Vitalik Buterin
@vitalik.eth
One way to look at the possible effects of deepfakes in politics is to look at "shallow fakes" that have been possible for a long time. For example, this screenshot purporting to be a "you're free to say whatever nasty stuff you want" whitelist for twitter. I actually have no idea if this is real or fake, but there definitely are some people who are treating it as real, imo without sufficient evidence. And yet, the effects of things like this are pretty bounded. This feels like a plausible outcome for deepfakes in politics. The smart people know not to trust a politician's statements without confirmation on official channels, and less smart people get tricked, as they do today with shallow fakes. If something fake goes viral, Community Notes can help on the margin in making it clear that it's fake. Most normies don't actually look at this stuff in real time, and so the effect ends up not too bad. This is the strongest case for not being too worried. The place where I am *more* worried about deepfakes is...
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Vitalik Buterin
@vitalik.eth
... financial scams. This is an area where many people have no existing defenses - their family members desperately calling them saying they really need a big pile of money quickly. Or the corporate equivalent of the same. This is the reason I wrote this article: https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2024/02/09/securityquestions.html Though we really need a much stronger concerted education effort in this regard. Also much better authentication across the stack.
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0xen 🎩
@0xen
i witnessed one of these in real life a few years ago at a gas station. elderly woman was at a bitcoin ATM with an envelope full of money (10k) talking on a cell phone. something was off so i approached and she said her grandson was in jail. it took quite a bit of convincing her that it wasn't real and there was no AI involved at all.
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ciefa 🐌 eth/acc
@ciefa.eth
Oh man, I had to deal with these cases A LOT when I was working for CEXs... From people getting pig butchered to dads using their kids college funds and getting scammed... it's unreal just HOW much money these scammers are making and the police is usually not able to do much, if anything at all
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Vladi🦄
@novaque
When you here that scammers scammed another million and when you read the real story of people in such a situation — it is a absolutely different feeling
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ciefa 🐌 eth/acc
@ciefa.eth
Yes, it really hits different. Having to tell them their money is gone for good always sucked big time. Something something the price of liberty is eternal vigilance
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