Free Republic

The memory of Stalin’s Terror is now receiving more attention in Russia than at any time since the 1980s. The Stalin epoch’s influence on Russia is undeniable. Present-day Russians mainly live in a country inherited from the Stalin-era Soviet Union, not least in terms of infrastructure, architecture and social institutions. However, scholars, intellectuals and journalists agree that Russian society has yet to thoroughly work through the totalitarian legacy of Stalin’s era. According to a recent Levada-Center poll, Stalin’s popularity is actually rising. Around 40 percent of respondents expressed positive attitudes towards Stalin, while around one third agreed that Russia now...

A quiet wager has taken hold among researchers who study artificial intelligence techniques and the societal impacts of such technologies. They’re betting whether or not someone will create a so-called Deepfake video about a political candidate that receives more than 2 million views before getting debunked by the end of 2018. The Deepfake technology in question first gained notoriety in December 2017 when a person going by the pseudonym “DeepFakes” showed how deep learning—a popular AI technique based on neural network computer architecture—could digitally stitch the faces of celebrities onto the faces of porn actors in pornography videos. Since that...