Tech News: Faking the Deepfakes

Defendants in court cases are trying the deepfake defense and judges are not having it. Think twice before you commit a huge investment into AI companies. SBF is asking courts to throw out most of the charges against him. And Peter Thiel has some icy plans after his demise. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio. And how the tech
are you. It's time for the tech news for Tuesday,
May ninth, twenty twenty three, and we begin, as is

(00:28):
our custom, with some AI related stories, but it's a
little bit different this time around. So first up, the
Wall Street Journal has an article titled chat gpt Fever
has investors pouring billions into AI startups no business plan required.
If you've been around for a while, that headline's going

(00:49):
to sound really familiar to you because you've seen the
same darned thing happen before. I mean, it happened in
the nineties with webs startup companies as investors flooded fledgeling
companies with more money than they knew what to do with,
and a lot of those companies didn't have any kind
of business plan that would allow them to actually work

(01:10):
in the long run, and a lot of those companies
collapsed a year or two later and all that money
went away. The dot com bubble was brutal. It happened
again in two thousand and eight, with the real estate crisis,
banks were issuing loans to folks who really couldn't afford
to pay those loans back, and then banks were selling
that debt to other institutions that were buying debt in

(01:33):
order to try and make even more money. It all
collapsed on itself to disastrous effect. It happened with cryptocurrency
and blockchain companies that really flared up with NFTs. We
saw it happening with the metaverse as well. So pretty
much anytime there's an interesting technological innovation that emerges, folks
will get hit by fomo super hard. But fomo is

(01:55):
a fear of missing out in case you didn't know,
and they don't want to be the person on the
block who can't afford to move into a mansion because
they didn't go and pour their life savings into some startup.
We all want to be the investor who got into
Apple just before Steve Jobs came back and took the
company to the stratosphere. Or we want to be one

(02:16):
of the people who put money into Google when it
was just a startup working out of a garage. But
this behavior ends up being self destructive and destructive in general,
even assuming that the people behind an AI centric company
are on the up and up, there's no guarantee that
their idea is going to be practical or monetizable in

(02:36):
the long run. Then there are all the opportunists who
see a chance to make a killing by presenting a
cool sounding idea without having any intention of seeing it through.
They might promise the moon and stars because they see
that there are a lot of suckers out there with
a ton of money to invest, and they're excited about
the prospect of an AI company. It is a perfect

(02:58):
storm for parting a fool with their money. In other words,
now that's not to say that every AI company out
there is a bad idea or a scam. I'm sure
there are a lot of great ideas too that are
built on a foundation of a solid business plan. But
we're also rushing toward a time where regulators around the
world are starting to square off against AI. Now I

(03:20):
am no financial advisor, and goodness knows, I have got
a terrible track record at predicting whether something is going
to be a hit or not. I would just suggest
that before anyone invests serious money into any startup, they
use some critical thinking and careful consideration before paying out
a mountain of cash. Today, IBM launched an AI platform

(03:44):
called Watson X. Now you might remember that Watson is
IBM's AI platform that famously competed on the game show
Jeopardy way back in twenty eleven. For IBM, that exhibition
was really a whole lot of advertising for Watson, and
the company was hoping that other companies would come up
with cool business ideas that would require AI, and since

(04:08):
AI was really really hard to do well, those companies
would hire on IBM and pay to use Watson as
the foundation for their idea rather than have to build
everything from the ground up. But this was more than
a decade ago, and it was mad expensive to pay
for that kind of computing power. But now that we're
starting to see insane amounts of investment pour into AI, well,

(04:30):
IBM sees that the iron is hot, so it's time
to strike. So again, Watson X is meant as an
enterprise product, So it's meant for companies that want to
leverage AI to do something, maybe even something that will
end up eliminating jobs for people like you know, programmers,
for example, and then they will lean on a IBM

(04:52):
to provide the horse power while they take advantage of
the capabilities to do whatever it is they plan to do.
That's the basic concept behind watson x. NPR's Shannon Bond
has an article titled people are trying to claim real
videos are deep fakes. The courts are not amused, and
the headline gives you a strong hint at the contents

(05:14):
of that article. The article's great, by the way, you
should definitely read the whole thing. I think we can
all recognize the potential for deep fakes to cause a
person real harm. So imagine that a video pops up
online that makes it look like you were part of
some illegal activity that you had nothing to do with,
or that you were doing something you personally object to.

(05:36):
You have been robbed of your agency. Someone has effectively
forced you, or at least an image of you, to
do something that you wouldn't do. That's a violation and
it could do you serious harm. Imagine that your employer
sees a video of you appearing to deface property or
to take part in some violent act. It doesn't take

(05:56):
long before you start to come up with all sorts
of scenarios that are ugly and harmful, but then there's
the other side of the deep fake coin. Imagine someone
who was legitimately caught on camera actually doing something illegal
or unethical or immoral, and imagine that that person tries
to weasel out of accountability by claiming that the video

(06:17):
is in fact a deep fake. That's not me, that's
computer generated. When deep fakes get so good that we
can't tell their deep fakes, the sword cuts both ways.
Bobby Chesney and Danielle Cetron coined the phrase the liar's
dividend to describe this situation, one in which a person
can deny responsibility for their actions that were caught on

(06:39):
video by claiming it was faked footage. The NPR article
cites a case in which lawyers for a certain Elon
Musk claimed that a recorded statement made by Musk was
actually a deep fake. The judge was not having it.
In fact, she said that to accept the claim that
the audio was not real would effectively say legal precedent

(07:00):
that would let Musk say whatever he wants to, no
matter what the consequences might be, and then fall back
on claims that it was all just generated by AI
in order to avoid accountability. I imagine such a precedent
would be gleefully adopted by countless public figures. It really
helps them fight against these so called cancel culture. The

(07:21):
play to foist blame on deep fakes so far has
not been successful in court, as the headline of the
article suggests, and there are companies that develop tools that
look for tiny indications that a video was actually faked.
So it's not like deep fake technology is perfect and
that it can go undetected. But that's how things are
right now. There's no telling if or when we'll get

(07:42):
to a point when the fakes are indistinguishable from the
real thing, and we may see court systems adopt practices
that require anyone using a deep fake defense to provide
proof of their claim. However, the article also points out
that the opposite effect could end up happening with that approach.
Right so, instead of proving that something isn't fake, the

(08:06):
increase in the costs and time on part of prosecution
to provide evidence that, yeah, this is a real video,
it's not fake. That could mean that the prosecution never
submits the video in the first place because of the
defense can say no, that's fake. You have to prove
it's true, and the cost of proving it's true is
super expensive. Prosecution might say, you know, we can't submit

(08:29):
that as evidence because we don't have the money to
pay to prove that it's that it's real. And so
it could be that the requirement to provide proof, you know,
ironically prevents anyone from submitting video evidence in the first place.
And really it just means that we're heading toward a
future where people can't trust reality, which is terrifying. Sam

(08:57):
Bateman Freed aka SBF aka the founder of the cryptocurrency
exchange FTX, you know, the one that went belly up
late last year, says it's all been fun and stuff,
but maybe the courts could just like toss out the
charges against him. Not all of the charges, mind you,
but you know, ten out of the thirteen. So if
you don't remember what happened, here's the super fast version.

(09:19):
SBF had two cryptocurrency companies that he co founded. One
was Alameda Research that's an investment fund or it was
an investment fund that would take investor dollars and then
put them into various crypto companies. The other one was FTX,
which was an exchange where you could exchange one type
of currency for some other type of currency. Someone leaked

(09:41):
an internal document that showed that Alameda had secretly been
funneling money belonging to FTX customers in order to pay
off Alameda investors, and they were essentially counting on the
fact that the FTX community would keep enough of their
cash inside FTX to cover the transfer, the idea being that, Okay,
when we make the money back, we can cover this.

(10:03):
But when news got out that this was happening, there
was essentially a run on the bank and everyone started
to try and pull their money out of FTX, and
it all came tumbling down. The FED stepped in and
seized assets in an attempt to get as much money
back for customers as possible, and folks like SBF were
on the hook for committing lots and lots of crimes. Now,
SBF is saying that prosecutors unfairly targeted him and that

(10:27):
FTX wasn't the only cryptocurrency to collapse last year. It's
not like it was an outlier. So essentially SBF's lawyers
are saying because other companies failed, ftx's failure wasn't special
and thus did not warrant the speed and ferocity of
prosecution that it got, except that some of SBF's compatriots

(10:47):
have already pleaded guilty to charge as a fraud. And
also it sounds like it's kind of too coke reasoning.
Like you also the idea being, hey, because this person
did a crime, that means my crime's not as bad. No,
it just means that two people have comit a crime. Anyway,
the document showing the transfer of funds that came out

(11:07):
before FTX collapsed, I think that's a big problem. I mean,
I'm not a legal expert. Maybe it's not a big problem.
I would just assume that when you have a document
that indicates that something hinky is going on and then
the company goes under, that does warrant a closer look.
So there may be aspects to SBF's claims that I

(11:29):
am completely missing, or maybe even some of his lawyer's
complaints against prosecutors and government officials are accurate. But for
the moment, I remained skeptical that this ploy is going
to work. Sticking with crypto, yesterday, the cryptocurrency exchange called
Bittrex Incorporated filed for bankruptcy protection. So just under a
month ago, the US Securities and Exchange Commission or SEC

(11:52):
alleged that Bittrex was acting as an unregistered securities exchange.
Following that accusation, the company shut down operations in the
United States. So Bittrix Incorporated is the US arm of
this crypto exchange. This is not unusual. There are a
lot of crypto companies that maintain a separate entity, specifically

(12:15):
for the United States. You can also see ftx's former
chief rival, Binance, another cryptocurrency exchange. It does this too.
And while Beatrix Incorporated appears to be going under Bittrix Global,
the part of the company that sees business everywhere besides
the United States, has no future like that in store

(12:37):
for it. It's, still, according to the founders, going strong.
So the US branch says it still has its customer
funds in its possession and it's requesting a time during
bankruptcy proceedings to allow customers to retrieve their money before
it becomes a big part of this messy bankruptcy proceeding.
Investigations into Bittrex indicate that perhaps something hinky was going

(13:00):
going on, and perhaps there was an effort to cover
up said hinkiness. Though the company has denied any such hincosity.
It did agree to pay twenty nine million dollars in
fines to the Treasury Department relating to stuff like money
laundering and sidestepping international sanctions against other countries. So you
know that's totally different. Okay, we're gonna take a quick break,

(13:22):
and when we come back, I'm gonna talk about ads
a little bit. We're back, okay, and I know, in fact,
if there's just one thing I know, it's that people
do not like ads. They tell me that all the

(13:43):
time regarding my show. Also, just quick moment of me
being real with all of y'all. So I work for
a really big media company, right, Folks, way higher up
on the ladder than I am, decide how many ads
get served on shows like mine. I don't get to
make that decision. That decision is made and I have

(14:04):
to abide by it. Now, those ads pay the bills
and they keep shows like this one going, so they
do serve a purpose. Just No, I'm not the person
sitting in the big old chair pet and the kitty
cat while laughing maniacally. It's one of my bosses. I
won't say which one or ones. Anyway, The Verge reports
that Google is inserting more ads into Gmail now. Previously,

(14:27):
Google inserted ads into the top sections of the promotions
and social inbox tabs, you know, the ones that you
hardly ever check. In fact, I never checked those unless
I was expecting something and I couldn't find it in
my inbox, so then I looked to see if maybe
it got shuffled into one of those tabs. Now Google
is testing the ads in other places, such as in

(14:49):
the updates filter. So this filter creates a view of
your email that shows messages that you know give you
updates about stuff. So let's say you ordered a product
and you did it online and you just want to
see where in the delivery process it is what was
the last update. You might use the update filter that
kind of weed up all the other stuff in order

(15:09):
to find this specific update more efficiently. Well, if you
are in the test group, then when you use that filter,
it would also show you ads incorporated within the results
of this filter, presumably ads for stuff that's not necessarily
related to your actual updates. And as I'm sure you
can imagine, Google users who have seen this as part

(15:33):
of the test are not super happy about this change.
Some users shared screenshots that showed the ads appeared in
between valid email messages, so you'd have like an email,
an email, and email, an AD that looks like an email,
but it's labeled AD if you looked off to the side,
and then more emails, so it's like filtered into it

(15:55):
as opposed to all gathered at the top, which is,
you know, kind of how Google had in doing things
where all the ads were at the top. You would
scroll past the ads and you would get to the
actual content. Now they're being interspersed, so that also is
something people are objecting to, and in fact, it's something
that podcasters subject to too. A lot of podcasters like myself,

(16:17):
we want to have a clear delineation between the episode
and the ad breaks, and so that's why before every
ad break, I say we're going to take a quick break,
because I want to make sure that it's clear we're
transitioning into ads and it's not like some bait and switch.
So Google's doing something that the rest of us figured
out is not good and ends up undermining trust, but

(16:41):
they're doing it anyway, at least in this test. Whether
this gets rolled out to the general public, we have
to wait and see. But I will say, if Google
sees that it's making them more money, I think it
would be unrealistic to expect them to just back off
of it. So we'll see now. At the same time,
Microsoft is effectively turning to Google to say hold my beer.

(17:02):
So tech Radar reports that Microsoft appears to be pushing
more ads into the Windows eleven experience now as it stands,
when you open up the start menu on Windows eleven,
you can see a display of ads for other Microsoft services,
typically stuff like cloud storage or access to other Microsoft
suites of programs. So it's not just that it's an

(17:26):
operating system, it's also serving as an advertising platform for
other Microsoft products. Tech Radars Darren Allen says we might
see something similar roll out into the Settings app within Windows,
so like if you ever have to go into Windows
to change settings for something, you might end up seeing
ads for Microsoft services in there as well. A Twitter

(17:46):
user with the handle at the book is closed they
also go by Alba Core shared some images that were
said to be screenshots of the setting's homepage in a
test build of Windows eleven, and sure enough, there are
more ads for Microsoft products, specifically the image that Albacore
shared had an ad for Microsoft three sixty five embedded

(18:11):
in the Settings home view. It appears that the price
you pay for using Microsoft Windows computers is a persistent
barrage of notices urging you to, you know, buy more
Microsoft products and services. Now, I should add this has
not been rolled out to Windows users in general. In fact,

(18:31):
it's not even been confirmed to be real yet when
I was recording this. But assuming that there are beta
testers out there who are encountering these kinds of things,
we can only hope that they push back against this practice.
If nothing else, it's really not doing Microsoft any favors
because various regulators around the world are scrutinizing the company

(18:53):
over matters of anti competitiveness. And if you're integrating ads
for your own products into your own operating system, that
feels to me like it could be treading dangerously close
to territory that regulators would latch onto and say you
are using an unfair advantage here because you have a

(19:15):
dominant position in the operating system market. For you to
be using that to advertise your own services, but say
not anyone else's is potentially anti competitive. I'm not saying
that regulators are necessarily going to clamp on down to that.
But like, it just surprises me that Microsoft would even
pursue this based upon the pushback the company has received

(19:37):
recently around the world. You know, when everyone's giving you
side eye, maybe you should cool it for a little bit.
Here in the United States, the Department of Defense is
seeking a way to fund new tech projects without first
gaining congressional approval. Now that notice gave me a knee

(19:57):
jerk reaction of WHOA, that's not good. But then I
read it and I started to get a deeper appreciation
beyond the surface level reaction. So the way things normally
work is that the Pentagon identifies a technological need for
matters of defense. Right they figure out, we need this
program in order to stay current and to give the

(20:22):
nation the best security possible. And the need then has
to be presented to lawmakers for approval before it can
move forward and then get funding. And then there's the
actual round of securing funding for the new project. It's
to incorporate it into the budget and to be able
to actually pay to have this tech project put into action.

(20:46):
This whole process of approval and budgeting can take a
really long time. The concern is that as time passes,
while you're just waiting to get started, adversaries are rushing
ahead with their own because they're relying on less oversight,
or they have a streamline process, or they're being run

(21:06):
by the military, so they just approve everything without having
to go to anyone else. And so the proposal is
for a three hundred million dollar allowance within the DoD
to use to fund new projects without first getting Congressional
approval for them. Now, these projects do have to hit
several criteria in order to merit a share of that

(21:28):
three hundred million dollars. They have to be new projects.
Any existing project requires the old budgeting approach, that three
hundred million comes out the overall budget for the Department
of Defense. So this is not like a three hundred
million dollar check handed out by Congress. Congress is saying you,
or the proposal is saying Congress would allow the Department

(21:50):
of Defense to carve out three hundred million dollars within
its budget to serve for this purpose, where in return
for not having to seek Congressional approval, this one hundred
million can be used to fund various stuff, and any
project leader would have to get a sign off from
the Secretary of Defense first before the project would move forward.
The Secretary of Defense would have to determine that waiting

(22:13):
for the normal budget cycle would result in being too
far behind that that would be a dangerous thing. So
there are a lot of boxes that have to be
checked marked before this proposal would even be a thing now.
As I said, my first reaction upon reading the headline
was to be nervous, because I'm not a fan of

(22:35):
military organizations having less governmental oversight. But on the flip side,
it is undeniable that the pace of technology is way
way faster than the political system, which moves at a
more glacial speed. And it's not like there's no oversight
at all. Nor is it like giving the DoD a

(22:56):
blank check to do whatever they want with it, and
the next you know, you've got robot soldiers. So as
the proposal stands, I'm cautiously in favor of it, but
I'm also old enough to be ready to regret saying that.
Further down the line. Okay, we've got a few more
news stories to get to, but it's time for us

(23:18):
to take another quick break and we'll be right back.
So we're back. Ours Technica has a great piece that's
titled white House challenges hackers to break top AI models

(23:39):
at def Con thirty one. So def Con is a
hacker and cybersecurity conference. It's the type of event where
you don't want to bring a personal laptop or smartphone
with you. Now burn our phones only please. It's a
place where folks have created all sorts of device is
meant to siphon information from all types of sources, so

(24:02):
we're talking things like RFID readers and NFC sensors and
sniffers and other stuff as well. It is not unusual
for the US government or for various companies to issue
a challenge to attendees in an effort to find security
vulnerabilities and thus get the chance to patch those vulnerabilities

(24:23):
early on before someone figures out a way to exploit
them in like a zero day attack. And as we
have seen over the last year, AI is a huge deal.
It has the potential to do amazing things or amazingly
terrible things. Figuring out if various AI platforms are secure
is absolutely critical for making sure that we steer AI

(24:44):
more toward the good stuff and away from the bad stuff.
Because weaponized AI is legit scary stuff, after all. So
the goal of this challenge is to have hackers uncover
gaps and security and AI design that companies will then
be able to address to minimize the chances of things
going really, really wrong in the future. That doesn't mean

(25:08):
that you know things won't go really wrong. Maybe they will,
but at least this is a step toward trying to
make sure that we're doing the best we can to
avoid that outcome. I think it's a necessary step. I
think the people who attend these conferences they have the
kind of mentality and skill set and knowledge to really

(25:32):
put various systems to the test. They look at things
in a different way, and by doing that and using
things in ways that weren't necessarily the intended use, you
can sometimes find out, Hey, this thing you didn't think
was important, turns out it's absolutely critical and you need
to address it. So I think that this is a
good step, but it's always I would be so intimidated

(25:55):
to appear at a defcon. I've never gone, and I
don't think I ever will. I'm not smart enough, I'm
not educated enough in that world. I mean I could
certainly learn a lot and report on a lot, but
I couldn't contribute anything other than potentially my own personal
data because I poorly secured a device or two or something.

(26:20):
That's kind of my nightmare. So I just stay far
away and let the smart people handle it, and then
I read up on it now in our last news
story of the day, which is going to include a
lot of Jonathan Snark in it. Peter thel technologist entrepreneur
Peter Thiel said in an episode of the podcast Honestly
with Barry Weiss that he is so deeply disappointed that

(26:43):
humanity hasn't figured out how to conquer death. I mean,
what are we even doing right? Like, we have not
spent the time needed to eliminate death or figure out
whether or not that's impossible. He also revealed he's gonna
get frozen after he dies, put into cryogenic storage so
that one day he might be able to be brought back,

(27:05):
possibly if such a thing is possible. And y'all, I
feel like this is a theme with certain uber rich people.
I get the feeling. Elon Musk falls into this category too.
The sensation I get, and this is just my own opinion,
is that these are people who are terrified by the
notion that one day they will die, just like all

(27:28):
the poor people out there die, that all the wealth
they've mounted throughout their lifetimes will still not stop the
grim reaper from slinging that scythe down on them one day,
and then they'll just die like one of the common people. No,
thank you. No, these billionaires are looking for a way out,

(27:49):
whether it's being turned into a theasicle or maybe having
their brains somehow pourted over into a machine. Because the
possibility of just ceasing to exist is plain unthinkable to them.
It is so counter to their daily experience that they
cannot accept it. I think that's the fear that fuels

(28:12):
a lot of futurists as well, who for years have
predicted the technological singularity. To me, that's more of a
revelation that they fear that undiscovered country from who's born
no traveler returns, rather than a genuine prediction of where
tech itself is actually going. Anyway, I can't say that

(28:32):
I'm really surprised by this. Honestly, it confirms a lot
of biases I already had. It doesn't mean that I'm
right about everything else, obviously. Again, it's all my opinion,
but its opinion, just based off of observation. Why not,
you know, dedicate a portion of your huge wealth to
keeping you going after you've snuffed it. I mean it
makes sense, right, you're a billionaire. Why not just put

(28:54):
some of that money aside to keep you on ice
in case one day you're brought back. I mean, what
else is that money going to do? Feed the hungry?
Why they're just gonna get hungry again tomorrow? Right? Oh gosh,
eat the rich, y'all? Okay, Before I sign off, I
thought I would do one more thing and mention a
couple of longer form pieces that I came across this

(29:16):
week that I think y'all should check out. I'm gonna
try and do this more regularly when I come across
something that I'm like, this is really good. It doesn't
really fit within news because it goes more into journalism,
but I feel like people need to be aware of it.
So first up is a piece by David Pierce in
The Verge. It is titled speed Trap, and it's about

(29:38):
an initiative Google had that ended up having really negative consequences.
It's a great read. It's a great read. I think
you'd really like it. The second piece I want to
mention is in the Atlantic and it's by Ariel or
Ariel Sabar titled The billion Dollar Ponzi Scheme Hooked Warren

(30:00):
Buffett and the US Treasury. This piece is about a
guy who ran a company that built solar powered generators,
like portable generators you could bring to different sites with
the idea of disrupting the portable generator market to create
a carbon neutral approach to portable electricity generation. And it

(30:21):
was meant for things like construction sites and festivals and stuff.
It's a good article. It reminds me a lot of
the Therenose story in many ways, because it seems like
it's one of those things where someone comes up with
an idea that would be great if you could get
it to work, but then the idea ends up making
the person huge amounts of money before they realize that

(30:44):
their idea doesn't actually work, or at least it doesn't
work at a level that it needs to in order
to be a viable business. Both of those articles are
well worth your time. And also I have no connection
to either publication or either author. I don't know the author,
and I mean I'm just a reader of those publications,
so there's nothing connecting the back end there. These are

(31:07):
just pieces I thought were really good and that more
people should check out. That's it for this episode. For
the news for Tuesday, May ninth, twenty twenty three. I
hope you are all well, and I'll talk to you
again really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For

(31:30):
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.