Technologist and researcher Aviv Ovadya isn't sure that generative AI can be governed, but he thinks the most plausible means of keeping it in check might just be entrusting those who will be impacted by AI to collectively decide on the ways to curb it. That means you; it means me. It's the power of large networks of individuals to problem solve faster and more equitably than a small group of individuals might do alone (including, say, in Washington). In Taiwan, for example, civic-minded hackers in 2015 formed a platform -- "virtual Taiwan" -- that "brings together representatives from the public, private and social sectors to debate policy solutions to problems primarily related to the digital economy," as explained in 2019 by Taiwan's digital minister, Audrey Tang in the New York Times. Since then, vTaiwan, as it's known, has tackled dozens of issues by "relying on a mix of online debate and face-to-face discussions with stakeholders," Tang wrote at the time.

The dark side of technology was among the topics explored at NYC Media Lab's second Machines Media conference, which was sponsored and hosted by Bloomberg at its global headquarters in the city on May 15. Though some of the sessions were more about looking at what tech is currently available to media, even those brought up the shadow of manipulation and misinformation. In the session entitled "State of the Art," Gilad Lotan, VP, head of data science, Buzzfeed, pointed out that the problem of fake or misleading news cannot be blamed solely on media companies or new technology. "People aren't necessarily searching for facts," he said. He added that feeding that desire for stories and favored narratives can result in fake news that is "more manipulation than false information." In fact, the story delivered may not include anything false at all.

Modern motion-capture systems are the product of a century of tinkering, innovation and computational advances. Mocap was born a lifetime before Gollum hit the big screen in The Lord of the Rings, and ages before the Cold War, Vietnam War or World War II. It was 1915, in the midst of the First World War, when animator Max Fleischer developed a technique called rotoscoping and laid the foundation for today's cutting-edge mocap technology. Rotoscoping was a primitive and time-consuming process, but it was a necessary starting point for the industry. In the rotoscope method, animators stood at a glass-topped desk and traced over a projected live-action film frame-by-frame, copying actors' or animals' actions directly onto a hand-drawn world.

Think that AI will help put a stop to fake news? The Department of Defense is funding a project that will try to determine whether the increasingly real-looking fake video and audio generated by artificial intelligence might soon be impossible to distinguish from the real thing--even for another AI system. This summer, under a project funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the world's leading digital forensics experts will gather for an AI fakery contest. They will compete to generate the most convincing AI-generated fake video, imagery, and audio--and they will also try to develop tools that can catch these counterfeits automatically. The contest will include so-called "deepfakes," videos in which one person's face is stitched onto another person's body. Rather predictably, the technology has already been used to generate a number of counterfeit celebrity porn videos.

"We're entering an era in which our enemies can make it look like anyone is saying anything at any point in time -- even if they would never say those things," says "Obama," his lips moving in perfect sync with his words as they become increasingly bizarre. "So, for instance, they could have me say things like, I don't know, [Black Panther's] Killmonger was right! Or Ben Carson is in the sunken place! Or, how'bout this: Simply, President Trump is a total and complete dipshit." As the video soon reveals, the man speaking is not the former commander-in-chief, but rather Oscar-winning filmmaker Jordan Peele with a warning for viewers about trusting material they encounter online.

"At the time, it felt like we were in a car careening out of control and it wasn't just that everyone was saying, 'we'll be fine' -- it's that they didn't even see the car," he said. Ovadya saw early what many -- including lawmakers, journalists, and Big Tech CEOs -- wouldn't grasp until months later: Our platformed and algorithmically optimized world is vulnerable -- to propaganda, to misinformation, to dark targeted advertising from foreign governments -- so much so that it threatens to undermine a cornerstone of human discourse: the credibility of fact. But it's what he sees coming next that will really scare the shit out of you. "Alarmism can be good -- you should be alarmist about this stuff," Ovadya said one January afternoon before calmly outlining a deeply unsettling projection about the next two decades of fake news, artificial intelligence–assisted misinformation campaigns, and propaganda. "We are so screwed it's beyond what most of us can imagine," he said.

We live in unprecedented times, where, unfortunately, increasingly things are not what they seem to be or what they should be. We have only been in this situation for less than 18 months, but it is rapidly affecting our lives on a daily basis. I am talking about fake news and how it has become one of the greatest threats to democracy, free debate and capitalism. Unfortunately, for many, fake news is not a problem at all. It is even Trump's favourite topic.