When You Can't Trust What You See

On today’s show we are talking about artificial intelligence and a few of the implications that are associated with it.

I’m hearing a lot of chatter about how the development of AI will mean losing control of our society and our business. On today’s show I’m going to make the case for maximizing the development of AI capability, but for constraining its use.

But before we can talk about these ideas in the context of AI, it would be useful to talk about these same issues in the real world.

The first issue surrounds the erosion of trust that is reaching epidemic proportions in our society. There was a time when you could believe what you see. With the capability of free AI tools, and for $20 a month you can generate images and videos that are nearly impossible to distinguish from reality. If you can no longer trust what you see, the circle of trust in each of our lives will become smaller and smaller. For some people it will disappear completely.

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Episode Transcript

(00:02):
Welcome to the Real Estate, a special podcast, your morning
shot of what's new in the world of real estate investing.
I'm your host, Victor Minash. On today's show, we're talking
about artificial intelligence and a few of the implications
that are associated with it. I'm hearing a lot of chatter
about how the development of AI will mean losing control over
our society and our business. And on today's show, I'm going
to make the case for maximizing the development of AI

(00:24):
capability, but for constrainingits use.
But before we can talk about these ideas in the context of
AI, it would be useful to talk about those same issues in the
real world. The first issue surrounds the
erosion of trust that is reaching epidemic proportions in
our society. It was a time when you could
believe what you see. With the capability of free AI

(00:45):
tools and maybe even a $20.00 a month subscription, you can
generate images and videos that are nearly impossible to
distinguish from reality. If you can no longer trust what
you see, then the circle of trust in each of our lives will
become smaller and smaller. For some people, it might
disappear completely. You probably already know some
people who live their entire lives bound up in conspiracy

(01:07):
theories. These people are extremely
difficult to be around because they don't even accept truths
when presented with hard evidence.
These conspiracy theorists have a highly developed need to
protect themselves from hidden threats, and they're generally
miserable people. There've been numerous attempts
to cheat throughout history, andthat's nothing new.
For the most part, we've main trust, for example, in the

(01:29):
monetary system by making it illegal to counterfeit money.
And I won't get into the philosophical argument about
government printing money. I'm talking about using a
photocopier to create counterfeit bills or some other
means that might be more sophisticated.
We could solve the problem by banning the use of photocopiers
or high performance printers, and that would solve the
problem. Just stop the advancements in

(01:51):
computer and printer technology and we won't have any more
problems with counterfeit currency.
But instead we've chosen to makeit illegal to counterfeit money,
and for the most part that's been sufficient to maintain the
trust in the monetary system. Today.
It's also possible to counterfeit people, or at least
their digital likeness. Now we don't have a problem with
visual falsehoods in the name ofentertainment.

(02:12):
Hollywood's been putting out realistic looking fantasies for
decades. The creation of the Star Wars
movies did not erode trust in our society.
While the technology existed to create those false narratives,
it was extremely expensive and time consuming to do so.
So very few people had these tools or the expertise to use
them that virtually nobody did it.
Today you can just type a few sentences and minutes later that

(02:36):
fantasy has been created. It's too easy.
But AI is not the problem. There's never been a connection
between intelligence and truth, or between intelligence and
good. For example, even though I've
never met him, I've no doubt that Vladimir Putin is highly
intelligent, even though what hesays cannot be trusted.
See, trust and intelligence are not synonymous, and they never

(02:56):
have been. Truth and intelligence are not
synonyms either, and they never were synonymous.
Now, this is a real estate podcast.
It's not a technical podcast. And we're here to talk about
this aspect of artificial intelligence on real estate
because real estate's a businesslike any other business, with
some distinct differences. Number one, real estate is a
business of large numbers, and that makes it an attractive

(03:18):
target for fraudsters. The increasing use of AI in
business means that it may be possible to bypass safeguards
until the industry truly learns how to use AI and how to create
those new safeguards that protect owners and property
managers from AI perpetrated fraud.
But could it be possible for AI to act autonomously and to cover
its tracks and for it to shield the human criminal behind the

(03:40):
scenes? Sure enough, if you try and ask
Google Gemini or ChatGPT to commit an obviously criminal
act, there are some rudimentary safeguards built in.
But those safeguards are not very robust.
Let me give you a trivial example of what I'm talking
about. A few weeks ago, images started
to circulating the Internet showing singer and songwriter
Billie Eilish at the Met Gala inNew York.

(04:02):
The Internet was alive with comments about her wardrobe
choices. We're talking lots of comments
about her clothing and how awfulshe looked.
Eventually she stepped in to setthe record straight.
She did not attend the Met Gala because she was in Amsterdam for
a concert. The images were AI generated.
Now this seems fairly harmless and she laughed it off.
But what if it was a video of a fund manager making claims about

(04:25):
a project and misleading investors?
What if some investors are fooling to investing in a fake
version of a real project? After all, all of the best lies
involve half truths. See, we're increasingly
developing secret, safe words within our business.
They're not written down anywhere that must be
transmitted in person just to validate wire transfer
instructions. Otherwise, it's too easy for AI

(04:47):
to impersonate a human in a realestate transaction.
See, we're at the infancy of this technology and trust that
will be destroyed before it can be restored with new systems
requires us to stay a few steps ahead of the counterfeiters.
We are at a moment in history where we cannot trust what we
see and we need to develop stronger systems in order to
protect ourselves and our investors.

(05:08):
As you think about that, have anawesome rest of your day.
Go make some great things happenand we'll talk to you again
tomorrow.