Only one way to fight deep-fakes and other A.I. wrongs

By: Eli Amdur
Vantage Point
NorthJersey.com
10/22/2023

..... "If I had one hour to save the world," said Albert Einstein, "I would spend 55 minutes defining the problem and five minute solving it."
..... He further observed, "in order to solve a problem, you've got to have the right problem."
..... In the age of AI, it is a good idea to heed Einstein's advice because AI is not only presenting us with the chance to make the greatest leaps forward - more than any other invention or discovery in the history of humankind - but also the greatest cascade of calamities to bear. No hyperbole. No kidding.
..... To lend authority and credibility to that statement, I have spent years studying and pondering the greatest inventions and discoveries, and how we've sued them. In every case - without fail - we humans, bless our souls, have figured out how to use them constructively but also destructively.
..... For example, with our very first invention, stone tools, 3 million years ago, we figured out how to build things with them but also to weaponized them. With agriculture, we learned how to farm healthy foods but also poppies, from which we make heroine. in 1903, the Wright brothers, in one of history's most momentous accomplishments, took us off the ground. Not 11 years later, we had mounted guns and bombs on those heavier-than-air flying machines and were fighting a world war with them.
..... If you're intrigued by my postulate but wish to find exceptions, let be save you some time. There are none. We've done it every time.
..... And with AI, we've already begun: the misuse, abuse and overuse of AI has come upon us faster and more broadly than any other innovation. That's because nothing we've ever done has been bigger.
..... Misinformation, disinformation and deep-fakes. Like with all technologies, bad actors figure out how to achieve the worst we can imagine of ourselves, and then the battle is on: the bad guys beat the system, the good guys overcome it temporarily, and the bad guys get a leg up again.
..... So predictable is this syndrome that it seems inevitable, so we resign ourselves to it.
..... Just what the bad guys want. In that kind of chess game, they can always make the next move faster than the good guys - without playing by the rules. It's inevitable, so our entreaties linger.
..... But stop for just a second. suppose we look at this another way. Suppose we redefine the problem. The reason that disinformation and deep-fakes work has little to do with the obvious technology, bad actors, or failed governmental inaction. It's that there is not enough critical thinking to combat it. And that goes back, simply, to the failing of our schools, both public and private.
..... There's not enough being taught in our schools form fourth grade on, not enough of an understanding of ethics, civics and logic. Trust me here. I taught two graduate leadership and miscommunications course from 2003 to 2015 and witnessed a precipitous decline in these skills sets. Actually, these sensibilities. It was nothing less than appalling, frightening and sad, but to make matters worse, it indicates to me that two, maybe three, generations are thus deprived. And I'm pretty certain what I'm saying here.
..... I'm not, by credential, an "educator' but i am, among other things, a teacher and a critic. I'm also the beneficiary of a beautiful public education in Mount Vernon, New York in the 1950s and early 1960s, followed by a nifty four years of rigorous liberal arts education at Fairleigh Dickinson University. I've taken it form there and continue the responsibility and the joy of self-learning.
..... Suffice to say, the painful paucity of sound, critical thinking; of disciplined logic when called for or wild creativity when needed; of deep, deliberate thought form reading the Classics or critical biographies: of reading Longfellow poems while listening to a Brahms symphony is sadly missing.
..... That's why deep-fakes work, not because the bad guys got the last laugh - or because a tech giant promised to take steps or because legislators promise an answer.
..... We are to blame and only we can fix it - not through technology, not through business, not in the halls of government, and not step by shortsighted step. We must go back to educating - really educating - our rising generations to think for themselves.
..... This will take time, but it's the only way. The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next best time is now. We can start the way Einstein would.

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