Archives: March 2023

Issue Brief First Paragraph Draft

 

TOOL NOT THREAT:
THE IMPLICATIONS OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE ON EDUCATION AND BEYOND

For decades, there has been a general worry that robots will take over the world. Often depicted in movies and media, this worry is slowly becoming a reality. From the creation of this country, there has always been an incentive to advance technology in order to progress education. In the past few decades, this progression has occurred exponentially, becoming hard to keep up with. This ethical dilemma is becoming harder to not act on, with academic integrity on the line. There has been little regulation on this issue by the federal or Pennsylvania government, or in higher education. Penn State must combat the progression of artificial intelligence’s rapid implementation on its campuses through thoughtful and combative regulation to save jobs for its employees, ensure the integrity of its education system, and protect its securities & interests.  

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The Beginning of the End: Succession’s Final Season-Spring Blog #5

I am writing this post a bit early on March 26, mere hours before the Season 4 premiere of Succession, the hit HBO drama. I am not going to lie a bit, I absolutely love this show. I love it so much that I actual wrote my rhetorical analysis essay about the show last semester in 137H. In preparation of this final season, I rewatched the last 3 over the past couple of weeks. If you don’t know, here is a little synopsis of this revolutionary show:

Imagine a family owns the largest media conglomerate in the world, known as Waystar Royco. Logan Roy, the patriarch of the family, is the CEO and founder. He has four children; Connor, a goofy political pendant; Kendall, a drug addict businessman; Shioban (Shiv), a democratic campaign organizer; and Roman, a disrespectful and disgusting man with some business knowledge. When Logan suddenly falls ill, there becomes a question as to who will be his successor (hence Succession). With many other characters in play, it must be decided who will take control of the company. As Logan gains back his strength and others lose their own, this situation becomes much more complicated.

I think the thing that I love most about the show is that none of the characters are really likable. Through the past few seasons, characters have switched “teams” depending on the state of personal relationships, but this new season really moves the chess pieces. For the first time, the 3 main children: Kendall, Roman, and Shiv are united against their father.

Figuratively and literally, this series is rich and vulgar with wealthy people fighting to death for their own personal position. The writing has genuine depth, with each line connecting to events in the future. This series is written and ran by Jesse Armstrong, who actually decided last-minute to make Season 4 the last for this wonderful series. He has spoken in many interviews with the argument that shows should not overstay their welcome, which I greatly respect. This decision was so last minute that many actors, including Sarah Snook (Shiv) did not realize it would be the end until the season finale script read-through. I personally am very distraught over this news, but that will be dealt with when it finally ends in May.

Nonetheless, I am still very stoked for this final season. I am trying not to spoil anything, but season 3 ended with a large sense of betrayal and perhaps opens up the need for revenge. Many relationships were completely broken in the final episodes of the last season that it will be so interesting to see how everything shakes out as this new one begins. One thing I am particularly interested in is the episode titles, which are unique and intentional. All of the season finale titles come from the poem “Dream Song 29” by John Berryman. I.e.: “Nobody is Ever Missing” in season one, “This is not for Tears” in season 2, and “All the Bells Say” in season 3. I won’t spoil, but these titles very much correspond with the events of each episode. There are many guesses that the series will end with the title “If He Had a Hundred Years”, a pivotal line in the poem which alludes to the legacy of Logan.

No matter the outcome of this final season, I am absolutely ecstatic for these next 10 weeks as new episodes come out. If you have not watched this show, I highly recommend to start watching. It’s like watching your least favorite people fight, what could be better?

References:

  • https://poets.org/poem/dream-song-29
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Streaming: Merging, Selling, Shaking- Spring Blog #4

Last semester, I wrote about the state of streaming as we knew it. I spoke about emerging out of Covid and people’s attention changing to other things in life. As time has progressed since then, the rocky state of streaming seems more evident, with companies now simply strategizing in the name of impressing shareholders and actually making money from these services.

Recently, Netflix, the main “independent” streaming service, dipped its toes into a controversial move: banning password sharing. This article has more specific information, but basically, the streaming giant is looking to make more money by limiting the amount of people on each account. This was met with public outrage, causing the company to step-back on its original intentions, saying it would only be testing in international markets.

Unlike Netflix, most of the other streaming services are owned by a larger entertainment/media corporation. For example: Disney owns Disney Plus, Hulu, and ESPN Plus; Comcast owns Peacock; Paramount owns Paramount Plus and PlutoTV; and WarnerBros Discovery owns HBO Max and Discovery Plus. Streaming of course became a focus for these companies during the pandemic due to the circumstances, but as stay-at-home life has come to an end, these business units are struggling to stay afloat. Many are raising prices and adding advertisements, but these common go-to’s are not providing the needed benefit.

To combat this struggle in demand/market, many of these media corporations are looking at merging, with WarnerBros Discovery finding themselves moments away from announcing a merger between its streaming services, with one likely consuming the other. However, Deadline has recently reported that the company has abandoned its plans to do so, shifting strategy given each services’ respective upcoming slate. WarnerBros Discovery is of course not new to a merger, given its own just last fall, which led to a rocky few months as all the puzzle pieces painfully went together.

Disney is also reportedly looking at changing up its own streaming services, as Bob Iger returned as CEO recently due to his predecessor/successor’s failure with Disney Plus. The company recently reorganized its devisions, singling out ESPN as its own entity with many speculating that this could lead to its eventual sale. This area has notoriously been a trouble for Disney, given the cost of sports streaming and unfavorable level of ESPN Plus subscribers. The company also has a 66% controlling ownership in Hulu, with its rival Comcast owning the other 33%. Disney needs to either buyout Comcast’s share or sell its portion out by the end of this year. With the company already struggling with debt from their Fox purchase in 2019, Bob Iger is looking to sell the whole streaming service to Comcast. Deadline reports that he is open to this possibility as the deadline looms.

I think the main issue that many media companies are currently dealing with is being too large for what they can handle. Generally, their industry strived during the last few years, but their continued heavy growth may have been too optimistic. As economic uncertainty shakes consumers, many are cutting the cost of streaming or theme parks as their money can be better utilized, especially when they simply do not watch anymore. These companies are looking to become leaner and more streamlined as they strategize to fully recover from the effects of the pandemic. These next few months will be very interesting in the streaming world as parent companies try to finally make these services profitable-or at least break even.

 

References

  • https://www.cnet.com/culture/entertainment/netflixs-password-sharing-crackdown-has-begun-everything-to-know/
  • https://deadline.com/2023/02/warner-bros-discovery-abandons-plan-to-merge-hbo-max-discovery-plus-streaming-1235253134/
  • https://deadline.com/2023/02/disney-bob-iger-open-to-selling-hulu-1235254445/
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AI’s Grasp on the Art of Impersonation

Recently, I have been seeing many different types of misinformation via media swirling around on the internet, with a new culprit to this societal phenomenon: Artificial Intelligence. Its use has been in place for years, especially in the Hollywood industry, but its access has just recently been given to the general society. UK-based company, ElevenLabs, headed by Zach Silberberg, has been making recent headlines due to its creation of a technology that allows for almost complete voice imitation with little initial reference given. This new development in artificial intelligence has already started off with beat, raising ethical and moral questions due to the many concerning things that many have made with this new technology.

Author John Hendrickson recently wrote an article in The Atlantic in which he interviewed Silberberg about his opinion on his company’s controversial technology. In ElevenLabs’ point of view, their AI audio and video technology was intended to be used for “storytelling”, specifically as an obvious comedic bit. He does acknowledge though, that there has been an unfortunately thin line between storytelling and disinformation/propaganda, especially in the political realm. In recent weeks, these political ai-generated “deepfake”-akin videos center around President Joe Biden. They show him saying that he has not visited East Palestine after that area’s train derailment because he found himself lost on the island from Lost and speaking about the 2011 movie, We Bought a Zoo. While these political figure videos may have comedic intent that could be seen as a simple joke, there is a real worry that this technology could produce dangerous impersonations that are misread. The past few elections were filled with misinformation, culture wars, and propaganda which greatly influenced Americans and gave many outside viewers a poor view on this country. This would likely just be execrated with ElevenLab’s new programs. 

When Hendrickson brought this concern to Silberberg, he emphasized that the key to AI deepfakes is that they show the mannerisms of the person that they are misrepresenting. For example, the President’s stuttering due to documented speech disabilities. But, even Silberberg acknowledges that his company’s technology and AI in general are headed in a bad direction:

“My opinion is that, blanket statement, the use of AI technology is pretty bleak. The way that it is headed is scary. And it is already replacing artists, and is already creating really f*****-up, gross scenarios.”

Sure, a joke is fine, but the danger of this technology comes with the intentions behind it. We like to think that people are rational, ethical, and have good intentions, but this naive sentiment puts us between a rock and a hard place. Technology’s evolution is integral to the advancement of society but that evolution may be putting society at risk. As AI technology progresses and gets smoothed out, these videos and audio recordings may become indistinguishable from reality, having us all question each other

These deepfake videos and audios via AI go beyond politics, with some scary results from the use of ElevenLabs’ new technology. Author Kyle Barr from Gizmodo.com writes that this new technology is being used in Hollywood on popular figures. Recently, 4Chan, a popular anonymous English-language image board website, saw its users post various deepfakes on popular stars. Some well-spread examples include Emma Watson was reading Mein Kampf and Rick and Morty creator Justin Roiland assaulting his wife (after his recent criminal charge). In addition, users also posted various manipulated, fake clips of popular animated characters saying offensive and off-putting things.

Author Justin Carter from Gizmodo.com reports that many of the voice actors of these characters being deepfaked have become outspoken about the dangerous effect this technology has on their personal likeness, image, and years of work. As I mentioned earlier, this manipulation of voices has been happening for years in the Hollywood industry, with voice acting being a main focus. Often, there are clauses in the contracts with these actors which basically require them to give away their voice rights which allows for more limited work (and less pay) on their part which production companies can use to create larger forms of media. This “small amount of reference being turned into a large amount of work” aspect is exactly why ElevenLabs’ new AI technology is so potentially dangerous.

ElevenLabs has created such an advanced technology that a 15-30 second clip from TikTok, Instagram, or other media is all that is needed as reference to create longer audio and potential video fakes. Scam calls have been apart of our society for decades, but this new tech has only accelerated their threat to society. According to author Jakob Aylesbury from eTeknix.com,  Scammers are actually using ElevenLabs’ capabilities to mimic the voice of loved ones of elderly people. This allows them to easily manipulate and confuse this vulnerable population to being scammed out of money and resources, which is disgusting. While this can be managed like any other scam call from the perspective of phone/service companies, their threat is greatly enhanced and should not be overlooked.

Perhaps the most terrifying thing about ElevenLabs’ capabilities and like technology is that there has been little done to stop the dangers that it brings to society. ElevenLabs is looking to implement account verification or manual checking on these fake videos/audio recordings, but no other action has been considered. I also think there is an argument that social media companies really need to start looking into the affect that this type of misinformation has on their respective platforms. Like much other propaganda, these videos have spread like wildfire on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok; and while they can be approached similar to other posts with misinformation, that may become harder to differentiate. As this technology becomes more hammered out and loses many of its obvious fake elements, the oversight may become impossible simply due to its nature. 

As I have mentioned in my prior two blogs focusing on artificial intelligence, no matter what direction this technology takes, it will have a real and life-changing effect on our society. How we approach it and the level of ethics used may determine the survival of the human race.

*I have not included any of the videos mentioned due to their inappropriate content and intent*

References

  • Aylebury, Jakob. “Scammers Using AI Voice Generation to Mimic the Voices of Loved Ones.” ETeknix, 7 Mar. 2023, https://www.eteknix.com/scammers-using-ai-voice-generation-to-mimic-the-voices-of-loved-ones/.
  • Barr, Kyle. “Ai Voice Simulator Easily Abused to Deepfake Celebrities Spouting Racism and Homophobia.” Gizmodo, Gizmodo, 30 Jan. 2023, https://gizmodo.com/ai-joe-rogan-4chan-deepfake-elevenlabs-1850050482.
  • Carter, Justin. “Voice Actors Are Having Their Voices Stolen by Ai.” Gizmodo, Gizmodo, 12 Feb. 2023, https://gizmodo.com/voice-actors-ai-voices-controversy-1850105561.
  • Hendrickson, John. “The next Big Political Scandal Could Be Faked.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 3 Mar. 2023, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2023/03/politicians-ai-generated-voice-fake-clips/673270/.
  • Lajka, Arijeta, and The Associated Press. “Artificial Intelligence Makes Voice Cloning Easy and ‘the Monster Is Already on the Loose’.” Fortune, Fortune, 11 Feb. 2023, https://fortune.com/2023/02/11/artificial-intelligence-makes-voice-cloning-easy-and-the-monster-is-already-on-the-loose/.

 

 

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