Comment by 👻 darkghost
Re: "AI-Assisted Propaganda Imaging"
In our cold war mindset we tend to view the end of society as a single event (nuclear war.) There are plenty of bad endings that happen so slowly and gradually that we don't notice in the moment.
👻 darkghost [Left leaning independent]
Jan 31 · 3 months ago
7 Later Comments ↓
🚀 stack [OP] · Jan 31 at 19:06:
I think we notice.
👻 darkghost · Jan 31 at 19:17:
After it's too late to change. Though frankly none of us as individuals have the sort of power needed to change society, even if we see it coming. Such as giving liars better tools to lie with.
@stack Wheels and clocks and books and keyboards all have a richly documented history of altering cognition, but we're talking here about a technology concerning the heavy industries in the control of a highly centralized group of people which acts itself as a kind of ersatz cognition. So qualitatively quite different from pottery or looms.
🚀 stack [OP] · Feb 01 at 04:37:
I don't know if I agree that it's qualitatively different from earlier and cruder 'deepfake' hand-made images and video. Like everything, it is automated, greatly improved and more accessible...
👻 darkghost · Feb 01 at 12:26:
The liars with better lying tools permits the wholesale manufacture of a false reality. No longer concocted just on empty words, half truths, and rumor. The bifurcation of objective truth will continue to split. It's a goddamn machine gun of self affirming cognitive dissonance, no longer requiring such tiring mental gymnastics to defend the absurd.
Of course Donald Trump personally waded through the flood waters of NC to deliver aide with Jesus Himself. Of course Elon Musk high-fived a kangaroo on Mars. I saw it with my own lying eyes right there on my iPhone. Steve Jobs (who is alive and well btw) wouldn't lie to me! He forged the iPhone in his golden lair with the angels. Ok that's enough sarcasm, sorry.
🚀 stack [OP] · Feb 16 at 18:15:
Article in today's NYT saying the same.
👻 darkghost · Feb 16 at 21:36:
Did you see the developer for matplotlib getting personally attacked in blog posts by an unattended LLM that had its contributions rejected? I fear even open source is not safe.
Original Post
AI-Assisted Propaganda Imaging — This week has been very eventful. I found three news examples that look credible (or should I say incredible): A Black leader's arrest photos doctored to show her crying (to demoralize Democrats?) An odd retouching of Pretti to make him look healthier (good enough to date your daughter?) A ridiculous headless ICE agent holding Pretti while another shoots him in the head (?) The last one is particularly interesting -- on the Senate floor, an obviously too-old Dem...