Deepfakes et al ...

[Illustration: Yoshi Sodeoka; Source image: Zoonar GmbH/Alamy]

Deep fakes are everywhere. Just go to any site and see nonsense, usually on the right hand side of a site page or on the bottom, purporting to say something ridiculous regarding some celebrity, news event or "scientific" fact along with a doctored graphic showing said tidbit to be "true" One of the usuals is a huge beast found on a beach near you. Seems Adobe and significant others, using metadata as the weapon of choice, is enabling us rubes to put out stuff that's legit without question. 

However, deepfake code's everywhere, even in Adobe.

In the photo, Beyoncé looks beatific, with a closed-lip Mona Lisa smile. But it’s easy enough to give her a toothy grin. Just dial up her “Happiness” to the maximum level using Adobe Photoshop’s Smart Portrait tool, and her face gets a Cheshire cat-like smile, white teeth appearing out of thin air.

Smart Portrait, released in beta last year, is one of Adobe’s AI-powered “neural filters,” which can age faces, change expressions, and alter the background of a photo so it appears to have been taken at a different time of year. These tools may seem innocuous, but they provide increasingly powerful ways to manipulate photos in an era when altered media spreads across social media in dangerous ways.

But what Adobe giveth, Adobe also can use this tech to insure any image generated from us is truly real.

Rao, who now leads the company’s AI ethics committee, teamed up with Gavin Miller, the head of Adobe Research, to find a technical solution. Initially, they pursued ways to identify when one of Adobe’s AI tools had been used on an image, but they soon realized that these kinds of detection algorithms would never be able to catch up with the latest manipulation technologies. Instead, they sought out a way to show when and where images were taken—and turn editing history into metadata that could be attached to images.

The result is the new Content Credentials feature, which went into public beta this October. Users can turn on the feature and embed their images with their identification information and a simplified record of edits that notes which of the company’s tools have been used. Once an image is exported out of Photoshop, it maintains this metadata, all of which can be viewed by anyone online through a new Adobe website called Verify. Simply upload any JPEG, and if it’s been edited with Content Credentials turned on, Verify will show you its metadata and editing history, as well as before-and-after images.

Glad to see other apps designed to deal with deep fakes, 

a scourge just as bad as spam calls on your smartphone.

Digital with Analog override/rev II

Rarely has an advertising image been hailed as a pop culture icon. In that rarified company of Marlboro Man and Benetto Pieta belongs this 1978 photograph by Steven Steigman, which would later be known as the Blown-away Man. The ad for Hitachi Maxell, the Japanese manufacture of stereos has since been parodied from Family Guy to P.Diddy, and to this day, has been recycled and reused by Maxell is its ad campaigns.

The ads showed hair and tie of a man sitting in a Le Corbusier chair — along with the lampshade and martini glass next to him — being blown back by the tremendous sound from speakers in front of him. Who actually modeled for the ad is unclear. Steigman wanted a model with long hair (for obvious reasons), but when a model could not easily be found, Steigman used a makeup man working for his ad agency Scali, McCabe, Sloves. The model is identified only as Jack. To achieve the wind-blown position, Steigman put tonnes of hairspay on the model’s hair, and tied some hair strands to the ceiling with fishing lines. The lampshade, tie and martini glass were also likewise tied to fishing lines.

The photo was instantaneously a hit, a powerful statement that music has power and force to move the mind and the soul. It was so popular that it was expended into a TV ad campaign. In the television versions, either Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries or Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain was the music responsible for those powerful waves.

But this isn't about the Blown-away Man and Maxell but rather about digital with analog overrode and how it applies to the uncanny valley and AI. 

1. Is this face of a real person or artificially synthesized? (See answer below.)

You might be confident in your ability to tell a real face from one created using artificial intelligence. But a new study has found that your chance of choosing accurately would be slightly better if you just flipped a coin—and you are more likely to trust the fake face over the real one.

Farid has been exploring synthetic images—and how well people can tell them apart from the real ones—for years. He initially focused on the rise of computer-generated imagery. But the medium’s path has accelerated in recent years as deep-learning-based neural networks known as GANs (generative adversarial networks) have become more sophisticated at generating truly realistic synthetic images. “If you look at the rate of improvement of deep fakes and [GANs], it’s an order of magnitude faster than CGI,” he says. “We would argue that we are through the uncanny valley for still faces.

As corollary, the impedance to ubiquitous AI has been the amount of power said tech uses as neural nets are analog, taking measurements of the outside world while computationally, the backend evaluates the data input crunching bits, thus creating a computational mismatch requiring enormous power to overcome, a problem considered to be almost impossible to solve until now.

Algorithms that use the brain’s communication signal can now work on analog neuromorphic chips, which closely mimic our energy-efficient brains.

Today’s most successful artificial intelligence algorithms, artificial neural networks, are loosely based on the intricate webs of real neural networks in our brains. But unlike our highly efficient brains, running these algorithms on computers guzzles shocking amounts of energy: The biggest models consume nearly as much power as five cars over their lifetimes.

Enter neuromorphic computing, a closer match to the design principles and physics of our brains that could become the energy-saving future of AI. Instead of shuttling data over long distances between a central processing unit and memory chips, neuromorphic designs imitate the architecture of the jelly-like mass in our heads, with computing units (neurons) placed next to memory (stored in the synapses that connect neurons). To make them even more brain-like, researchers combine neuromorphic chips with analog computing, which can process continuous signals, just like real neurons. The resulting chips are vastly different from the current architecture and computing mode of digital-only computers that rely on binary signal processing of 0s and 1s.

The BrainScaleS-2 neuromorphic chip, developed by neuromorphic engineers at Heidelberg University, uses tiny circuits that mimic the analog computing of the real neurons in our brains.

2. Is this face of a real person or artificially synthesized? (See answer below.)

Wth this being said, everything's different now as AI's a reality not to be denied and man is not ready for it. Bill Joy, in 2010 wrote

What we do suggest is that the human race might easily permit itself to drift into a position of such dependence on the machines that it would have no practical choice but to accept all of the machines' decisions. As society and the problems that face it become more and more complex and machines become more and more intelligent, people will let machines make more of their decisions for them, simply because machine-made decisions will bring better results than man-made ones. Eventually a stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex that human beings will be incapable of making them intelligently. At that stage the machines will be in effective control. People won't be able to just turn the machines off, because they will be so dependent on them that turning them off would amount to suicide.

Answers

1. Fake

2. Real

Deep Fakes ...

Deepfakes (a portmanteau of "deep learning" and "fake"[1]) are media that take a person in an existing image or video and replace them with someone else's likeness using artificial neural networks.[2] They often combine and superimpose existing media onto source media using machine learning techniques known as autoencoders and generative adversarial networks.

It gets better ...

An example of deepfake technology: actress Amy Adams in the original (left) 

is modified to have the face of actor Nicolas Cage (right)

And now there's something else that Artificial Intelligence can do; it can create a moving digital avatar of you. 

It's crazy and people are seemed to be really hyped with this innovation. It seems indeed like a Black Mirror if you can think of all the things you can do with this feature of Artificial Intelligence. 

Something to think about for sure, don't you think?

In the Event of Moon Disaster ...

We, along with BRT and significant others, know a little bit about deep fakes but to see how it really should be done, click https://moondisaster.org/film as the process to do this at such a high degree is detailed and nuanced to the nth degree. Read the lengthy Scientific American piece to learn why AI could be our final invention without question.

What can former U.S. president Richard Nixon possibly teach us about artificial intelligence today and the future of misinformation online? Nothing. The real Nixon died 26 years ago.

But an AI-generated likeness of him shines new light on a quickly evolving technology with sizable implications, both creative and destructive, for our current digital information ecosystem. Starting in 2019, media artists Francesca Panetta and Halsey Burgund at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology teamed up with two AI companies, Canny AI and Respeecher, to create a posthumous deepfake. The synthetic video shows Nixon giving a speech he never intended to deliver—half a century after the subject it addresses.

This is how they did it. https://moondisaster.org/explainer

To compound the felony ...

This past April a new video of Barack Obama surfaced on the Internet. Against a backdrop that included both the American and presidential flags, it looked like many of his previous speeches. Wearing a crisp white shirt and dark suit, Obama faced the camera and punctuated his words with outstretched hands: “President Trump is a total and complete dipshit.”

While the sentiment may be true but Obama saying is not.

TECHNOLOGY that was originally developed to create virtual scenes in film (1) has evolved into a tool that can be used to make fake videos (2) to spread disinformation. Credit: Film still from Forrest Gump, Paramount Pictures, 1994 (1); Film still from You Won't Believe What Obama Says in This Video!, Monkeypaw Productions and Buzzfeed, April 17, 2018 (2)

Endgame ...

Clicks, Lies and Videotape

Artificial intelligence is making it possible for anyone to manipulate audio and video. 

The biggest threat is that we stop trusting anything at all

Total distrust is already here.

The wild west equation ...

MS TECH | NGA

AI's everywhere but you already know that, right? Well, the EU is trying to reign in the nasty part of the tech in writing up laws designed to protect the public from an open ended technology already evolving at rates boggling the mind. The question to ask is, will this attempt to regulate AI actually work? From this perspective, it's questionable at best but worth a shot nevertheless.

It’s a Wild West out there for artificial intelligence. AI applications are increasingly used to make important decisions about humans’ lives with little to no oversight or accountability. This can have devastating consequences: wrongful arrests, incorrect grades for students, and even financial ruin. Women, marginalized groups, and people of color often bear the brunt of AI’s propensity for error and overreach. 

The European Union thinks it has a solution: the mother of all AI laws, called the AI Act. It is the first law that aims to curb these harms by regulating the whole sector. If the EU succeeds, it could set a new global standard for AI oversight around the world.

The AI Act is hugely ambitious. It would require extra checks for “high risk” uses of AI that have the most potential to harm people. This could include systems used for grading exams, recruiting employees, or helping judges make decisions about law and justice. The first draft of the bill also includes bans on uses of AI deemed “unacceptable,” such as scoring people on the basis of their perceived trustworthiness. 

The bill would also restrict law enforcement agencies’ use of facial recognition in public places. There is a loud group of power players, including members of the European Parliament and countries such as Germany, that want a full ban or moratorium on its use in public by both law enforcement and private companies, arguing that the technology enables mass surveillance. 

As someone somewhat well versed in tech and knowing how grossly inefficient government tends to be, a grain of salt applies as we haven't gotten rid of spam on our smart phones so how will this initiative flies regarding deep fakes and other such niceties residing on open ended code forever remaining opaque due to the fact real time programs require real time machine driven software able to modify said code to evolve as needs warrant, is something this well intentioned law cannot address in any way, shape or fashion.

Appearance is reality/rev II

Deep Fakes, so real you can't tell the difference from the real is now going high res, thanks to research course Disney Research Studios.

It may sound contradictory, but deepfakes are becoming more real.

Deepfakes, which refer to the swapping of video or still images of an individual with the likeness of another person, have become wildly popular on the Internet over the past three years. They hold great potential for entertainment and humor, but they also carry foreboding capacity for scandal, fraud and even geopolitical upheaval.

Disney Research Studios announced this week that it has developed a process that automates deepfake production with a fidelity greater than previously achieved.

"To the best of our knowledge, this is the first method capable of rendering photo-realistic and temporally coherent results at megapixel resolution," Disney stated on its website Monday.

Endgame ...

By the end of last year, 96 percent of online deepfake videos were porn, according to a report by cybersecurity firm Deeptrace. In almost all instances, the images were used without the subjects' permission.

So popular was this new genre of fake porn that a $50 Windows app using artificial intelligence to scan pictures of women and "undress" them was uploaded and withdrawn within a single day last summer following an immediate backlash.

Appearance is reality, is it not?

The Memory Hole/Rev V

Photograph: Roberto Schmidt/Getty Images

Everyday, the specter of 1984 becomes evermore present under this administration from hell, this time, the removal of not only images showing DEI in the military or the presence of the word Gay in the Enola Gay pix of the B29 bomber carrying the nuke to Hiroshima but also on how AI should deal with the biases and prejudices of mankind as after all, we're the ones who create this tech in the first place.

Paul Tibbets waving from Enola Gay's cockpit
before taking off for the bombing of Hiroshima in 1945

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has issued new instructions to scientists that partner with the US Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute (AISI) that eliminate mention of “AI safety,” “responsible AI,” and “AI fairness” in the skills it expects of members and introduces a request to prioritize “reducing ideological bias, to enable human flourishing and economic competitiveness.”

The information comes as part of an updated cooperative research and development agreement for AI Safety Institute consortium members, sent in early March. Previously, that agreement encouraged researchers to contribute technical work that could help identify and fix discriminatory model behavior related to gender, race, age, or wealth inequality. Such biases are hugely important because they can directly affect end users and disproportionately harm minorities and economically disadvantaged groups.

The new agreement removes mention of developing tools “for authenticating content and tracking its provenance” as well as “labeling synthetic content,” signaling less interest in tracking misinformation and deep fakes. It also adds emphasis on putting America first, asking one working group to develop testing tools “to expand America’s global AI position.”

1947 draft manuscript of the first page of Nineteen Eighty-Four,
 showing the editorial development

The memory hole beckons.

Wack a Mole ...

[Source images: IULIIA MARCHENKO/iStock; cienpies/iStock; Bigmouse108/iStock; Yuriy Altukhov/iStock; Tatyana Larina/iStock; Bigmouse108/iStock]

Wack a Mole applies to many things on the net from deep fakes to porn as computers, combined with ubiquitous networks allows this kind of content, and more, to run online 24/7. With this in mind, a long and detailed article in Fast Company shows where young people go to play games and access porn without restriction if they have the smarts to make it so.

Sex, lies, and video games: Inside Roblox’s war on porn

Roblox is waging a technological shadow war against condo games: digital sex parties where kids act like adults. With more than half of Americans under 16 playing Roblox, can the company regain control of its own platform?

Roblox today is the product of its over 150 million monthly active users. What began as a sandbox now resembles a scrappy cybernation of teens and tweens whose population rivals that of Japan. And the dollars are real: Players poured more than $490 million into Roblox via mobile devices in the first half of 2020 alone, according to Sensor Tower data. Roblox projects that its user-developers—many of whom are Roblox veterans in their late teens and early twenties—will earn more than $250 million from selling access to their creations this year. The company, which is valued at $4 billion, takes roughly 65 cents of every U.S. dollar when developers cash out.

It gets better.

KIDS BETWEEN THE AGES OF 5 AND 9 SPEND MORE TIME PLAYING ROBLOX THAN DOING ANYTHING ELSE ONLINE ON PCS.

Read the Fast Company piece in its entirety. It's a really smart thing to do.

Guesstimates

Funhouse

Guesstimates, you know, predictions about the future or even the present is chancy at best as change is the only constant and because of that, one can only throw darts and hope one doesn't miss. In Crossing the Rubicon ..., BRT talked about a perilous future, here, within that time frame, will be a tiny partial guess as to how science and tech will hold on as best as it can as in the face of a most pernicious storm of our own making.

For starters, SI FI in books and film is at it's acme with China going full tilt in examining it's relationship to same as it becomes the other super power on planet earth.

Cancer becomes solvable due to AI and intense compute power able to discern how proteins fold and how that impacts the communicative problem of cancer cells as to why they go rogue.

Fusion will happen as there is simply too much money and need for it to not happen. Think MIT and private enterprise on this front as research is beginning to bear real fruit. Timeframe - 20 years. This will be the true start point to hopefully ameliorating GW as solar, wind and wave lack the energy density to transition energy grids from coal, oil and gas with any degree of success.This is key if civilization is to survive as nature does reset if given a chance as carbon and methane injection into the atmosphere will begin to fall if fossil fuels are finally done away in their entirety. If this doesn't happen, we're toast.

Happy motoring begins to collapse as there is no more cheap energy to be found. Shale and natural gas have had their day in the sun. Scarcity becomes the new watchword for now though cheap and powerful batteries to power the inevitable changeover to electric goes prime time. 

Graphene becomes real in more ways than one can imagine. Ditto quantum computing.

Really big telescopes get built and discoveries of all kinds take off.

Space travel ...

As obnoxious as Elon Musk is, the man knows rockets and how to build them to be useful and practical at the same time. This reusability factor will expand to other vendors, as it always does, as the resources in space are too valuable to ignore. Starting with good enough and improving upon same to make the space tech reliable and relatively cheap will make space travel viable but Mars "ain't" the answer to how man will survive the coming storm of GW.

Astronomy goes lunar with radio and optical scopes being built on the far side of the moon.

Moon and Mars get bases, 10-20 years out.

The James Webb telescope becomes operational, finally.

Extraterrestrial life is discovered. Mars, Europa, Enceladus or Titan look to be the best candidates or perhaps aliens make the scene. It's about time don't you think? 

Quantum Mechanics and Relativity finally gets unified under a new theory.

Quantum chemistry goes primetime

Gravitons indirectly become recognized as the carrier force for gravity.

Medical

In situ stem cell treatment of maladies like cancer, diabetes and hear problems gain traction due to the aforementioned computational and AI prowess of systems coming online as we speak. This also applies to increasing the lifespan of man though, in light of what's coming, one has to ask the existential question, Is it a good idea?

AI becomes sentient. Question, What's next?  

Guaranteed income is coming as bots are going to take over most jobs because it's cheaper and more efficient. Sustainability will become the mantra as conditions on planet earth get worse. 

Smart weapons, autonomous bots and digital swarms of cheap but deadly drones, controlled by AI, replace the large and overly complex systems of today. Think Avatar.

Lab on a chip gets real. 

Nanotech gets real, finally.

Local farming gets real.

Geoengineering, a tech most disquieting, gets all too real. 

Media, untrusted to the max, becomes immersive. Think Blade Runner 2049.

Video goes virtual but we already know that. Think The Mandelorian.

Hardware craps out. Solar, 20 years, ditto wind. Will we have the resources to replace said tech? 

Bots as sexual companions go prime time.

Deep Fakes reside everywhere, not only in images and video but also in audio and writing.

Guns become more cherished than ever in the home of the brave & land of the free.

China and the US avoid a hot war.

Rewild the world - David Atenborough

We totally depend on tech, a most fragile entity without question.

All of this can happen if we have enough time ...

Resource depletion et al ... 

Earth Overshoot Day (EOD) is the calculated illustrative calendar date on which humanity's resource consumption for the year exceeds Earth’s capacity to regenerate those resources that year. 

30 years from now, it's June 30 therabouts. Think 2050.

The descent.

Countries splinter in the face of GW, resource depletion and environmental degradation. 

Hundreds of millions die as forced migration is hazardous to one's health. India's problem with Covid is just a taste of what's coming as glaciers dry up and variable land disappears under the onslaught of GW.

India, without the monsoon, is terrifying to the max.

Science get attacked by the ignorant. Politics becomes ever more fractious. The US anyone?

Man goes tribal.

Enclaves of modernity will spring up to hold off the hordes of impoverished millions along with bands of foraging bandits, bringing forth a new dark age with islands of civilization residing, either behind fortified walls or hidden away to avoid detection. Dangerville awaits.

VR will be big as travel becomes too perilous. Cybersecurity will be job one to keep intruders digitally away.

2050 looms.

         There's A Pony In Here...Somewhere.

Roadway 101