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Make old family photos come alive. Have Joe Biden or Kim Jung-un sing a song and act in famous Hollywood scenes. Deepfake technology makes this all possible. This is done using clever software to create or manipulate images, sound and text. It all sounds quite innocent. Yet this technology carries a lot of risks. What about politicians suddenly shouting things they never said in real life? Or when your daughter calls you to transfer money, which later turns out to be software

The technology is now so advanced that most people do not realize that the images have been tampered with. Thats according to research carried out by the University of Amsterdam in The Netherlands. The same research also found that these so-called deepfakes can negatively influence opinions. Experts warn of an infocalypse. If this continues, we will no longer be able to rely on our eyes and ears to judge what is real.

Just as the brain is still the most elusive part of our body, artificial intelligence is still very much uncharted territory. That our brains control our bodies is something we as humans have come to accept. However, this does not apply to the way in which AI is gradually taking over control of our society. We would like to have a few more vigorous debates about that. In a series of articles and interviews, Innovation Origins, in close cooperation with theDutch AI Coalition, reveals what the average Dutch person feels about this all-important social revolution. How do we as humans keep our hands on the controls? The fears, the opportunities, the dilemmas.

In the opinion of future tech strategist Mark van Rijmenam, we as a society have a serious problem when we can no longer tell if videos are real or fake. Besides the fact that you can no longer trust the images you see, a politician can also exploit deepfakes to deny certain statements, he explains.

He believes that things have not yet reached that point. In many images, we can still see with the naked eye that they are manipulations. Provided you pay attention of course, since images are becoming more and more realistic. Just like other technologies, the development of deepfake technology is advancing incredibly fast. People will no longer be able to tell the difference within one to three years, Van Rijmenam predicts.

Jarno Duursma, a technology expert and author of the report Deepfake technology; the infocalypse, is not blind to the risks of deepfakes either. Duursma already sees things that are indistinguishable from the real thing. Yet he thinks the dangers are overestimated. The older generation in particular is still from a time when they trusted that whatever was in the newspaper was true. With the advent of social media, suddenly anyone could hurl information into the world. Including information that is not true. So weve been dealing with unreliable information on the Internet for some time now.

Recently, scientists at the University at Buffalo released an AI tool that determines with 94 percent certainty whether something is a deepfake or not. To do this, the model looks at the reflection in the eyes, among other things. Both experts agree that it will always be a cat and mouse game when it comes to unmasking deepfakes. But even if it is discovered afterwards that something is a deepfake, the damage can be substantial. Van Rijmenam: Think about the damage to companies reputations. Victims of fake revenge porn who are no longer accepted by their family. Or people who give in to blackmail resulting from manipulated images. Even if it is clear pretty quickly that these are deepfakes, the damage has already been done.

Innovation Origins asked a number of Dutch people what they think about deepfakes and whether, in addition to the dangers, they also see opportunities for this technology. Like the experts, they cite fake news and identity fraud as the biggest risks. They are aware of this phenomena when viewing information on the Internet. Some respondents are concerned about what the consequences of deepfakes might be. According to them, opportunities lie in being able to better imagine what something will look like, advertising and making more and easier funny videos for the Internet.

Besides all the risks, both technology experts believe there are also plenty of upsides to deepfake technology. Van Rijmenam: Using deepfake technology, you can help people get over their fear of swimming or other fears. By pasting their face onto a video, a kind of memory is implanted in their minds. Your brain doesnt know if its true or not. It works the same as if you were to imagine yourself speaking in front of a thousand people. Then when you actually step on stage, your brain thinks, Ive already done this, I can do this!

Duursma is careful: This still needs to be researched, we dont yet know if this is really how it works in our brain. Other advantages are more obvious he says: With deepfake technology, you can clone the voices of the voice actors of The Simpsons and continue making episodes long after they have passed away. You can bring amazing people who have died back to life. A movie with Elvis Presley? Why not! I even had a digital avatar of myself created that I can use for short video presentations. It doesnt work perfectly yet, but it saves a lot of time. I no longer have to record a video of myself. I type the text and then the AI system makes a video to go with it.

Duursma prefers to use the umbrella term synthetic media for deepfakes. These are renderings made or manipulated by AI software. From paintings to film scripts and even digital individuals who can speak in different languages. Basically anything we can think up, but created or modified by AI. This software makes creativity accessible to everyone. It allows you to generate thousands of ideas or perspectives and choose from any of them. Its a goldmine of ideas.

For instance, there is already an AI model that conjures up new images on the basis of a written text. Or comes up with ideas for new start-ups. These technologies use the GPT-3 language model, which wrote an article in The Guardian last year. According to Duursma, we will work increasingly more with these kinds of systems in the future. People are afraid of bing made redundant. Thats a kind of primal feeling. While we already lean on technology for so many things. I dont remember phone numbers anymore, for one thing. To me, machines with imagination that generate new ideas for us are not a scary idea at all. It gives everyone access to creativity.

Original post:
Deepfakes: Danger to democracy or creativity for all? - Innovation Origins

The state legislatures Environment Committee hearing started on ZOOM at 10 a.m. Friday, March 19. There were a number of bills on the agenda.

Usually legislators get the first hour and then the public gets to testify. However, this day the Commissioner of DEEP Katie Dykes was the guest at 10 a.m. and the legislators asked her questions until 2:30. Then finally the public got to testify.

The way ZOOM hearings work is this: Those who want to testify in person register to do so and then the night before the hearing the committee sends out the list of when each person may testify.

I was given number 45.

The two big bills that got most of the testimony were:

So.. The first 25 people who testified got tons of questions. The legislators were all very attentive and very frisky. Some people were talking up to half an hour. If the legislators knew the person testifying they could go on even longer with many legislators saying hello and asking many questions.

After about seven hours by about 5 p.m. some legislators were getting upset by how long this was all taking and how many people were left yet to testify and the legislators began to fight among themselves about how long each person should get and how long each individual legislator should get. All this went on in public over ZOOM.

By dinner time things started to thin out. Legislators were getting tired and probably hungry, so they asked fewer questions. Some people now got none. Then a fisherman testified on a bill about enforcing regulations on fishing for striped bass. The legislators who were left and liked fishing became alive. That testimony went for on a long time as those left asked fishing questions and it was decided by the end of lengthy questioning about fishing that the best way to catch striped bass was with a single hook.

After dinner the legislators really thinned out and the questions almost stopped. I could no longer tell how many legislators were even left. I finally got to testify at 8:15 p.m. after having listened all day to 10 hours to everyone elses testimony.

Even though my company, Environment and Human Health, Inc., had worked on the Bottle Exemption Bill for over four years and knew a huge amount about it and even though EHHI had worked on the issue of nips which were included in the bottle bill (and should not have been) we were asked NO questions. Everyone was too tired or not even there.

So goes our democracy. Making democracy work is not easy for those who wish to delve into it it is clear democracy is hard work but there is no better way to govern so we will keep at it even when it seems unfair. Unfair or not its better than any other system of government and that seems to be the bottom line.

Nancy Alderman is President ofEnvironment and Human Health, Inc.

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See the original post here:
Opinion Of striped bass, the bottle bill and democracy via Zoom - The CT Mirror

In my previous article, I described the BJP as a Hindu Democratic Party, in an evidence-based manner by interpreting their recent record of legislative and executive actions.

On this basis, it was demonstrated that they do not even qualify to be considered a traditional right-wing or even traditionally conservative party.

Among interesting feedback to the article was confusion that it implies the BJP is like the Democratic Party of the USA.

This view is wildly off the mark, but it underscores that the default Indian political understanding broadly divides politics into modern liberalism (akin to the US Democrats/British Labour) and traditional conservatism (like the US Republican Party/British Conservatives).

This is a very narrow binary view that does not reflect the reality of Indian politics at all.

A second and very pertinent piece of feedback is that the original article appears to impose a western construct (Christian democracy) upon India. However, thats not quite the case, as this article describes.

Christian democracy is simply an umbrella term for a range of European parties who all have a common imperative with the BJP the preservation of a homeland safe for their faiths, while also maintaining a functional modern democracy, i.e. not a theocracy.

Hindu Democracy : A Form of Liberal Conservatism

The BJPs recent legislative record is wide ranging. Some laws address core political objectives: the elimination of Article 370 and the CAA law and the pursuit of UCC.

Others address reformist goals like the farm laws, the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, and the GST. Other recent legislative actions are very liberal minded supporting workers compensation rights, consumer rights, maternity care and abortion rights and transgender rights.

In political science, this is liberal conservatism. The conservative basis is forward looking it just values orderly evolution that focusses on preserving the basic cultural fabric of the land.

If the underlying basis is too rigid, it becomes a right wing traditional polity or theocracy, instead of a liberal conservative entity. Hinduism is a forward- looking religion that enables this.

There is no compromise or hypocrisy in liberal conservatism. The BJPs support, for example, of maternity, abortion or transgender rights is not driven by the modern feminist or LGBT movements.

Those groups are not sole guardians of these rights. Rather, it reflects the fact that Hinduism itself respects women and has never been antagonistic to the third gender; the western approach to these is alien to India; the factual legislative record shows that the BJP has evolved its own independent, native liberal doctrine.

Arguably, the Anglophone liberal versus conservative dichotomy reflects the lack of evolution of polities in both the US and UK, as compared to India.

This backwardness of their politics shows up in the pronounced polarisation of their local politics. Modern democracies in lands with strong cultural moorings have often tended towards liberal conservatism the BJP in India, the Christian Democrats in Germany, Austria and Italy, the LDP in Japan, the Liberal Party in Australia being examples.

Neither the US nor UK have a political party that is avowedly liberal conservative; the only significant party of the kind in the Anglosphere is the Liberal Party of Australia (LP).

The LPs conservatism in Australia was primarily racial Robert Menzies, who was their Prime Minister from 1949-1966, was a strong supporter of the White Australia policy.

The term Hindu Democratic Party is derived from the most well known mainstream form of liberal conservatism involving religion and native culture as a base Christian democracy in Europe.

But why associate the BJP with a western construct at all? This is a very good question. Several features of the western political spectrum simply do not apply to India. Such terminology cannot be carried over wholesale without any nuance.

However, we live in a global world today. As India grows in power and influence, we interact more with the world. It is important to understand how politics is interpreted by the outside world, and to have a well considered description of Indian political mainstream using a best approximation, even if the association cannot be perfect.

Liberal Conservatism: The Dominant Politics of Strongly Rooted Cultures

An interesting behaviour seen post-World War 2 is that all modern democratic nations that have either strong religious or native cultures, or are the punyabhoomi of major faiths, have all developed liberal conservatism as the principal local political form.

In Germany, Konrad Adenauers CDU came to power in 1949, and dominated German politics, having collectively ruled for over 50 of 70 years.

Besides Angela Merkel and Adenauer, Helmut Kohl and Ludwig Erhard are famous Christian Democrats; Merkel and Erhard were practising Lutheran Protestants, the other two Catholics.

In Italy, Alcide de Gasperis Christian Democrats came to power in 1946, and that party continuously ruled until 1981, and then came back to power again a few times.

In Israel, the Likud Party has been the dominant political force since the 1970s, with leaders like Menachem Begin, Ariel Sharon and now Benjamin Netanyahu being Likud leaders.

In Japan, the Liberal Democratic Party has dominated postwar politics. Everyone from first PM Shigeru Yoshida to Hayato Ikeda famous for driving their postwar economic miracle to Shinzo Abe were LDP leaders.

In Ireland, a Catholic bastion, the Fine Gael and Fianna Fail founded by their longest serving leader Eamon de Valera have dominated politics.

All these parties have something in common they are liberal conservative ones, and the majority classify themselves as Christian Democratic. Italy and Ireland are homes of Catholicism. Germany the home of Protestantism/Lutheranism, Israel the Jewish homeland and Japan the home of Shintoism.

It is not a coincidence that they all developed analogous polity right upon foundation.

The organic rise of the BJP is a similar story. From a more traditionally conservative origin in the Bharatiya Jan Sangh days, it evolved into a more right wing populist entity and rapidly gained a stable vote share of at least 20 per cent in every general election.

Over the past two decades, it has solidified itself as the principal political pole of India.

Neither the US nor UK have a native faith. While there is a Church of England, that is simply the result of a political split King Henry VIII wanted an annulment but the Vatican wouldnt grant one. So he split and created his own church for convenience.

The US is a young frontier country with a stagnant two-party system.

Hindu Democracy: A Liberal Conservative Approach to Dual Imperatives.

Countries that are both a democratic society and the home of a major faith realise that they also safeguard that faith, while simultaneously managing the uniform policy imperatives of being a modern democratic society.

They all maintain legal secular rights for individuals. However, they all make it clear that politics serves the culture, and not the other way around. Therefore, the dominant culture will always receive a first-among-equals treatment by polity, even when individuals from different faiths are treated alike from the perspective of basic law.

This distinction arises from the fact that politics does not hold a land together. Its culture does. India has a dominant culture thats readily visible to everyone from a natural born person to a stranger looking from outside in.

That culture is Dharmic. India safeguards Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism.

The power of Dharmic culture over polity has demonstrably manifested itself in the fact that the moment the artificial basis of Nehruvian western liberal-socialism weakened, the BJPs liberal conservative polity took hold rapidly within less than two decades.

It has since cemented itself under Narendra Modi, while the Congress has been reduced from over 75 per cent of Lok Sabha to under 10 per cent essentially a large regional party.

A country that had no other basis for socio-political cohesion would simply have fallen apart into civil war, as many countries have. Had India lacked such a basis for cohesion, the end of the Congress would have been the end of the political nation state of India.

However, that did not happen. India has instead politically united into the strongest form in several decades. So much so that assorted wags hyperventilate that India is authoritarian.

Why Did The BJPs Emergence Take So Long ?

Given this political history, a question remains if countries with such strong religious and cultural foundations took a common approach, why didnt India do so at its inception?

At this point it might be somewhat clear it almost did. People like Sardar Patel and S P Mukherjee advocated this path.

One can take a look at the dire situation in 1948-50: Muladi massacre, Barisal riots, Anderson bridge massacre, Sitakunda massacre and more just in Bengal, with even more in Punjab.

Each day brought more grim news.

S P Mukherjee, among others, argued strenuously for a population transfer. Objections to this included the difficulty of transferring crores of people, treatment of property and more; those in favour argued that at least non-Muslims must be allowed to move to India.

Nehru opposed this, with fatal consequences for millions of Hindus. The arguments came to a head when S P Mukherjee quit the government during the Nehru-Liaquat Pact and founded BJPs predecessor the BJS.

Mukherjee later died in custody while protesting the imposition of Article 370. Sardar Patels demise preceded Mukherjees. With its brightest leaders gone, the BJP took another generation to become a political force.

It has not looked back since.

The BJP retains a historical memory of its foundation. Its first two acts upon acquiring the 2019 mandate that gave it reasonable strength in both houses of Parliament, were to deal with two items its founder fought over eliminating Article 370 and passing the Citizenship Amendment Act, which serves to fulfill at least partly, the goal of enabling non-Muslim refugees from partition era lands the ability to gain citizenship in India, as Amit Shah explained.

The current position of strength within Indian polity gives the BJP the opportunity to cast the future of Bharat in the terms it should have always been.

This land is the sacred land and guardian of not merely one but multiple great faiths Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism.

The guardianship of this history and culture cannot be sacrificed at the altar of tactically expedient identity politics. There is much to be done, but it must also be acknowledged that the BJP has been true to its history, and remains the only national party that understands and has the dedication to accomplish the political goal of ensuring that India remains a place where its native faiths and culture can flourish.

Visit link:
Hindu Democracy, Punyabhoomi And The Idea Of Bharat - Swarajya

Republicans are outraged outraged! at the surge of migrants at the southern border. The House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, declares it a crisis created by the presidential policies of this new administration. The Arizona congressman Andy Biggs claims, we go through some periods where we have these surges, but right now is probably the most dramatic that Ive seen at the border in my lifetime.

Donald Trump demands the Biden administration immediately complete the wall, which can be done in a matter of weeks they should never have stopped it. They are causing death and human tragedy.

Our country is being destroyed! he adds.

In fact, theres no surge of migrants at the border.

US Customs and Border Protection apprehended 28% more migrants from January to February this year than in previous months. But this was largely seasonal. Two years ago, apprehensions increased 31% during the same period. Three years ago, it was about 25% from February to March. Migrants start coming when winter ends and the weather gets a bit warmer, then stop coming in the hotter summer months when the desert is deadly.

To be sure, there is a humanitarian crisis of children detained in overcrowded border facilities. And an even worse humanitarian tragedy in the violence and political oppression in Central America, worsened by US policies over the years, that drives migration in the first place.

But the surge has been fabricated by Republicans in order to stoke fear and, not incidentally, to justify changes in laws they say are necessary to prevent non-citizens from voting.

Republicans continue to allege without proof that the 2020 election was rife with fraudulent ballots, many from undocumented migrants. Over the past six weeks theyve introduced 250 bills in 43 states designed to make it harder for people to vote especially the young, the poor, Black people and Hispanic Americans, all of whom are likely to vote for Democrats by eliminating mail-in ballots, reducing times for voting, decreasing the number of drop-off boxes, demanding proof of citizenship, even making it a crime to give water to people waiting in line to vote.

To stop this, Democrats are trying to enact a sweeping voting rights bill, the For the People Act, which protects voting, ends partisan gerrymandering and keeps dark money out of elections. It passed the House but Republicans in the Senate are fighting it with more lies.

On Wednesday, the Texas Republican senator Ted Cruz falsely claimed the new bill would register millions of undocumented migrants to vote and accused Democrats of wanting the most violent criminals to cast ballots too.

The core message of the Republican party now consists of lies about a crisis of violent migrants crossing the border, lies that theyre voting illegally, and blatantly anti-democratic demands voting be restricted to counter it.

The party that once championed lower taxes, smaller government, states rights and a strong national defense now has more in common with anti-democratic regimes and racist-nationalist political movements around the world than with Americas avowed ideals of democracy, rule of law and human rights.

Donald Trump isnt single-handedly responsible for this, but he demonstrated to the GOP the political potency of bigotry and the GOP has taken him up on it.

This transformation in one of Americas two eminent political parties has shocking implications, not just for the future of American democracy but for the future of democracy everywhere.

I predict to you, your children or grandchildren are going to be doing their doctoral thesis on the issue of who succeeded: autocracy or democracy? Joe Biden opined at his news conference on Thursday.

In his maiden speech at the state department on 4 March, Antony Blinken conceded that the erosion of democracy around the world is also happening here in the United States.

The secretary of state didnt explicitly talk about the Republican party, but there was no mistaking his subject.

When democracies are weak they become more vulnerable to extremist movements from the inside and to interference from the outside, he warned.

People around the world witnessing the fragility of American democracy want to see whether our democracy is resilient, whether we can rise to the challenge here at home. That will be the foundation for our legitimacy in defending democracy around the world for years to come.

That resilience and legitimacy will depend in large part on whether Republicans or Democrats prevail on voting rights.

Not since the years leading up to the civil war has the clash between the nations two major parties so clearly defined the core challenge facing American democracy.

Read more here:
Republicans have taken up the politics of bigotry, putting US democracy at risk - The Guardian

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In the 1800s the Republican Party championed the democratic principles of freedom, liberty, justice and equality for all. The Democratic Party stood for the wealthy and powerful, the plantation owners, the captains of industry. It was a tug of war between democracy and oligarchy.

Today we are in that same tug of war. This time the Democrats espouse those principles, while the Republican legislators are in the pockets of the wealthy and powerful. It is evident in their refusal to increase the minimum wage, while endorsing huge tax cuts for the top 1%, reducing the inheritance tax, using taxpayer money to bail out bad acting, too big to fail banks and Wall Street all actions that continue to redistribute money upwards. The list goes on, especially in the regulatory area by eliminating workers rights and reducing financial and environmental standards.

They have failed to hold the wealthy and powerful accountable for their criminal behavior. One standard of justice for the rich and powerful, another standard for everyone else.

Republican lawmakers believe that government should stay out of the way of business making money with no regulation, no social contract, no protection for workers. This type of government might work for the wealthy, but not for you and me. Who is going to protect us from domestic and foreign terrorists, pandemics, the ravages of climate change?

This is not an individual task, but together by pooling our resources, we can help one another. That is what democracy is all about, government of, by and for the people, not just for the wealthy and powerful.

Joanne Garing

North Huntingdon

Categories:Letters to the Editor | Opinion

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Letter to the editor: Democracy for all people, not just the powerful - TribLIVE