You need a safe word with AI

This week, I was reading an interview with a leading global expert in detecting so-called deep fakes, mainly visual content created by artificial intelligence.

The takeaway: even he struggles to tell the difference any more. Also, he’s very, very tired.

Tech giants take over the world

Hany Farid has recently moved from Silicon Valley to a cabin in the mountains to try to find some peace. He can’t stand the valley any more.

“These major tech giants will burn everything to the ground as long as they’re making a profit,” he told the New York Times.

“They’re not interested in anything that’s going to slow them down.”

No way to tell the difference with AI

Farid trusts nothing he sees, because he knows anyone anywhere can make completely convincing AI imagery and audio of anybody – Obama, the pope, your child – doing or saying anything at all, from impersonating your grandson on the phone, to sending fake nudes to your colleagues.

An AI hoax that took seconds to create takes hours to analyse, frets Farid, by which point it’s hardened into truth in the public mind and the world has moved on.

It’s not just me being a Luddite, then. Because I’m so done with the toxicity of AI, a technology that was – still is – sold as saving us all, but instead is selling humanity down the river.

Unregulated immigration vs unregulated AI

If you worry about what unregulated immigration will do to your prospects, then maybe consider the industrial revolution-dwarfing impact that unregulated AI will have… and is already having.

Frankly, March and March should consider rerouting its path. I am. A week or two ago, I started trying to break away from the behemoth that is Google, mostly because of the AI flimflam it serves up every time I look anything up, but also to avoid tracking.

I downloaded the DuckDuckGo browser onto my phone to replace the Google app, turned off “search assist” (the function that generates those dubious AI summaries), and said yes when it gave me the option to transfer passwords automatically.

Safe word needed

Today it tells me it has blocked 540 trackers in the last seven days. I have also set it as my default search engine on my computer.

And, meanwhile, in the analogue world, Himself and I have agreed on a safe word for any sensitive online or phone line communication.

Paranoid? Well, no more so than a world expert on digital forensics, because Farid and his wife have a safe word too. As should you.