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I’ve been away for a while, but the tech world has been moving at lightspeed. We’ve seen reusable rockets land simultaneously in a breathtaking sequence. We’ve seen bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies take a massively wild ride. We’ve seen Facebook taken to task for the management (or mismanagement) of the public’s information. It’s a perfect example of the impacts that technology can have beyond faster mobile apps.

UnFake News

The Blockchain Solution to Our Deepfake Problems – Wired.com

One such intersection is the deep fake. Thanks to progress in photo recognition and video manipulation, we’ve seen the rise of manufactured videos that look just like the real thing. The implications of such an advent are massive and touch all level of society. What would you do if someone made a fully authentic-looking video of you? Of a loved one? In any situation they chose. There are some real troubling scenarios that arise, but ones I’m most interested are in the justice system. While it would be terrible to star in an embarrassing video, it’d be worse to end up framed for a crime by one. Or to have a killer with the power to edit video go free. Those who know of my work on the Tubman Project will understand this instinct.

But tech is neutral. For every problem a bad actor can create, a better actor can create a solution. A recent article from Wired talk about just such an actor, Factom. People often don’t get my excitement about a company that secures data (obviously, working there helps). But a big part of that is seeing the potential of the Factom blockchain to head off issues such as these.

The AGI Horizon

In other news, MIT is giving away cutting-edge information from the fringes of AI science. Their recent class, 6-099 – Artificial General Intelligence, has the goal of exploring the potential to build human-level intelligence into a machine and, eventually, surpass it. The lecture series for the course includes many luminaries and futurists working in the space from Stephan Wolfram to Ray Kurzweil. The entire series is being shared online via YouTube.

This is fairly normal for MIT. The school acts as a collaboration center for technology. To further that goal, they embraced the online education movement. They even offer courses for free via the MITx section of EdX. This week was a special treat though. Boston Dynamics CEO, Mark Raibert took the podium to discuss the challenges of using AI to move physical bodies at natural levels of grace and speed. You may know of this little Massachutes company as the creator of the bipedal robot that was seen being repeatedly tripped on the Daily Show. You may also know them for developing a machine that inspired an episode of Black Mirror. If you’re a science head like me, you’ll get to know one of the guys behind it.