Nearly a third of X owner Elon Musk’s posts last week were false, misleading or missing vital context, a New York Times analysis shows.
In response to new California laws that regulate deepfakes, Musk re-shared a deepfake video of Vice President Kamala Harris and falsely claimed that the law would ban all parody.
Musk’s nearly 200 posts of political commentary and misleading information were seen more than 800 million times. But are regulation and deepfake detectors what people need to know if what they see is true? Or is there a better, more proven way?
Deepfakes Go Back As Far As Humanity
The dictionary defines deepfakes as “an image or recording that has been convincingly altered and manipulated to misrepresent someone as doing or saying something that was not actually done or said.” While it may sound like a new problem that has arisen with the spread of AI-powered technology, humans have always struggled with distinguishing true from false.
Just think of the serpent in the Garden of Eden who misrepresented God’s command not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil to entice the first humans to do just that. Suggesting that God said something He never said, the serpent’s approach to Eve may be considered humanity’s first encounter with deepfakes.
And perhaps all the conversations we have since had with nature and with each other have been nothing but one long attempt to clearly distinguish true from false?
Deepfakes Call For Deep Doubt
Reminding ourselves and each other that humans have always dealt with deepfakes opens up millennia of experience navigating a world where nothing is ever certain. And it spurs us to learn from those who have not only dealt with the problem before us, but have also come up with convincing suggestions on how to solve it.
One such deepfake super thinker was the French philosopher René Descartes. Living in the 16th century, it was neither deceptive serpents nor AI-powered videos that worried Descartes. It was the credibility of his own senses. For Descartes, the problem with deepfakes was not about the quality or persuasiveness of the fake, but about how quickly and easily we humans are deceived.
When it is us, not technology, that is the problem, the solution must also be found in us, not in technology. Therefore, Descartes didn’t set out to develop technology that can help detect deepfakes. Instead, he developed “a method of doubt.”
Considered the founder of modern science, Descartes’ thinking is complex and nuanced. Still, I believe we can both understand and find help in his method of doubt by asking ourselves the same three questions he asked himself:
1. Why Is It Important To Distinguish True From False?
In his 1637 masterpiece “Discourse on Method”, Descartes wrote: “I have always had an especially great desire to learn to distinguish the true from the false, in order to see my way clearly in my actions, and to go forward with confidence in this life.”
That’s it. That’s Descartes’ answer to why it is important to distinguish true from false: Because it helps you see your way clearly and go forward with confidence.
Asking why is it important to distinguish true from false won’t help you determine whether the image or video in front of you is real or fake. But it will remind you that the reason you want to know is that the image or video will impact how you see and go forward in this life.
And unless you’re absolutely certain it is trustworthy, it doesn’t help you see clearly and act with confidence. Rather, it does the opposite, causing you to lose touch with yourselves and your surroundings.
2. Why Do I Have To Make The Distinctions Myself?
While posterity knows Descartes for his contribution to the development of the scientific method, he himself emphasized that his purpose was “not to teach the method that everyone ought to follow in order to conduct his reason well, but merely to show how I have tried to conduct my own.”
For Descartes, his method of doubt was about doubting what everyone takes for granted, not developing a method for everyone to follow.
Asking why do I have to make the distinctions myself is a reminder that while there are powerful technological and economic forces that want you to believe otherwise, there is no generic method of distinguishing true from false, and thus no way to teach someone or something (say an AI-powered deep fake detector tool) to do it for you.
3. Why Is Doubt Stronger Than Deepfakes?
Descartes explained the prevailing rumor that he had succeeded in finding a philosophy that was “more certain than the commonly accepted one” in this way:
“I cannot say on what they based this opinion, and if I have contributed something to it by my conversation, this must have been because I confessed that of which I was ignorant more ingenuously than those who have studied only a little are in the habit of doing, and perhaps also because I showed the reasons I had for doubting many things that other people regard as certain, rather than because I was boasting of any learning.”
Asking why is doubt stronger than deepfakes is a reminder of the difference between human thinking and artificial intelligence. Confessing that of which you are ignorant, and showing the reasons you have for doubting what others regard as certain require neither learning nor data. All it requires is that you think for yourself.
Descartes realized that if he couldn’t find the certainty he was looking for in books and formal education, he had to look somewhere else. And after ruling out all other options, he ended up with himself. “But what then am I?”, he asked in Meditations on First Philosophy from 1641. And his answer was, “A thing that thinks.”
By asking the same questions that Descartes asked himself, we might reach the same conclusion and activate the same ability to distinguish true from false.