James Cameron Warns of 'The Dangers of Deepfakes' (bbc.com) 83
Slashdot reader DevNull127 shares this transcript of James Cameron's new interview with the BBC — which they've titled "The Danger of Deepfakes."
"Almost everything we create seems to go wrong at some point," James Cameron says... James Cameron: Almost everything we create seems to go wrong at some point. I've worked at the cutting edge of visual effects, and our goal has been progressively to get more and more photo-real. And so every time we improve these tools, we're actually in a sense building a toolset to create fake media — and we're seeing it happening now. Right now the tools are — the people just playing around on apps aren't that great. But over time, those limitations will go away. Things that you see and fully believe you're seeing could be faked.
This is the great problem with us relying on video. The news cycles happen so fast, and people respond so quickly, you could have a major incident take place between the interval between when the deepfake drops and when it's exposed as a fake. We've seen situations — you know, Arab Spring being a classic example — where with social media, the uprising was practically overnight.
You have to really emphasize critical thinking. Where did you hear that? You know, we have all these search tools available, but people don't use them. Understand your source. Investigate your source. Is your source credible?
But we also shouldn't be prone to this ridiculous conspiracy paranoia. People in the science community don't just go, 'Oh that's great!' when some scientist, you know, publishes their results. No, you go in for this big period of peer review. It's got to be vetted and checked. And the more radical a finding, the more peer review there is. So good peer-reviewed science can't lie. But people's minds, for some reason, will go to the sexier, more thriller-movie interpretation of reality than the obvious one.
I always use Occam's razor — you know, Occam's razor's a great philosophical tool. It says the simplest explanation is the likeliest. And conspiracy theories are all too complicated. People aren't that good, human systems aren't that good, people can't keep a secret to save their lives, and most people in positions of power are bumbling stooges. The fact that we think that they could realistically pull off these — these complex plots? I don't buy any of that crap! Bill Gates is not really trying to microchip you with the flu vaccine! [Laughs]
You know, look, I'm always skeptical of new technology, and we all should be. Every single advancement in technology that's ever been created has been weaponized. I say this to AI scientists all the time, and they go, 'No, no, no, we've got this under control.' You know, 'We just give the AIs the right goals...' So who's deciding what those goals are? The people that put up the money for the research, right? Which are all either big business or defense. So you're going to teach these new sentient entities to be either greedy or murderous.
If Skynet wanted to take over and wipe us out, it would actually look a lot like what's going on right now. It's not going to have to — like, wipe out the entire, you know, biosphere and environment with nuclear weapons to do it. It's going to be so much easier and less energy required to just turn our minds against ourselves. All Skynet would have to do is just deepfake a bunch of people, pit them against each other, stir up a lot of foment, and just run this giant deepfake on humanity.
I mean, I could be a projection of an AI right now.
"Almost everything we create seems to go wrong at some point," James Cameron says... James Cameron: Almost everything we create seems to go wrong at some point. I've worked at the cutting edge of visual effects, and our goal has been progressively to get more and more photo-real. And so every time we improve these tools, we're actually in a sense building a toolset to create fake media — and we're seeing it happening now. Right now the tools are — the people just playing around on apps aren't that great. But over time, those limitations will go away. Things that you see and fully believe you're seeing could be faked.
This is the great problem with us relying on video. The news cycles happen so fast, and people respond so quickly, you could have a major incident take place between the interval between when the deepfake drops and when it's exposed as a fake. We've seen situations — you know, Arab Spring being a classic example — where with social media, the uprising was practically overnight.
You have to really emphasize critical thinking. Where did you hear that? You know, we have all these search tools available, but people don't use them. Understand your source. Investigate your source. Is your source credible?
But we also shouldn't be prone to this ridiculous conspiracy paranoia. People in the science community don't just go, 'Oh that's great!' when some scientist, you know, publishes their results. No, you go in for this big period of peer review. It's got to be vetted and checked. And the more radical a finding, the more peer review there is. So good peer-reviewed science can't lie. But people's minds, for some reason, will go to the sexier, more thriller-movie interpretation of reality than the obvious one.
I always use Occam's razor — you know, Occam's razor's a great philosophical tool. It says the simplest explanation is the likeliest. And conspiracy theories are all too complicated. People aren't that good, human systems aren't that good, people can't keep a secret to save their lives, and most people in positions of power are bumbling stooges. The fact that we think that they could realistically pull off these — these complex plots? I don't buy any of that crap! Bill Gates is not really trying to microchip you with the flu vaccine! [Laughs]
You know, look, I'm always skeptical of new technology, and we all should be. Every single advancement in technology that's ever been created has been weaponized. I say this to AI scientists all the time, and they go, 'No, no, no, we've got this under control.' You know, 'We just give the AIs the right goals...' So who's deciding what those goals are? The people that put up the money for the research, right? Which are all either big business or defense. So you're going to teach these new sentient entities to be either greedy or murderous.
If Skynet wanted to take over and wipe us out, it would actually look a lot like what's going on right now. It's not going to have to — like, wipe out the entire, you know, biosphere and environment with nuclear weapons to do it. It's going to be so much easier and less energy required to just turn our minds against ourselves. All Skynet would have to do is just deepfake a bunch of people, pit them against each other, stir up a lot of foment, and just run this giant deepfake on humanity.
I mean, I could be a projection of an AI right now.
It's the year 2038 (Score:5, Funny)
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That sounds pretty similar to the plot of some movie I forget the name of, where the guy turned out to actually be on drugs or something? Hollywood has been releasing so much poorly written crap lately I can barely keep up.
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sounds like the VR system that we all will have embedded in our brains at birth borked.
How do we really know that what we see, touch, smell, taste and hear is real?
Are we the subjects of a gazillion player video game run from Vogon?
Meanwhile, in the real world, some of us will eschew all that VR, automated car bovine excrement and continue to think that Elon, lord high almighty Musk is nothing more than a snake oil sales droid dropped on us from a galaxy far, far away!
If you believe a word of what I have wr
Re:It's the year 2038 (Score:4, Interesting)
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I don't like the "living in a sim" theories, because any sim would require more atoms to build than it could simulate
You assume the "real" universe is made of the same stuff as the simulated universe. There is no reason that needs to be true.
You also assume the entire universe is simulated rather than just the neural input to the observer.
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At first I was going to disagree with you, but then I started thinking about baked in textures vs shaders. Baked textures require a value for each pixel, while procedural shaders, or just plain shaders calculate the surface value based on math.
Granted baked textures are faster only requiring T&L unit, but if we're living in a simulation, it's not like we get an FPS count, from our perspective time moves normally, but from the universes perspective, it might take days to render 1 frame of time so the am
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You can't simplify anything and hope humans won't eventually notice
Some will notice while others will dismiss their observations as psychosis.
Re: It's the year 2038 (Score:2)
One interesting bit of weak evidence I saw for the simulation hypothesis is that, if it only needs to simulate stuff that someone is observing and nothing more, then, assuming an upper limit processing speed, one would expect the simulation to run slower where there's a lot of stuff being simulated, and faster where there are few things being simulated. Well, that's exactly what we see: the more stuff (atoms, mass) there is in a place, the slower it "runs".
Why this happens is also explained by General Relat
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Re: It's the year 2038 (Score:2)
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That's what happens when the water flows underground and you let it hold you down.
Re: It's the year 2038 (Score:2)
Re: It's the year 2038 (Score:2)
And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife
And you may ask yourself, "Well, how did I get here?"
Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by, water flowing underground
Into the blue again after the money's gone
Once in a lifetime, water flowing underground
And you may ask yourself, "How do I work this?"
And you may ask yourself, "Where is that large automobile?"
And you may tell yourself, "This is not my beautiful house"
And you may tell yourself, "This is not my beautiful wife"
I had to post the lyrics to Once in a Lifetime by the Talking Heads to show how much of a parallel your story compared with an early 80s song.
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Yes, what a coincidence! You really are clever to have drawn the parallel. I bet the OP wishes they'd spotted it themselves.
Re: It's the year 2038 (Score:2)
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Of all the Y2038 bugs that could pop up from the timestamp overflowing, those are some of the strangest.
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Qu'est-ce que c'est?
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No big change (Score:5, Insightful)
Journalism is dead, now we just have outrage bait
Re: No big change (Score:5, Insightful)
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The rich and powerful have always done whatever they want. What's the point of being rich and powerful if you can't do what you want?
Re: No big change (Score:2)
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With what ethic foundation would we democratice private property?
Or are you one of those people who nood vigorously and with glee when some schmuck spouts we need a new world order that does away with private property?
Democratizing things only does you any good if the people involved actually put some care into that democracy... You can have democracy all you want, if the public isn't on the streets and making sure every last shred of corruption gets dragged into the light and severly punished, it's nothing
Re: No big change (Score:2)
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Even if Boris Johnson gets kicked out of his job as Prime Minister, there won't be real consequences for him. One of the worst death tolls in the world, tens of billions given to cronies, and long term economic decline, all on his watch. It's not like there is any chance of him going to jail or having to pay a fine.
Some countries do have laws that can send politicians to jail if they misbehave.
Johnson will get his portrait on the staircase at No. 10, and a cushy job as a lobbyist or speaker. Will probably g
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Where was it you first read or heard
"Dont believe anything you believe on the internet" - ill give you a clue, it wasnt the internet.
Heres some truth about #BBC the nations LEAST trusted news service and broadcaster.
1) It admitted that it would not expose Prime Minister Boris Johnsons lies , reasoning "it would undermine public faith in democracy"
2) On a very prominent so called and public debate program it hired actors to pretend to be opinionated members of the public. In one case hiring an actor to prete
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You check for some of the most common logical fallacies that are frequently used in propaganda (possibly out of order, because I don't have the statistical data to assign accurate weights to any of these): ad hominem, false dichotomy, association fallacy, tu quoque, false equivalence, relative privation, straw man, weak man, shifting burden of proof, argument from ignorance, bandwagon, ad hoc/post hoc, moving goal posts, et
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I already don't believe most of the stuff I see in the news or on the Internet, so it won't change much for me.
Journalism is dead, now we just have outrage bait
But see that is the real conspiracy at work. Sow total distrust in everyone and everything and propogate the belief that nothing will ever change so why bother agitating for anything different, just shut up and go with the flow that the Masters decide.
Easy remedy (Score:4, Interesting)
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Matt Stone and Trey Parker's Sassy Justice [youtube.com] fights deepfakes with deepfaked humour.
But, like a lot of their work, the stupidity is underpinned with a serious message.
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And that was nearly four years ago.
Re: Easy remedy (Score:2)
Trusted content via blockchain? (Score:2)
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Couldn't publishing sources (CNN, Reuters, etc.) tie their credibility to the stuff the publish via a blockchain (possibly NFTs) that are recognized by web browsers much in the same way Certificates of Authority are trusted?
Why do you trust Certificates of Authority? What do you know about the people who issue them? I know I have no control or oversight of them so as far as I can tell they are issued in exchange for money (or by governments) and have zero inherent credibility.
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It wouldn't help anyway. The video spreads like wildfire and most of the people watching it ignore the "Facebook has determined this video is fake" tag.
It's not that it's hard to prove stuff is fake, it's that it's hard to make the people who are fooled by it care.
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Blockchain adds no value there. Digital signatures will do that job just fine.
We aren’t being controlled by humans!!! (Score:2)
> And conspiracy theories are all too complicated. People aren’t that good, human systems aren’t that good, people can’t keep a secret to save their lives, and most people in positions of power are bumbling stooges.
Ah, I see the logical fallacy!
The “people” on top ARE NOT HUMANS! They’re Reptilian Draconins from the Alpha Draconis star system.
I am NOT making this shit up.
https://u.osu.edu/vanzandt/201... [osu.edu]
Never give up, bro! (Score:2)
You forgot the most convincing video of all :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re:Never give up, bro! DAMM!!! (Score:1)
I'm just a fool....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
G.
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“Tell people there's an invisible man in the sky who created the universe, and the vast majority will believe you. Tell them the paint is wet, and they have to touch it to be sure.”
George Carlin
We managed before video (Score:2)
We managed fine back when there weren't videos and photographs had to be posed. If deep fakes become prevalent we'll just have to manage like we did back then.
Indeed, deep fakes offer a number of benefits. If it's common for people to generate deep faked porn then no one will have their life ruined because an ex (or carelessness) caused a leak of a sex tape (just lie and claim it's a deep fake). Yes, it feels icky to imagine someone is watching porn based on someone who looks like you but some people alr
Re: We managed before video (Score:2)
A own a country (Score:2)
That movie was called The 5th wave (2016).
The deep-fake is that the other half of the country has a plague, so the survivors must identify the infected (with their new AR-equipped googles) and murder them. It's not as clean as a neutron bomb and not as messy as military invasion or fission bombs but it's a very, very cheap way to own a country. With tribalism dominating so many countries, including some first-world ones, this is very plausible.
The idea of an apocalpse (zombie or other) from engineered
Re: A own a country (Score:2)
Re: So it's ok for the government to fake 911 (Score:2)
The only 'vet' people care about fix their pets (Score:2)
The science community, sure. And look at how well people are listening to that community and to others actually knowledgeable about anything. You can't get the Dunning-Krugerites out there to pay attention for 30 seconds to listen to driving directions they asked for and you think they'll actually
Well that's fine, but... (Score:2)
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Cameron is late... (Score:2)
...didn't Michael Crichton point this out in 1992? https://www.goodreads.com/book... [goodreads.com]
Not Paranoid Enough (Score:1)
"So good peer-reviewed science can't lie."
no kidding (Score:2)
You have to really emphasize critical thinking. Where did you hear that?
No kidding.
"I hear he was beat to death with a fire extinguisher! [allsides.com]"
"Those monsters!"
Captain obvious (Score:1)
Re: Captain obvious (Score:2)
The Twilight Zone addressed this in 1960 (Score:5, Insightful)
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Ver well said. Thank you for posting this gem.
Who needs deepfakes? (Score:2)
So the Titanic didn't sink? (Score:3)
I'm more concerned... (Score:2)
...about his shit-products being misidentified as films.
Someone needs to build a fake detector (Score:1)
Re:Someone needs to build a fake detector (Score:4, Informative)
That's a race you can't win. Fake detector will just be used as the input for the fake producer.
Who cares? (Score:2)
Who cares what celebrities think? This is who politicians turn to for advice about technology? No wonder we are in a pickle.
What about Hollywood monotone? (Score:2)
The simple-minded stories that hollywood has propagated are the musical accompaniment to the brainwashing that is carried out by propaganda sources. To some extent, it's the mind-numbing simplicity of James Cameron movies that drags people away from the sort of reading that might lead them to Occam's razor and leads them to talk radio.
I'm not stating a cause and effect, but hollywood and talk radio (especially "conservative" media) work synergistically to dumb people down.
Just for using the term Occam's raz
Occam's razor (Score:1)
Why can't anyone use the razor properly. "When everything else is disproved, whatever remains, however unlikely, must be the cause."
Which really means you have to disprove some stuff, starting with the most likely scenario. The disproving being paramount. It does not mean "the simplest explanation is the correct one" or even usually the correct one. If you haven't tried to disprove it, it might as well have been aliens. (The third most unlikely thing to disprove.)
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It's not as if Fox News and "conservative" media are concerned with rational discussion of topics.
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I wouldn't know, the only time I see any fox news clips is when someone is deriding the channel.
But what I've heard they are all about the "True story".
Re: Occam's razor (Score:2)
Try to find clips of things they got right. They donâ(TM)t exist.
The project manager perview (Score:1)
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But...but...but... that's because the illuminati needed those secrets leaked to cover up some other screw-up.
And just to remind everybody not to let this be a victim of Poe's law.
Deepfakes? here, have a full open database (Score:1)
a solution? (Score:1)
Your favorite video player should verify the meta data with the manufacturer and warn you if the video stream isn't the original.
The meta data being encoded in the actual pixels would make it difficult to create a spoof by using a camera to create a "valid" video from a fake video by re-filming it.
Sure, most video is going to be software encoded for the internet, but when it truly matters, someone can prove their vide
No shit (Score:2)