’t be discussed, say, with parents, because of the moral trouble that might ensue. They generally call late at night — say at four in the morning — because that adds to the confusion. The preferred mechanism of money movement is wire transfer — and that’s a warning: don’t transfer money by wire without knowing for certain who is receiving it, because once it’s gone, it’s not coming back.
Now what if it was possible to conduct such a scam using the actual voice of the hypothetical victim? Worse, what if it was possible to do so with voice and video image, indistinguishable from the real thing? If we’re not at that point now (and we probably are) we will be within months.
In April of this year, a company called Coding Elite exposed an artificial intelligence (AI) program that took a substantial sample of my voice, which is easily accessible on the YouTube lectures and podcasts that I have posted over the last years.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalpost.com ...
The linked article includes a video example of an actor performing voice impersonations while his face is briefly replaced with the image of other actors he's impersonating. The impersonating actor just happens to blend well visually (shape of his head etc.) and I suspect that's no accident - this seems to be the curriculum the Deep State has for the public.
Naturally, at the link, Obama is shown faked. This particular article is written by a professor of psychology who had a whole website AI devoted to faking him saying anything users wanted. He's a good spokesperson - I think that's why he was chosen.
Quoting Peterson, "More to the point: how are we going to trust anything electronically mediated in the very near future (say, during the next presidential election)? " Yes - the presidential election. This must mean they will probably release deep fakes of POTUS saying things he didn't say (instead of just having the MSM lie) and as he and others push back on false accusations, use that momentum to push back on any actual incriminating audio/video of Hillary and co.
Peterson says, "Why should we not assume that the noise to signal ratio will creep so high that all political and economic information disseminated broadly will be rendered completely untrustworthy?" That's the goal.
However, I've heard that forensic examination reveals the application of this technology, even if it is visually smooth. So I guess it could come down to a battle of experts, with the DS experts claiming the authentic tapes/audio are "deep fakes" and decent investigators explaining that they are authentic and haven't been altered.
Elsewhere in the article, the author asks if in-person contact is going to be the only reliable proof. That works for people like Hillary Clinton and other Deep State actors - people keep dying around them.
That’s a silly premise.
The technology is already out there. You’re never going to assume that everything is real. Just because you say ‘it has been stopped’ doesn’t mean it really stopped. It would be worse if someone set about stopping deep fakes and proclaiming it a success, because I guarantee you it wont be.
That’s a silly premise.
The technology is already out there. You’re never going to assume that everything is real. Just because you say ‘it has been stopped’ doesn’t mean it really stopped. It would be worse if someone set about stopping deep fakes and proclaiming it a success, because I guarantee you it wont be.
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I agree. I actually don’t think he’s sincere - he must KNOW there’s no example of a technology genie being put back in the bottle because of public uneasiness. To me, that’s a PR piece advancing a strategy. He’s supposed to be too smart to miss the blindingly obvious. He’s shrieking about it like it’s a house fire.
I used to love technology. I still think it is awesome, but I also think it is on the cusp of utterly destroying civilization.
I sometimes wonder if governments are embracing the global warming farce to create a system of wealth distribution to ensure everyone has money in a world where nobody is really needed for production of food, products and services. Part of that will be lots and lots of government “make-work” jobs.
Just thinking out loud.
The average person already knows anything can be faked with video.
The bigger problem is those who fake narratives.
That is about where I am at too. There is a practical limit and after that it becomes completely irrational.
Nah, global warming is nothing new, it’s exactly the old snake oil scam. If you take snake oil and get better then it cured you. Otherwise you needed to take it sooner, or take more. And you have to take it when you are well too, to prevent you getting sick.
This is not science, because there are no tests or alternate outcomes. You must take advantage NOW of this limited time offer!
Coupled with that is my belief that the exponentially increasing rate of change is already causing cracks to form in our civilization. Eventually, not just some, but most people will simply not be able to cope. When that critical mass is reached, it collapses in a matter of hours.
I’m with you completely, I forgot the sarcasm tag. :)
“I used to love technology. I still think it is awesome, but I also think it is on the cusp of utterly destroying civilization.”
I’m the same way. I used to read about 8 tech blogs a day 10 years ago to keep up with all the cool stuff being developed, now I look at about two, and none of the news is about anything other than stale releases of the same phones and tablets or the latest privacy breach and state intrusion into tech.
It feels like the tech companies have all stopped making nifty consumer gadgets and now are all building a digital cage around us. Just going into Best Buy no longer instills the wonder it once it. Everything is over-connected and not inspiring. Just crap to lock you in.....to something.
Makes me glad I bought a Zune off eBay just to have one gadget from the good old days when everything wasn’t watching you or learning from you.
“I believe the filthy political and social “elites” are working to train the public not to believe video and audio tapes which expose their crimes. “
no doubt about it ... they’ve already proclaimed obviously real videos fakes when they had no other explanation ... a good example was when Acosta shoved the Trump aid at a press conference ... there was another occasion I remember watching Trump live, when the dying lying leftist fake stream enemedia claimed the video was faked ...
their goal now appears to be to fake so much of everything and censor the publication of the truth so that the ordinary citizen will no longer know what to believe about anything ...
I absolutely agree. It is all geared towards encouraging and satisfying pure laziness and reduced need for use of the human brain. It is creating controlled biological robots with no cognitive ability of their own completely dependent on technology or they cannot function at all.
Just curious - what could you wander into Best Buy and see that would re-instill that sense of wonder and awe?
We have so many fancy tech goodies available to us these days, it’s easy to forget how good we have it. Compared to the old days of dial phones, 8 tracks and 3 VHF channels on the tube TV.
Is there anything left that we could want that isn’t dangled before our greedy eyes?
I wonder.
(At the same time as I’m holding out for that full size holo-deck, Deanna Troi model...)
Oh, and if you do think of whatever it might be, invent it, and you can be the next tech billionaire.
Scary, very scary.
“He’s supposed to be too smart to miss the blindingly obvious”
Smart about psychology, sociology, etc, does not make one smart about technology.
They’ve done it with every Jame O’Keefe investigation for years. They just say “that was heavily edited” even though he always released the full videos on his website the same day.
The real danger is that most people are dumb enough to believe whatever the media tells them; they would rather be spoonfed a patently ridiculous lie than make the effort to learn to think critically.
The Trump solution is to communicate solely through HIS Twitter feed. That works.
When we see a video of Hillary saying nice things about Trump, we’ll know it’s fake.
“I actually don’t think he’s sincere”.
Given what I’ve heard of Peterson in the past, I don’t think he could be more sincere.
But what I couldn’t help thinking when I’d finished the posted article was this: How do we know what was written in that article actually was from Jordan Peterson? Not that I don’t think it was him, but if you can fake video and you can fake audio you can certainly fake written, and you can fake web addresses and damn near anything.
So ultimately it seems to me responsibility comes back to whoever *promulgates* a video or an article or whatever. If Peterson had *not* written the article that was posted, and someone had just submitted (with whatever technical embellishments) as his, how would he prove to the site he was Jordan Peterson? And how would he make it known that he, Jordan Peterson, wanted that article removed because it wasn’t him?
Propaganda is not new but the technology is taking it to a new level and the vehicle that is delivering it in the American media is unprecedented and very dangerous for the future of this nation.
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