Deepfakes Paranoia Considered Pointless

Deepfakes paranoia is the dumbest worry in the world.

The concern is that AI has gotten so good that we’ll be able to create videos of important people saying all sorts of nutty things, which will lead to a total breakdown in our ability to trust important institutions. The problem here is that world leaders already say incredibly nutty things. Making a fake video of Donald Trump saying something outrageous is superfluous, like photoshopping a picture of Jeff Bezos so he’s holding a twenty dollar bill.

The other problem is that the media suffer from an intellectual autoimmune disorder, and relentlessly hype up minor misstatements into full-blown hysteria. If you’re at all partisan, you can think of examples of The Other Guys doing this. Every educated person knows that “cling to guns and religion” was a sympathetic remark from a churchgoer, except of course for the educated people who know that Mitt Romney’s “47%” line was a rhetorical flourish about people who pay no Federal income taxes.

The point is not to take sides; anyone who wants to win 270 or more electoral votes is going to say some dumb things, simply because low-information voters are the easiest to persuade and the easiest to lie to. If your options are either a) to patiently explain how your technocratic policy ideas artfully thread the needle between disparate goals for a variety of constituencies, or b) to rant about how the other party hates your country, your family, and your wallet, option B wins every time.