“Fool me once, shame on you,” the saying goes; “fool me twice, it’s AI.”
Okay, that’s not really the saying, but it might be the reality with Joe Biden if his campaign acts on a leftist news organization’s advice:
Use artificial intelligence (AI) to trick the public into thinking Biden is not exhibiting decrepitude and dementia. This strategy would help neutralize the issue of his serious deterioration “while allowing the Biden campaign to effectively disseminate true information,” the counsel goes.
In other words, the end justifies the means.
(Unsaid is that the disseminated information would be largely untrue.)
Cheapfakes and Deepfakes
Of course, what that leftist news outlet, the Huffington Post, is talking about is using AI-altered video to make Biden appear younger, more spry, and lucid. The irony of this is that just last month White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called actual videos of Biden’s behavior “cheap fakes” and even “deepfakes.” And while there is some footage of Biden that has perhaps been presented out of context, it doesn’t constitute deepfake technology. A deepfake is an “image or recording that has been convincingly altered and manipulated to misrepresent someone as doing or saying something that was not actually done or said,” Merriam-Webster informs. They are associated with AI.
As for HuffPo’s July 3 call for deception, The Daily Fetched reports:
The piece, titled ‘It’s Time For The Biden Campaign To Embrace AI,’ writes: “After the president’s dismal debate performance, he noted that he ‘might not walk as easily or talk as smoothly as I used to.’ AI could help with this.”
“Given the president’s concerning performance last week, it’s time for the Biden campaign to consider leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to effectively reach the voting public,” it continues, as the author, one Kaivan Shroff, declares that “the consequences of not taking this approach could be dire.”
Shroff suggests that “AI augmentations and video renderings could serve to smooth out these bumps while allowing the Biden campaign to effectively disseminate true information.”
Shroff is essentially suggesting that the Biden team lies to the American public by creating fake videos to win his votes.
Isn’t this election interference?
“AI would be a cost-effective and efficient way to communicate his message personally and directly to voters,” Shroff continues.
“How many times have we heard voters and pundits alike gripe that ‘Biden would be the perfect candidate if he were just 10 years younger?’ With modern technology, this exact deliverable [sic] is possible.”
(“Deliverable”? That word is never a noun. Do leftist writers have access to dictionaries?)
A Right to the Truth
Not surprisingly, Shroff has constructed a rationalization to justify his recommended skulduggery. “Reasonably, some may challenge the use of AI as dishonest and deceptive, but the current information ecosystem is arguably no better,” he writes. “It may even be worse. Media outlets like the New York Post have engaged in sharing deceptively cropped viral clips of the president, dubbed ‘cheapfakes,’ to make him appear confused or weak.”
Actually, the current “information ecosystem” is far better. Sure, misinformation and disinformation do abound; note, too, that this is largely, though not completely, a product of the Left. There was the censorship of accurate Covid prescriptions during the “pandemic,” the media’s lie that the Hunter Biden laptop was “Russian disinfo,” and it took seven years for “fact-checker” Snopes to debunk the Trump “fine people” hoax. (Mind you, the latter is a situation where Trump’s words have been presented out of context, repeatedly, for ages.) Yet no honorable person would say that these and other leftist deceptions justify reciprocal and proportionate lying.
Nor does Shroff prescribe this. Rather, his solution to the very human, age-old problem of “bearing false witness” is to jump the shark of shadiness, to leap from the lying pan into the fire. Would we raise kids this way? “We can’t stop them from lying completely — so let’s just teach them how to do it better.”
This could be applied to anything, of course. Since we can’t eliminate all theft, should we just go all in and ensure that our team can steal more effectively?
Promoting Virtue
A prerequisite for having a civilization worthy of the name is that we agree to promote the virtues, one of which is honesty. We owe each other the Truth because, just as how a patient given an incorrect diagnosis won’t know what actions will yield health, a people fed misinformation can’t know what actions will yield national health. (E.g., you won’t secure the border if you believe it isn’t porous.)
AI deepfakes pose a serious threat in this regard, too. In fact, I’ve long said that we should expect AI-enabled deception during the run-up to this year’s election. Remember that this technology could be used to create realistic videos of you, me, or anyone doing anything — stealing, using racial epithets, groping a woman, etc. Just consider the following deepfakes’ realism.
(The next video contains some vulgarity.)
As for the rationalizations, one could imagine digitally enhanced footage designed to make Biden look better being likened to makeup applied to obscure wrinkles or to online, cut-and-paste videos that make a presenter’s message more articulate and smooth (e.g., eliminating “uhs”). But most everyone expects these basic presentation enhancements, just as we know that a Miss America contestant has meticulously done her hair. Using science-fiction-like technology to cover up a president’s dementia, however, is serious deception that can threaten national security.
Americans have a right to know if a White House candidate is senile. Given this, is the Machiavellian obscuring of such a reality not akin to an enemy act?
