Clue in on

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Give someone the information they need
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Hairy eyeball

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In AmE to give someone the hairy eyeball is to look at them askance.

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053 – Is seeing believing? Deepfakes and the information apocalypse

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When you watch the news these days, do you trust your eyes and ears? Do you think what you’re seeing is real and happened the way it is being shown? Or is your first reaction to think: Hmm, I wonder if this video is fake? That’s what today’s episode is about, so stay tuned.

TRANSCRIPT PREVIEW – Get the full transcript here: https://ift.tt/3jxNmFq

Before we get started, I hope you’ll indulge me in a little Better at English background info. I don’t do Better at English for the money, but some of you have been going out of your way to send me thank-you gifts. So thank you so much to Charles for his very generous Paypal donation, and to the mystery person who sent me the Handbook of Self-Determination research from my Amazon wish list. I honestly didn’t know that it was even possible to find my Amazon wish list anymore, so getting a mystery book delivered was a real surprise! I’d also like to thank Zhuo Tao (I hope I’m saying that right) who wrote my favorite review this month: It goes like this “This podcast is getting better and better by every episode. It’s no longer just some language learning material, but food for thought as well.” That is indeed what I’m trying to do, so that was really nice to get that feedback.

You can say thanks here: https://ift.tt/34o8BF2

All feedback from you lovely listeners, whether it’s reviews, email, voice messages, donations, Amazon wish list gifts…it’s all positive feedback that fuels my motivation to keep doing this…it’s a sign that you’re getting value from the episodes, which is what it’s all about. So thank you!

OK, thank you for indulging me…let’s get on with today’s topic.

Deepfakes and the Information Apocalypse
Today we’re looking at misinformation and disinformation in our modern age, and how technologies like deepfake are making it increasingly harder for us to know what is really happening in the world, to separate fact from fiction. This episode builds on my earlier episodes about AI—that’s artificial intelligence—which you can find further down the podcast feed as episodes 47 and 48.

Before we go any further, take a moment to ask yourself how much you trust what you see, hear, and read these days, whether it’s online, in a newspaper, or coming from an expert or politician in a live televised address. Is seeing believing, as the expression goes? Go ahead, think of some recent examples that are personally relevant to you. Now ask yourself how your beliefs about what is true influence your actions, how much they shape what you actually do as you move through life. How do these beliefs influence, for example, who you vote for, what you buy, what you eat, which books you read, which car you drive?

You don’t need to be a Ph.D. in psychology to understand that our beliefs about what is true or false affect our actions. Nobody wants to make decisions based on lies or misinformation, so we all want information that we can trust. Just to give a current example, look at what’s happening regarding masks and the Corona-virus. If you think masks do help stop the spread and protect others, you’re likely to wear one even though they are uncomfortable and it’s kind of a pain in the butt. And if you think masks don’t help at all, you are more likely to resist wearing a mask or even flat out refuse. I mean, why bother if they don’t work, right? And if you have really strong beliefs about this, you might even march in protest against the rules that require you to wear a mask. The point is, your chosen path will be based on what you believe is right and true.

We are living in a pretty crazy time right now, and humanity is facing huge challenges. And it’s no secret that many of the big issues are extremely polarizing. And if you try to build an informed opinion by examining the information and arguments of both sides, you make a frustrating discovery, or at least I did:
Both sides seem to have completely different interpretations of facts and reality. And each side believes it sees things correctly and the other side is hallucinating. Or crazy. Or just plain evil.

To borrow an analogy from the author Scott Adams, it’s as if we’re all watching the same movie screen, but we’re seeing two completely different movies at the same time. And each of us is convinced that our movie is the truth.

This “two movies on one screen” phenomenon is already happening with events that we all can agree really happened. We might not agree on what these events mean, who is responsible, what should be done about them etc., but we basically accept that they actually occurred in the physical world. Seeing is believing, right?

But what happens when the things we are seeing and hearing, the video, audio, and photos are 100% fake? And what happens when these fakes are everywhere? If we can have such serious disagreements, such polarization about genuine, real events, what is going to happen when we truly can’t be sure if the media we are seeing and hearing is real?

Some experts think that this is going to happen really soon. We are entering the era of deepfakes. If you’re not sure what a deepfake is, you will understand it by the end of this episode.

You are going to hear experts discussing this topic in English, and I’ll pop in from time to time to guide you through the examples.

The link to the full transcript of this episode is in the show notes, and there are also links to the audio you hear and the examples that the speakers mention, like videos, websites, books, etc. So if you find this topic interesting, there is plenty of supplementary material so you can learn more.

All right, let’s get started. First of all, what is deepfake?

Nina
So a deep fake is a type of synthetic media. And what synthetic media essentially is, is any type of media, it can be an image, it can be a video, it can be a text, that is generated by AI.

Lori
That was Nina Schick, who is, to put it mildly, a pretty impressive woman with a very interesting background:

Nina
I’m half German, and I’m half Nepalese. And so I’ve this background in geopolitics, politics, and information warfare. And my area of interest is really how the exponential changes in technology, and particularly in AI are rewriting not only politics, but society at large as well.

Lori
She’s also proficient in 7 languages. All I can say is, wow. You’ll now hear Nina talking to Sam Harris about deepfakes. It’s from an episode of Sam Harris’s podcast “Making Sense,” which is another great podcast for you to add to your list of interesting podcasts in English. Here we go:

Sam
So much of this is a matter of our entertaining ourselves into a kind of collective madness, and what seems like it could be a coming social collapse, I realized that if you’re not in touch with these trends, you know, if anyone in the audience who isn’t this kind of language coming from me, or anyone else can sound hyperbolic. But we’re really going over some kind of precipice here, with respect to our ability to understand what’s going on in the world, and to converge on a common picture of a shared reality. [EDIT] And again, we built the, the very tools of our derangement ourselves. And in particular, I’m talking about social media here. So your book goes into this. And it’s organized around this, this new piece of technology that we call deepfakes. And the book is Deepfakes: The Coming Infocalypse, which umm, that’s not your coinage, it…on the page is very easy to parse. When you say it, it’s hard to understand what’s being said there, but it’s really, you’re talking about an information apocalypse. Just remind people what deepfakes are, and suggest what’s at stake here in terms of, of how difficult it could be to make sense of our world in the presence of this technology.

Nina
This ability of AI to generate fake or synthetic media is really, really nascent. We’re only at the very, very beginning of the synthetic media revolution. It was only probably in about the last four or five years that this has been possible. And for the last two years that we’ve been seeing how the real-world applications of this have been leaching out from beyond the AI research community. So the first thing to say about synthetic media is that it is completely going to transform how we perceive the world, because in future, all media is going to be synthetic, because it means that anybody can create content to a degree of fidelity that is only possible for Hollywood studios right now, right? And they can do this for little to no cost using apps or software, various interfaces, which will make it so accessible to, to anyone. And the reason why this is so interesting.

Nina
Another reason why synthetic media is so interesting is until now, the best kind of computer effects CGI, do you still can’t quite get humans right. So when you use CGI to do effects where you’re trying to create robotic humans, it still doesn’t look right…it’s called, you know, uncanny valley. But it turns out that AI when you train your machine learning systems with enough data, they’re really really good at generating fake humans or synthetic humans, both in images, I mean, and when it comes to generating fake human faces, so images, still images, it’s already perfected that and if you want to kind of test that you can go and look at thispersondoesnotexist.com. Every time you refresh the page, you’ll see a new human face that to the human eye, to you, or, or me, Sam, we’ll look at that and we’ll think that’s an authentic human, whereas that is just something that’s generated by AI. That human literally doesn’t exist. And also now increasingly in other types of media like audio, and film. So I could take essentially a clip of a recording with you, Sam, and I could use that to train my machine learning system and then I can synthesize your voice so I can literally hijack your biometrics, I can take your voice, synthesize it, get my AI kind of machine learning system to recreate that. I can do the same with your digital likeness.

Obviously, this is going to have tremendous commercial applications; entire industries are going to be transformed. For example, corporate communications, advertising, the future of all movies, video games. But this is also the most potent form of mis- and disinformation, which are democratizing for almost anyone in the world at a time when our information ecosystem has already become increasingly dangerous and corrupt. [Edit] So we have to distinguish between the legitimate use cases of synthetic media and how we draw the line. So I very broad brush in my book say that the use of and intent behind synthetic media really matters and how we define it. So I refer to deepfake, as when a piece of synthetic media is used as a piece of mis- or disinformation. And, you know, there is so much more that you could delve into there with regards to the kind of the ethical implications on the taxonomy. But broadly speaking, that’s how I define it and that’s my definition between synthetic media and deep fakes.

Sam
Hmm. Well, so umm, as you point out, all of this would be good, clean, fun if it weren’t for the fact that we know there are people intent upon spreading misinformation and disinformation and doing it with a truly sinister political purpose. I mean, not not just for amusement, although that can be harmful enough. It’s it’s something that state actors and people internal to various states are going to leverage to further divide society from itself and increase political polarization. But it would, it’s amazing that it is so promising in the fun department that we can’t possibly even contemplate putting this cat back in the bag. I mean, it’s just, that’s the problem we’re seeing on all fronts. It is, so it is with social media. So it is with the, the ad revenue model that is selecting for so many of its harmful effects. I mean, we just can’t break the spell wherein people want the cheapest, most fun media, and they want it endlessly.

And yet the, the harms that are accruing, are so large that it’s, it’s amazing. Just to see that there is just no there’s no handhold here, whereby we can resist our slide toward the precipice. Just to underscore how quickly this technology is developing. In your book, you point out what happened with the…once Martin Scorsese released his film, The Irishman which had this exceedingly expensive, and laborious process of trying to DE-age its principal actors, Robert de Niro and Joe Pesci. And that was met with something like derision for the the imperfection of what was achieved there — again, at great cost. And then very, very quickly, someone on YouTube, using free software, did a nearly perfect de-aging of the same film. [You can see it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHSTWepkp_M ] It’s just amazing what what’s happening here. And, again, these tools are going to be free, right? I mean, they’re already free and and ultimately, the best tools will be free.

Nina
Absolutely. So you already have various kind of software platforms online. And so the barriers to entry have come down tremendously. Right now, if you wanted to make a convincing deepfake video, you would still need to have some knowledge, some knowledge of machine learning, but you wouldn’t have to be an AI expert by any means. But already now we have apps that allow people to do certain things like swap their faces into scenes, for example, Reface I don’t know if you’ve come across that app. I don’t know how old your children are. But if you have a teenager you’ve probably come across it. You can basically put your own face into a popular scene from a film like Titanic or something. This is using the power of synthetic media. But experts who I speak to on the generation side — because it’s so hugely exciting to people who are generating synthetic media — think that by the end of the decade, any YouTuber, any teenager, will have the ability to create special effects in film that are better than anything a Hollywood studio can do now. And that’s really why I put that anecdote about the Irishman into the book because it just demonstrates the power of synthetic media. I mean, Scorsese was working on this project from 2015. He filmed with a special three-rig camera, he had this best special effects artists, post-production work, multi-million dollar budget, and still the effect at the end wasn’t that convincing. It didn’t look quite right. And now one YouTuber, free software, takes a clip from Scorsese’s film in 2020. So Scorsese’s film came out in 2019. This year, he can already create something that’s far more…when you look at it…looks far more realistic than what Scorsese did. This is just in the realm of video. As I already mentioned, with images, it can already do it perfectly. There is also the case of audio. There is another YouTuber, for example, who makes a lot of the kind of early pieces of synthetic media have sprung up on YouTube. There’s a YouTuber called Vocal Synthesis, who uses an open-sourced AI model to train a…trained on celebrities voices

END TRANSCRIPT PREVIEW — You can find the full transcript here

Material used in this episode

The Making Sense Podcast with Sam Harris
Episode #220 The Information Apocalypse: A Conversation with Nina Schick
https://ift.tt/2HaTfuG

Deepfakes: Is This Video Even Real? Claire Wardle of the New York Times
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OqFY_2JE1c

Vocal Synthesis Youtube Channel – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRt-fquxnij9wDnFJnpPS2Q
6 presidents read the Twilight Zone intro – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2HlDk-u1hQ

Donald Trump reads the Darth Plagueis copypasta – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEzIAixNkFI

Supplementary Material

Nina Schick’s Book: Deepfakes: The Coming Infocalypse

Deepfakes: A threat to democracy or just a bit of fun?
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-51204954

The Irishman – de-Aging of Robert de Niro
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHSTWepkp_M

Here’s why deepfakes are the perfect weapon for the ‘infocalypse’ – By Nina Schick

https://lifestyle.livemint.com/smart-living/innovation/here-s-why-deepfakes-are-the-perfect-weapon-for-the-infocalypse-111602247119544.html

Deepfakes: How to prepare your organization for a new type of threat
https://www.accenture.com/nl-en/blogs/insights/deepfakes-how-prepare-your-organization

A deepfake porn bot is being used to abuse thousands of women
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/telegram-deepfakes-deepnude-ai

Deepfake video of Vladimir Putin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbFHhpYU15w

Deepfake video of Kim Jong-Un
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERQlaJ_czHU

Access Hollywood tape with Donald Trump and Billy Bush (2016) – vulgar, profanity, not safe for work
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSC8Q-kR44o

Actress in Trump’s ‘Access Hollywood’ Tape reacts to Trump’s claim that he’s not sure he “actually said that”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRIPFJcPbq4

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052 – The Other F-word: talking about fat

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

Talking about fat and fat bodies is a tricky area to navigate in English because the word FAT is so laden with meaning, associations, emotions, and feelings — and these are different for everyone. In this episode, you’ll hear a wide variety of people who self-identify as fat talking about their experiences. You’ll hear how they think, feel and talk about their own bodies and how they experience things as a person of size. There are many registers (styles) of English represented here, as well as many different regional dialects. Links to all sources are provided, and most of these are videos. I encourage you to watch the videos to see the language being used in context. A transcript preview is below. You can find a pdf of the full transcript here: https://ift.tt/36SE18v

I hope you find this episode thought provoking and useful.

TRANSCRIPT PREVIEW

Hi English learners, Lori here, your teacher from betteratenglish.com. In today’s episode you are going to hear various people’s thoughts, opinions and feelings related to the f-word. No, not the swear word you hear all the time in movies and TV. I’m talking about the other F-word: fat. Yes, fat.

Madison A Krall

Let’s talk about fat bias and thin privilege | Madison A. Krall | TEDxMileHigh
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gak58BcuPh0

Madison: When you hear the word fat what thoughts and images come to mind? Some of you might think of fat as the extra 10 pounds you’re currently trying to lose. Others might be thinking, “Hmm, I wonder what the fat content was in the bag of potato chips I had for lunch?” And some of you when you hear the word fat, might think back to that time in middle school when someone called you fat, and how it has affected the rest of your life. Let’s just admit it. Fat can be a pretty loaded word, no matter who you are.

Kelli Jean Drinkwater
Enough with the fear of fat | Kelli Jean Drinkwater
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzlYyhh3X0w

Kelli: I’m here today to talk to you about a very powerful little word, one that people will do almost anything to avoid becoming. Billion-dollar industries thrive because of the fear of it, and those of us who undeniably are it are left to navigate a relentless storm surrounding it. I’m not sure if any of you have noticed, but I’m fat. Not the lowercase, muttered-behind-my-back kind, or the seemingly harmless chubby or cuddly. I’m not even the more sophisticated voluptuous or curvaceous kind. Let’s not sugarcoat it. I am the capital F-A-T kind of fat. I am the elephant in the room.

Fat | Eating Disorders | One Word | Cut
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWXwIPs-xWg

Speaker 1: There are lots of good fats, and I don’t think fat on your body is a bad thing. And I don’t think fat in your food means fat on your body but it’s been used as hate speech.

Speaker 2: Fat can be a hateful word. It can destroy some people. But in some ways fat can be good. And depending on how you image yourself, your fat can actually be great.

Speaker 3: I see a lot of mothers with their daughters say, don’t eat that or else you’re gonna get fat. It’s like, is that really the one thing that you don’t want your daughter to be?

*********

Yes, a fat is a loaded word that raises a lot of feelings, emotions, and associations. I’m taking a risk with this episode, because, as you’ll hear, conversations around fat and body size can quickly lead you into precarious territory, even if you have the best of intentions. It’s a highly charged topic. But I think that’s all the more reason to understand different people’s perspectives on fat and being fat, and to have language to talk about it sensitively.

Apart from vocabulary related to the topic, in this episode you’ll hear many registers or styles of English: conversations, extracts from prepared talks like TED talks, segments from interviews, and even monologues from people on Youtube. You’ll also hear many regional varieties of English, as well as at least one non-native speaker of English.

All in all, you will hear a wide variety of authentic English, illustrating many of the ways people talk, think and feel about fat bodies. You’ll also be hearing people describe concepts such as body positivity, body shaming, concern trolling, and lots general vocabulary related to the overall topic.

I have put links to all the sources you are going to hear in the transcript for this episode, which you can find at betteratenglish.com/transcripts . They all come from videos, so I encourage you to follow the links so you can see as well as hear the language in context.

So let’s get started. We’ll begin with a question. Is it appropriate to tell someone, “You look great! Have you lost weight?” At first glance, it seems like it could be a compliment. But is it really? I’m going to play an extract from the podcast “Inappropriate questions.” Listening to this podcast is what sent me down the rabbit hole of inquiry that led to this episode. In this podcast, the two hosts, Elena and Harv, talk to people who identify as fat or plus size to find out what they think about this question.

Elena is from the U.S.A., and Harv is from India. They start off by talking about people’s general attitudes toward weight in their different home countries.

********

Inappropriate Questions podcast
https://www.cbc.ca/listen/cbc-podcasts/414-inappropriate-questions

Elena
Harv, when you were growing up in India, what were people’s attitudes about weight like?

Harv
Oh, India had different beauty standard, at least at that time…

Elena
Right.

Harv
So if somebody was a little, what is considered an overweight here [it] was considered good. Because that person had enough money to eat food.

Elena
Right.

Harv
So so they used to use the word healthy. Then again, things have changed there as well, because again, obesity have, has become a problem in India. So again, the attitudes have changed. But at that time, it was very, very different.

Elena
Huh! That’s interesting. Do you think right now India’s beauty standards are kind of, like, the way they are here? [In the U.S.A.]

Harv
Pretty much, pretty much.

Elena
So thinness is really valued.

Elena
Now, yes.

Elena
And thinness is kind of associated with beauty and health.

Harv
Yeah, all those good things you, you know, even if you don’t go to the gym, it’s assumed that…

Elena
Yes!

Harv
…you work out.

Elena
Yes. You get the automatic

Harv
Yes.

Elena
benefit of the doubt.

Elena
Absolutely. Absolutely.

Elena
I love seeing more body positive stuff on the internet these days. I love seeing people who are trying to encourage more self love and self care. But sometimes I can’t put that into practice. I go home and I look at Instagram. And then I look at myself in the mirror. And I’m like, I know in my head that every body is beautiful. But then I look at my body. I’m like, no, I still feel bad about it.

Harv
So sometimes they say ignorance is bliss.

Elena
Yes.

Harv
Where I am, millennials have a whole lot of tools. The social media tools.

Elena
Yes.

Harv
All I have is a mirror.

Elena
Right.

Harv
That helps me tie my turban.

Harv
Yeah, so I don’t even look at my body.

[laughter]

Next you’ll hear Elena and Harv talking to a woman of size for her perspective on the question “Have you lost weight?” Her name is Steph Conover, but she likes to go by her state name, Ivory. Here is how Ivory describes herself:

Ivory
I am a mixed-race, six-foot, dragon lady. I’m a fire breather, stage performer, and a whole lot of woman.

Ivory is also an athlete, a plus size model, and is an active promoter of self love and body positivity. You’ll hear more about body positivity later. In the following extract, you’ll hear what Ivory thinks about the question “Have you lost weight?” You’ll also hear her talk about what it was like growing up and living in a larger body, and how the way she describes her own body has evolved over time.

Elena
Can you tell us about a time someone asked you, “Have you lost weight?”

Ivory
Oh boy. It happens all the time. It happens so often that I actually don’t take it in anymore.

Elena
Right

Ivory
You know, I’ll style my hair differently. I’ll wear a different article of clothing. And people think that it’s complimentary to say Wow, you look great! Have you lost weight? And it’s weird because as somebody who’s recovered from eating disorders, as somebody who still battles depression, there’s part of me that actually has that instant boost of serotonin where I go, “Ah! I look great! I’m skinny”

Group
[Sounds of sympathy]

Ivory
I’m like, “Bitch, you are a plus sized lady, you have not lost any weight and if you have it will probably find you and that’s okay. You can exist at whatever size you exist at and be happy there.”

END TRANSCRIPT PREVIEW

VOCABULARY IN CONTEXT on YOUGLISH.com

Fat shaming
https://ift.tt/3lgtkjG?

Body positivity
https://ift.tt/2SvRP02?

Body positive
https://ift.tt/3jDzpXl?

Fat acceptance
https://ift.tt/33DWbZo?

Concern trolling
https://ift.tt/3nsBWFO?

Body shaming
https://ift.tt/3jGY39l?

Fat
https://ift.tt/3loDkHE?

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Puke up

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vomit
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Throw in the sponge

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If you throw in the sponge, you give in and admit defeat.

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