Wednesday, July 22, 2020

Data manipulation and alternate history!

Like some movies having alternate endings, scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) Center for Advanced Virtuality created an alternate ending to the Apollo 11 moon landing this week. 

The video created had President Nixon's speech telling people in the news that the Apollo 11 mission was a failure. The technology available like deep-learning and artificial intelligence tools have enabled creation of such a perfect video. Of course this is not President Nixon speaking, but a voice actor, but it will be very hard for anyone to know the difference!  

It is quite scary to imagine the possibilities that such technologies provide for disruption of peace at so many levels. Highlights the need to never fully believe every news article or video and to always do a full research on any subject before conclusions. 

An old Tamil proverb "Kannal kaanbadum poi, kaadhaal ketpadhum poi; theera visaripadhe mei" (meaning - what you see is false, what you hear is untruths, what is the truth is well researched information only) is truer than ever today.

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