Terrifying reality of Artificially generated fakes

 

Something sinister is taking over the world. Suddenly one is not able to trust one’s senses. This is crucial since it is when we sense things that we can understand, comprehend through complex interactions of knowledge, experience, intuition and critical thinking faculties. This then becomes part of us, our memory, learning and future evaluation reference. If we cannot even trust our senses then situation becomes dire, as it is the world is increasingly nurtured by greedy self-centered people who are looking out to optimize their world view to ensnare people into profit. They are targeting our worst instincts to engage hence nurture addiction and outrage. It’s not that these things were not happening before. In India for instance, that lacks enlightened core to nurture better ways, for decades worst of people degraded possibilities of modern systems. Every new understanding, ideas or gadget became tool to manipulate for greed for power, money and influence. Marketeers and manipulators controlled the system with worst of tradition that became pointers for playing diversity, words were being used devoid of any meaning, they used power blatantly to control narration and give impression to West of liberal and progressive. They morph into best version of what West demands or expects. While ironically West, like Britain, was compromised with monarchy and feudal ways, crucially they controlled far off lands that encouraged corruption through money laundering so on. Attack on Iraq and its blatancy is a study on how deep the rot is. And I am quite sure dark money is pouring to them as gifts, influence, so on to work narration. This is how neo colonialism work. You benefit from framework of colonialism and feudal values with least of effort. These were also setting standards for the world, having amassed wealth and influence through colonial exploitations and slavery. Then the audacity to evaluate.  

I have closely observed manipulators at work. These are the worst kind of humans, and they have spread all across the world. Societies with strong ethical foundations tend to be less compromised, societies that invested on education and care tend to have compassionate value systems, but nevertheless these sinister forces work on the sidelines to pounce on every opportunity, that is essentially targeting weakness of human or system. They are here for money and power whichever way they can grab it. Semantics (without any meaning except as debating point to showcase their liberal bearing and virtue signaling) and control of narration is how they extended their sinister grip. Lacking egalitarian foundation democratic institutions get compromised, and nurture worst of possibilities. It was not an accident that british media went with the lies (‘sexed up’) of Blair and Labour party to attack Iraq and cause deaths and untold suffering to millions of people, and this less than a century ago when they caused horrendous atrocities through colonialism and slavery, the memories of which still flare the collective psyche. Clearly, the system is compromised hence the cosmetic, indeed damaging, attempts at multiculture that encourage worst of others. Religiophilia seems to be the latest strategy by charlatans in West to have upper hand on narration. From this entitled worldview common people are fodder for highest morals. The concerns that will deeply and disproportionately impact them like climate change or flawed economic systems so on will be least of concern. The everyday apprehension is to control the narration till the weekend, and weekend I am told is for partying.    

Now if this is how the world is then imagine the havoc AI generated images, videos, voices and deep fakes are going to unleash on the hapless people. We are living in a world where trust is almost nonexistent. So, we have to go by facts, and take effort to verify from diversity of sources. What we see and hear is an important source of fact, ofcourse these could be cleverly edited to create narration, but now imagine what we see and hear itself is patently fake and still we are not able to discern. Imagine the deep sense of disorientation this creates. This is precisely where the world is entering, and wait with baited breath to see how these will be manipulated by worst of people. Market media has primed us for fake, every product is sold to us through fake narration that targets lowest emotions to part with our money and time. This Ponzi scheme hides under the euphemism of words like democracy, freedom, choices and growth. Worst of people are edging out the best possibilities of democratic institutions, religions and human associations. Everything is graded, classified, and evaluated for profit. Hence, it’s but natural that worst of AI will spread faster. Lies always travel faster but AI generates lies on steroids.  Ofcourse immense possibilities of AI will work in the background through meticulous contribution from best of people with best of intentions. Apart from fakes biases and prejudices are multiplying and being reinforced with machine learning algorithm trained on skewed data. Even the objective function tends to be infected with subjective aspiration embedded in mathematically defined success. The purpose defined for machine learned generative algorithms is sketchy when interfacing with human values, hence the alignment problem.

I as a consumer and a concerned person would like to know what is machine learning goal of the system I am interfacing with? I should have the right to know whether what I am dealing with i.e. seeing or hearing is AI generated. There should be red letter tag AG (Artificially Generated) warning or similar clear indication. You cannot stop AI, you can only regulate with sensible actionable restrictions. Since this is an issue that is not confined to national borders an international law is needed before it’s too late. This powerful technology is developing very fast and worst of people, nurtured into powerful positions by compromised systems, have access to it. This shouldn’t be means to quantify suffering of majority of people into greed for money, power and position for few. If not acted with alacrity AI generated fake world has potential to collapse democracy, and hard-won values of freedom and liberty. The pandemic of misinformation, disinformation, lies and fakes are on AI steroid. They are infecting experiences. There is a significant qualitative shift happening in the creation and presentation of fake in the last few months. The situation really is quite dire, and what is unfolding is indeed terrifying.