By İdris Kardaş
In recent days we have been facing a new situation. I think it would be more accurate to call it a threat rather than a situation.
The production of videos developed with artificial intelligence has become very easy. Google has developed a new application, and in the last week or so, it has become impossible for us to tell whether a video is real or not.
We see footage from a universe that doesn’t exist, such as clips from street interviews, sympathetic animal videos, extraordinary nature videos, old people speaking English with accents, uncles and aunts chatting with different accents of Anatolia in villages.
We can easily eliminate videos like the one of the old uncle who loves sharks. But we are especially vulnerable to street interviews or images that make us angry, sad, upset, annoyed, laugh and look very real.
The topic of video production by artificial intelligence has been developing for a long time. But recent applications have led to the production of very easy, very fast and very common images. Because these are new developments, not many people know about them. Many people probably think these videos are real. But even those who know about the subject can never be sure of what they are watching. So after a while, everyone will know, but they will never be sure.
We are facing a process in which the truth is being killed. The truth is being killed and a new reality is being constructed for all of us, consisting of non-existent dialogues of people who never existed. Let’s say that as a society we have reached a point where we are very conscious and we have mastered the subject, but in this age of speed, we cannot be patient enough to investigate whether the video we are watching is real or not. Whether it is real or not, we will say that this is the new reality and we will watch a new image from a non-existent universe, we will laugh, cry, get angry or upset, and that’s it. It’s like the factors that trigger our emotions are no longer real. Then we will not be sure of the authenticity of our emotions.
A new world of non-existent people, non-existent animals, non-existent nature and non-existent cities is opening up in our minds. We don’t know how to make the connection between what is in our minds and what is not in reality.
Along with all this, new technologies called “deep fakes” that imitate us, that have our image and use our facial expressions, tone of voice and vocabulary are becoming widespread. This is one end of a major crisis affecting all our social relations, our work and family lives, and politics.
Not only technologists, software developers or engineers, but also psychologists, sociologists, communicators, politicians, philosophers and all segments of society should be interested in the developments in artificial intelligence.
We are facing a major reality crisis. Not in the medium or distant future; we are in the midst of this crisis right now and it directly concerns the very existence of humanity.
