Why Celebrities, Actors, Writers, And Artists Fear AI

• by: Leslie Alan Horvitz

Leslie Alan Horvitz
Photo: lesliehorvitz.com

09-15-2024 ~ Artificial intelligence can steal your likeness, mannerisms, voice, and creative work. Can anything be done about it?

With online access, you can easily tap into the powerful world of artificial intelligence (AI). By using Google’s AI chatbot, Gemini, or Microsoft’s Copilot, people can use AI to supplement or replace traditional web searches. OpenAI’s ChatGPT—the generative AI that’s become all the rage—can create a sci-fi novel or an innovative computer code and even diagnose a patient’s condition—produced in mere minutes in response to a human prompt.

Using a text-to-image program like DALL-E, a person can create an image of a unicorn walking along a busy city street. If they don’t like it, another prompt will tweak it for them or add another pictorial element.

But who owns this computer-generated content? Answering that question becomes tricky when the prompt includes the likeness or voice of someone other than the user. While regulators, legislators, and the courts are grappling with questions about the use and application of AI, they need to catch up, particularly on the issue of copyright.

“There’s a video out there promoting some dental plan with an AI version of me,” the actor Tom Hanks lamented in October 2023. “I have nothing to do with it.” He isn’t the only one facing these issues. Actress Scarlett Johansson also found that her voice and likeness were used in a 22-second online ad on X (formerly known as Twitter).

Don’t be taken in by singer Taylor Swift “endorsing” and giving away free Le Creuset Dutch ovens to Swifties—her fans. While Swift has said that she likes Le Creuset cookware, she isn’t doing ads for the brand. This and many other AI-generated fake ads use celebrity likenesses and voices to scam people. These include country singer Luke Combs’ promotion of weight loss gummies, journalist Gayle King’s video about weight loss products, and another fake video featuring the influencer Jimmy Donaldson (known to his followers as MrBeast).

A casual listener might have mistaken the song “Heart on My Sleeve” as a duet between the famous rap artist Drake and the equally famous singer The Weeknd. But the song, released in 2023 and credited to Ghostwriter, was never composed or sung by Drake or The Weeknd. There are several instances where the voices of singers were generated using AI. For example, an AI-generated version of Johnny Cash singing a Taylor Swift song went viral online in 2023.

This raises questions about who the rightful owners of these products are, considering that they are in whole or in part produced by AI. And what rights do Tom Hanks, Scarlett Johansson, Taylor Swift, and Drake have over their likeness and voices that were used without their permission? Do they have any rights at all? Read more

Even The National Intelligence Director Admits Government Secrecy Is A Problem

• by: C.J. Polychroniou

Lauren Harper ~ Daniel Ellsberg Chair on Government Secrecy

09-12-2024 ~ Up to 90 percent of info is overclassified by the US. Whistleblowers alone can’t fix this systemic crisis of secrecy.

Deception, lies and secrecy — including lies to cover secrecy — characterize authoritarian regimes. However, the politics of lying and official secrecy are no less common in democratic governments. For example, thanks to whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg releasing the Pentagon Papers, the public learned of the truth about the Vietnam War: U.S. military officials were systematically lying to Congress and the public while, at the same time, U.S. forces were committing unspeakable crimes against the Vietnamese people. But that’s not an isolated example. The U.S. government also lied about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. If it weren’t for independent journalism and courageous whistleblowers, we might have never known about the torture at Abu Ghraib and the U.S. spying on its own people and private citizens across the globe.

And with the 23rd anniversary of 9/11 upon us, we should also be reminded that there are still questions to be answered about Saudi Arabia’s role behind the attacks.

In the exclusive interview for Truthout that follows, Lauren Harper, the first Daniel Ellsberg Chair on Government Secrecy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, talks about government secrecy and the role of journalism and whistleblowers in defending democracy.

C. J. Polychroniou: I’d like to start by asking you to elaborate, in broad strokes, on the problem of government secrecy, especially national security secrecy, and the extent to which it erodes the democratic process.

Lauren Harper: Information is improperly classified between 75 percent and 90 percent of the time. This prevents information sharing — sometimes vital information — between agencies, with the public, and with Congress. It’s also expensive, costing taxpayers at least $18 billion a year.

Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines has reiterated that our approach to classifying information “is so flawed that it harms national security and diminishes public trust in government.” This trust is eroded when, for example, the CIA refuses to acknowledge the existence of a drone program that is widely reported on, including in The New York Times, on the basis the programs are properly classified. It also happens when a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request reveals that the U.S. Marshals Service abused classification markings to obscure the nature of its cell phone surveillance program.

Congress knows excessive secrecy is a problem. There have been three bipartisan commissions since the 1950s tasked with studying it, with the Moynihan Commission on Government Secrecy in the mid-1990s being the most important. The Moynihan Commission report underscored one of the key points about government secrecy that is often under-appreciated: it is a form of government regulation. I would frame that a little differently and say secrecy is a control mechanism, and one that prevents the public from basic self-governance. Read more

How Extensive Is The Privatization of Security?

• by: John P. Ruehl

John P. Ruehl – Independent Media Institute

09-11-2024 ~ While attention has been brought to the privatization of warfare, the growing privatization of policing continues to progress globally.

In August 2024, due to a $4 million budget shortfall, Idaho’s Caldwell School District terminated its $296,807 contract with the local police department, opting instead for armed guards from Eagle Eye Security. The new $280,000 contract is just a drop in the bucket of the roughly $50 billion U.S. private security industry and the $248 billion global market that is reshaping law enforcement worldwide.

While private military companies (PMCs) like Blackwater (now Academi) and Wagner have gained notoriety in war zones, private security companies (PSCs) are rapidly expanding in non-combat settings. Despite some overlap between the two, PSCs generally protect assets and individuals. Often collaborating with law enforcement, the effectiveness and ethical standards of PSCs vary widely, and armed guards are increasingly common. Security guards in the U.S. in 2021 outnumbered police by about 3:2.

Public policy is still playing catch up. Unlike police forces, PSCs operate under contract rather than direct taxpayer funding. They also don’t have the same level of regulation, oversight, or accountability. Criticisms of the police—such as excessive force and inadequate training—are frequently directed at private security officers as well. Many former police officers with controversial histories find employment in PSCs, where barriers to entry are low. Turnover, meanwhile, remains high, while wages are minimal. Yet the sector’s ongoing expansion appears inevitable.

Government forces and private security forces have been a part of society for millennia. Government forces mainly responded to unrest rather than preventing crime, often relying on volunteers. Private security options included hiring guards and bounty hunters, while communal efforts like the “hue and cry”—where villagers collectively chased down criminals— were also common ways of enforcing security. With increasing urbanization, though, traditional law enforcement methods became less effective, prompting the creation of the first modern police force, the London Metropolitan Police, in 1829. Distinct from the military, more accountable to city authorities and business interests, and focused on crime prevention, this model was adopted by Boston in 1838 and spread to nearly all U.S. cities by the 1880s. Read more

The Growth Of Malignant And Exclusionary Social Movements

• by: Colin Greer & Eric Laursen

09-11-2024 ~ The U.S. and many other societies are cycling into situations of toxic polarization today; discussion, let alone consensus, often appears impossible and the advantage goes to exclusionary social movements built on malignant rather than goodwill impulses. As Heritage Foundation president Keith Roberts stated in July 2024, “[W]e are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”

As recently as a decade ago, violent social movements were gaining ground primarily in countries and regions that were struggling economically as they integrated themselves into the neoliberal global economy: examples include Russia, Hungary, and other states of the former Eastern Bloc, Turkey, India, and Greece. More recently, however, toxic polarization has also threatened to engulf countries at the core of the liberal democratic political grouping, including France, Germany, Italy, the UK, and the U.S.

In every case, the malignant social movement aims to overthrow a political order built—at least notionally—on principles of inclusion and goodwill, which the movement blames for its followers’ loss of economic and political status within their societies. What’s most striking, even counterintuitive, about this takeover is its seeming inexorability, due to the failure of parties of the center and left to offer coherent alternatives—and the resulting landscape in which extreme positions are steadily normalized.

The result is a crisis of democracy, stunting people’s faith in collective self-government owing to its inability to help address practical problems such as climate change, economic inequality, and mass migration. To reverse this trend, we must first understand the conditions that brought it about. Read more

Why Children’s Rights Are Critical For Climate Policy And Environmental Activism

• by: Esther Afolaranmi & Carter Dillard

09-10-2024 ~ Birth equity is essential for ecological security.

The actual cause of the climate crisis is the anthropogenic emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere since the start of the industrial revolution. But the proximate cause—the underlying activity that sparked the climate crisis and the intertwined environmental crises—is how we have built society, starting from when humans are born.

Despite the threat of the sixth extinction, ecosystem collapse, air and water pollution, and the numerous associated health impacts, few environmental activists or politicians recognize the proximate cause.

The climate crisis has fundamentally been fueled by countries treating future generations as a means to sustain their economies instead of as an intrinsic part of their nations. Society is set up to view children as workers, consumers, and taxpayers rather than as empowered citizens with an influential voice in their democracies. This ill-advised social doctrine is the proximate cause of the climate crisis. We must take remedial measures and seek justice for the natural world—humanity and all species—through legal means that address children’s rights via birth equity.

By shifting the focus to children’s rights as a fundamental aspect of policy evaluation, we can reshape climate policy, save countless lives, and redefine wealth entitlements.

This is especially important since extreme temperatures will lead to more suffering for already vulnerable populations worldwide. According to international studies, these extreme weather conditions are likely to impact ethnic minorities more and will lead to the “greatest risks” for people from developing countries. To protect future generations from heat waves, the attenuation of democracy, and the reduction of representation ratios, children’s rights and the rights of individuals must drive policymaking.

If we addressed these factors, particularly intergenerational justice, climate policy would be different, saving countless lives and trillions of dollars. Read more

The Surprising Ways Inventions And Ideas Spread In Ancient Prehistory

• by: Brenna R. Hassett

Brenna Hassett – Photo: en.wikipedia.org

09-10-2024 ~ You can learn a lot about humanity from the first technological revolutions of more than 10,000 years ago.

The human capacity for invention is unparalleled. We have developed technologies that have allowed us to survive and thrive far beyond the ecological niches that constrained our ancestors. While our innovation has allowed us to break loose from the constraints of our home continent, Africa, and even our home planet, the actual way in which our species adopts new technologies remains a subject of huge debate among those scientists who study the past. Does one hominid ancestor start to shuffle upright, and the rest follow? Does the first human to loop a piece of string through a shell bead inspire the rest of the species to create the world’s first jewelry? Or do different animals take up the same new adaptation at different times, because it solves a problem that appears in many places?

We know that in some of our closest living relatives, the primates, new technical skills are passed on through direct learning. Macaques, in particular, are responsible for innovative behaviors that have been transmitted through their societies by individuals who have seen and observed them and then adopted them as their own. This is true of behaviors as varied as “hot tubbing” by the macaques of Japan’s northern Hokkaido island and the habit of dipping sweet potatoes in the sea to “salt” them developed by macaques on Koshima island further south.

Many of the technological innovations that have had the greatest impact on our species were first seen about 10,000 to 15,000 years ago in a region that archaeologists refer to as the “Fertile Crescent.” The region encompasses a swathe of land crossing the countries between the easternmost Mediterranean Sea and the Sinai, Arab, and Syrian deserts and up into the Zagros Mountains of what is now Iran. It is a region of famous firsts in terms of radical changes to our species lifestyle: settling down, cultivating plants, and taming the animals we eat are all first attested in this strip of relatively abundant land. Read more