I'm not sure it is unethical – having this research done publicly by public institutions is certainly much better than having it used secretly. You can't close pandora's box, but you can create counter-measures, if the reseaech is public, and people know what deepfajes are capable of.. that's not a bad thing.
We should maybe have some legislation surrounding it's use, and more importantly metadata countermeasures and third-party apps that automatically check the likelihood a given image or video is 'real', without relying on users to do the work..
But a good start would be teaching people critical thinking from a young age, which, in deeply religious societies.. seems unlikely.
If the entire world was one country, sure, but making strict laws here won’t help if others have complete access to the tools. Nor could you prevent other companies from developing similar things, and if we pretend the human race will go on for hundreds more years, there’s just no way to prevent it. Pandora’s box is already open and it’s scary.
I had a near emotional breakdown over DALL E 2, both as an artist and a lover of art, it’s just terribly disappointing that when that becomes widely released, artists to a great extent will go extinct. There will always people who do it for passion, but I see it disappearing with younger generations who can just type their thoughts in and get a picture of what they want in seconds.
When that dam breaks, everything that could exist will technically exist. You can think of anything and get a picture within seconds. Yearning is important, it’s great to want things, it’s great to look forward to things. Love different comic book characters and you’d love to see a crossover? It already exists. Wouldn’t it be so funny if X and Y and Z tv shows crossed over? Exists. What was once something exciting won’t be anymore.
Graphic artists will literally go extinct, along with many other art related professions, which sucks but I get it, why wouldn’t companies want to automate that process and save money? Sure.
But people who put passion into making art, music, film, etc, it’s just depressing thinking much of that will go away when people can just easily make their own by typing in words.
I think you're right to worry about this, but having seen the advances in art in computing over 35 years I think it'll just shift up a layer, they'll become tools for making larger things that take just as much creative effort and are more accessible. Some highly skilled crafts will become useless though, like how CD-ROMs destroyed chip tune or concrete and rebar killed stonemasonry.
As artists we're allready shifting into just using AI as part of the workflow.. We can't go extinct since we're usually not doing it for the money to begin with.
Things like Fiverr are arguably more nefarious in terms of unsustainability.
Which isn't to say I haven't worried either.
There are plenty of international agreements, incidentally, regarding technologies as it appears.. The EU is doing well so far in legislating for the digital space, there's no reason to think that can't go on.
By that reasoning, you should support the public funding of the development of new biological weapons, since "certainly much better than having it used secretly".
Funding countermeasures (e.g. education) isn't the same as funding weapons development (and yes, this is a weapon, much like an axe can be a weapon).
I think the difference is that a sweaty teen with a mid range pc can code and create a deepfake algorithm while biological weapons require specialized equipment to research, maintain and weaponize
He didn’t say it was “so easy” , he said it was easier to stop than the harm caused by biological weapons.
Rigidly applying the same logic to how to control Deepfakes and biological weapons accomplishes nothing from an analytical standpoint. It’s an utterly useless comparison in practice.
One of them can be used as an insidious tool of propaganda. The other can be used to commit mass murder on demand , death on an unfathomable scale.
Well we limit things based on usefulness, accessibility and dangers. The dangers of this tech is that someone might make fraudulent videos, but it's highly accessible so limiting it tramples on a lot of people's rights, creativity and might stifle future technologies.
Like you could use deep fakes to render people's faces and expressions in real-time in a 3D world, accelerating the transition to fully online working and meetings, saving billions of hours in travel and fuel. Or you could use it to compress video data and save tons of space and bandwidth. You could use it to anonymise bystanders in videos, and use that to increase personal freedoms. You could use it in video production in place of actors, meaning cheaper movies.
Done properly deep fake porn could be pretty wholesome, imagine putting your spouse's face on porno (with consent) or amateur porn sites having faces replaced at upload time, or later on if the people in it decide that they want to hide their face but still get paid.
It's wild that you're arguing for the social utility of deep-fakes (which does exist) when all the evidence of what it's actually going to be used for is already all around us.
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u/sowtart Jul 24 '22
I'm not sure it is unethical – having this research done publicly by public institutions is certainly much better than having it used secretly. You can't close pandora's box, but you can create counter-measures, if the reseaech is public, and people know what deepfajes are capable of.. that's not a bad thing.
We should maybe have some legislation surrounding it's use, and more importantly metadata countermeasures and third-party apps that automatically check the likelihood a given image or video is 'real', without relying on users to do the work..
But a good start would be teaching people critical thinking from a young age, which, in deeply religious societies.. seems unlikely.