Original air date: October 20th 2024
Artificial Intelligence is advancing faster than the speed of light, it seems, and a majority of Americans say they’re concerned about realistic Deep Fakes impacting the election Here’s Scott Thuman.
The following is a transcript of a report from “Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson.”
Watch the video by clicking the link at the end of the page.
Perhaps it is a measure of just how close this election is, or how divided the nation has become.
Throughout the campaign season, AI-generated fake videos and images have proliferated.
Sometimes the aim is to amuse, but mostly, the idea is to mislead voters, or throw a wrench into the wheels of democracy.
As happened last January in New Hampshire, when a robocall with a voice sounding like President Biden appeared to tell voters to skip the state’s primary election.
The political consultant who allegedly created that call was later indicted for deterring people from voting.
To better understand deep fakes, we had a Zoom call with Oren Etzioni in Seattle.
An AI expert, he’s launched a website that uses human and computer tools to inspect files for telltale signs of AI generation.
Like this one recently of a fake call between Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.
Scott: You know, we throw around that phrase ‘deep fake’ because we understand it, but I’m not sure the average person understands just how big or wide that scope is. Explain to someone who’s never heard of a deep fake why they should.
Oren Etzioni: When you see an image or a video, we’re visual animals, it’s natural to say, okay, I see this with my own eyes, I believe it. Unfortunately, we’ve reached the point where AI is sophisticated enough that it’s easy to fake these images, to fake these videos so that they look real, but they’re not.
Scenes that look unlikely, like President Trump hugging Dr. Anthony Fauci can still look convincing. In this case, in a video attacking President Trump’s decision not to fire Anthony Fauci.
Peter Loge is director of the Project on Ethics in Political Communication at George Washington University in the nation’s capital.
Peter Loge: The real downside of this, though, is because we’re all afraid of AI because there’s so much stuff. Anybody following these campaigns is looking at a wall of noise. We don’t know what’s true, what’s not, what’s fake, what’s not fake, what the candidates are saying, what people are pretending. So, maybe, we don’t believe any of it,
Loge says the big campaigns have largely avoided AI for their advertising and videos because of the risk of being caught out. But smaller campaigns, and foreign actors seeking influence can have a large impact without spending much.
Scott: So, if you or I had malicious intent and we wanted to alter the way people saw a candidate in this election, it wouldn’t take much?
Etzioni: It wouldn’t take much. It would take a few dollars. We’re not even talking about a hundred dollars, we’re just talking about a few dollars and existing tools.
Leaving voters to wonder if what they’ve seen and heard over the campaign is real or a sophisticated con.
For Full Measure, I’m Scott Thuman.
Sharyl: A number of states passed legislation to ban or punish deep fakes in elections. But California’s law was recently ruled unconstitutional.
A number of states passed legislation to ban or punish deep fakes in elections. But California’s law was recently ruled unconstitutional.
Watch video here.
We’ve been programmed to accept the computer tools which have led us to the precipice. As a result we’ve been imprisoned within a digital ‘matrix’ grid. Reality as we knew it is now ‘virtual’ instead of ‘actual.’ On the other side of this dilemma we may also consider how we humans are easily hypnotized to such degree that we believe we are awake when we are sleep-walking for a lifetime. The wisest sages and spiritual teachers have questioned what we consider as real for eons. The latest form of deception has a technological (techno-illogical)component which can be “unplugged”; and yet, we are addicted to the tech-toys due to the immediacy of sense gratification. ‘Deep fakes’ are merely the latest fad in the infinite arsenal of life’s grandest of illusions. Something about the metaphor of a garden comes to mind…some call it Eden.
It used to be that I searched for a video to confirm news articles that I read. More and more I worry that I can’t even trust videos. It makes it hard to trust any source of information.
Lisa, Sharyl—and Full Measure Team :
Re : Pioneers vs. Immigrants—the REALITY revealed, below
WHITES were pioneers, not “IMMIGRANTS.” as socialistic/communistic Democrats like to assert—White pioneers who had tamed a Savage land and its Savage/Waring Red-Indian Native Tribes ( read my report, “Myth of the Noble Savage” ).
America was built by its predominating race of WHITE ethnic groups.
America – and America’s cultural underpinnings of WHITE ethnic groups, before the Sixties’ Libertine Liberals trashed their legacy – reflect the innate ingenuity and character and temperament and intelligence of the White Race.
Could a rag-tag collective of, say, Iraquis, Koreans, Japanese, Haitians, Vietnamese, Mexicans or Pakistanis join together and successfully found a nation like America? No, of course not, because it is humans’ nature, in any collective, to draw close to those most like themselves in physical appearance, in character, in temperament, in intelligence and in other ways. The ‘United Nations’ works to make America look like its respective members—to divide and destroy the Founding Race and Culture of—White Civilized Society.
“Birds of a feather flock together.” -Aristotle.
Read Pioneer/Founder
John Jay’s view:
“Providence has been pleased to give this one
connected country
to ONE united [ White ] PEOPLE
. . . descended from the SAME ancestors
[ definition of “Nation,” say anthropologists ] ,
speaking the SAME language, professing the
SAME religion, attached to the SAME principles
of government, very similar in their manners
and customs, and who . . . fighting side by
side throughout a long and bloody war, have
NOBLY established their general liberty and
independence [ from the KING ].”
A racially homogeneous collective of WHITES conceived and built this nation, to reflect their innate/genetic qualities, which unparalleled ingenuity and achievement and general I.Q. has attracted every type of non-white human worldwide—people attracted by the unparalleled bounty that WHITE men and WHITE women have created in their WHITE Western states, and which bounty has been slowly eroded by ever-increasing Anti-WHITE racial-diversity GROUPS growing within them :
The Diversity-Perversity,
We-Are-The-World,
Universalist /
Internationalist /
Communist /
Anti-White
Movement (( see the recent NYC mayoral primary race,
as a Muslim-socialist-communist-MORON has won )).
-Rick