A Marriage Made In Hell

Now this is really disturbing.

The Verge reports that Jordan Peele and Buzzfeed combined forces to make a fake Public Service Ad:

Using some of the latest AI techniques, Peele ventriloquizes Barack Obama, having him voice his opinion on Black Panther (“Killmonger was right”) and call President Donald Trump “a total and complete dipshit.”

The video was made by Peele’s production company using a combination of old and new technology: Adobe After Effects and the AI face-swapping tool FakeApp. The latter is the most prominent example of how AI can facilitate the creation of photorealistic fake videos.

Researchers have developed tools that let you perform face swaps like the one above in real time; Adobe is creating a “Photoshop for audio” that lets you edit dialogue as easily as a photo; and a Canadian startup named Lyrebird offers a service that lets you fake someone else’s voice with just a few minutes of audio. Technologist Aviv Ovadya summed up the fears created by this tech, asking BuzzFeed News, “What happens when anyone can make it appear as if anything has happened, regardless of whether or not it did?”

The implications of this technology are frightening. Consider, for example, that propagandists will now have a powerful new tool with which to virally undermine their targets with embarrassing or compromising 'videos'; moreover, those who are caught in all manner of malfeasance will, as the current president of the U.S. regularly does, be able to claim it is all "fake news."

Scientists are currently creating tools that can spot AI fakes, but at the moment, the best shield against this sort of misinformation is instilling everyone with a little more media savvy. If you see a provocative video, you should ask yourself: where does this come from? Have other outlets corroborated it? Does it even look real? In the case of AI-generated videos, you can usually see that they’re fake by telltale signs of distortion and blurring.

As always, critical thinking will be paramount. However, how many, no matter how fair and balanced they consider themselves to be, will be able to resist the natural urge to believe the worst about those whose views and practices are so diametrically opposed to their own?

Artificial Intelligence meets fake news: surely a marriage made in Hell.

The Ball Is In Our Court

I am well past the age when I feel any real hope for the future of our species. Far too many of us are content to define our lives by the ease and conveniences afforded by technology, technology that is leaving us with an increasingly unstable environment and climate. And now, of course, we are beginning to see the effects, worldwide, of our self-indulgence. Hurricanes, tornadoes, unseasonable weather, fire and rain are but a foretaste of what is to come.

Nonetheless, like many others, I believe that we cannot abandon hope completely and must fight the good fight no matter its ultimate outcome. I read an article the other day which suggests a way that we can substantially reduce our collective carbon footprint. Unlike the ignoble lies told by people like Donald Trump, Justin Trudeau and, here in Ontario, Doug Ford, there may be a way to have our environmental cake while we more or less continue to consume as our prodigal lifestyles dictate.

Patrick Brown offers a partial solution to our woes:

Massive savings in carbon emissions are possible worldwide if governments adopt the highest energy efficiency standards for lighting and household appliances such as fridges, freezers and washing machines, researchers say.

Unlike the hot air Mr.Trudeau is happy to regularly release, this could go a long way toward the Paris agreement goal of keeping the global rise in temperatures as close as possible to the 1.5°C maximum world leaders agreed upon.

Many countries have already adopted higher energy efficiency standards, including the entire European Union (EU). But if the best standards were applied globally, more than 1,100 average-sized coal-powered generating plants, each producing about 600 MW, could be closed.

If low carbon electricity production were used to generate the remaining electricity needed, and fossil fuel plants were closed, then a reduction of 60% of all emissions from buildings would be possible by 2030, CAT [Climate Action Tracker]says. This is 5.2 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide, more than the EU’s entire current emissions.

Since we seem inextricably wedded to our convenience and comfort, this approach yields much and demands little. A good example is to be found in India, where efforts to boost the use of LED lights has led to dramatic reductions in energy use:

It meant at peak times that India needed 6,000 megawatts less electricity to satisfy demand than if ordinary bulbs had been used. The government was able to negotiate for better prices for mass orders of LEDs from the manufacturers, lowering prices and increasing jobs at the same time.

The trend to government intervention to cut energy use is catching on:

Other countries are also producing excellent results with different policies. In France lighting installations in non-residential buildings must be switched off at night, to reduce both energy waste and light pollution. The resulting energy savings are comparable to the annual electricity consumption of 750,000 households, lowering CO2 emissions by 250 kilotonnes and saving French businesses €200m in energy costs.

Professor Niklas Höhne of NewClimate Institute, one of the three members of the CAT consortium, said: “We found examples around the world where people are reaping the benefits by switching off lights in cities at night, switching to LEDs, smart lighting and smart metering, apps provided by energy companies to encourage customers to save energy or to use appliances at off-peak hours.”

As a species, we are very good at playing the victim, embracing a willful ignorance and helplessness, seeming to prefer that to an active participation in dealing with our self-made problems. It doesn't have to be that way.

The ball is now in our court.

Ahem, About That Second Amendment Thing

Clearly, this guy takes his rights very, very seriously, yet another reason to avoid the U.S. like the proverbial plague.

The Lie Deflector

This is a device critical thinkers probably don't need, but many others could benefit from. Simply click on the link within the box below to view the video:

Lie Deflector from MarkFiore on Vimeo.

On the other hand, we could dispense with such technology with this Spoiler Alert: You know Trump is lying when his lips move.

Last Gasps?

Some days, writing this blog is quite easy, as I only have to turn to the letters page of my newspaper to aggregate the well-considered thoughts of my fellow Canadians. Today is such a day.

To believe our Prime Minister, we can have our economic and environmental cake served upon the same plate. His fatuous assertions that pumping out more bitumen by twinning the Trans Mountain pipeline goes hand in hand with his climate change 'policy' is the stuff that will satisfy the untutored and the ideologues, but offers not even thin gruel to those prepared to open their eyes to our increasingly fraught world and engage in some critical thinking.

Today's Star letters are ample testament to the fact that some refuse to don the blinders that the federal government is so keen for the electorate to wear.

While I encourage you to read all of the letters online, here is but a sample:

Tim Harper has it right. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is in a cul-de-sac of his own making. The social-permission requirement made sense when campaigning for office. So when Trudeau talked of “consultation,” it made sense.

To alter that promise in order to sell oil makes sense, except that it does not make environmental promises believable. Development doesn’t happen without side effects. So to invoke constitutional authority and say the federal government rules makes a mockery of “consultation.” Trudeau’s government is caught not in a cul-de-sac, but between a rock and a hard place. Or is it a political dead end?

The Liberals will lose seats in B.C. whatever they decide. If they go ahead and put coastal waters at risk, they will lose seats. When there is an almost inevitable oil spill, Liberals could be friendless in B.C. for a long, long time. They don’t have many real friends in Alberta and the phaseout of oilsands extraction is inevitable.

So why not create an environmentally friendly Liberal legacy now and say farewell to Texas pipeline companies?

To invoke the heavy hand of federal authority now will make a lot of enemies. Think of British Columbia and Quebec for starters and Canadians who care about global warming, too.

Bruce Rogers, Lindsay, Ont.

Dear Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Alberta Premier Rachel Notely, what about your children? When they’re suffering from the effects of climate change, what will you say? “I’m sorry but, like John Turner, I had no choice?”

Canadians want investors for a sustainable country, not an oil-stained, disfigured landscape. It’s 2018. Isn’t it time for sustainable political leadership?

Barry Healey, Scarborough

In 25 years or so, if people in Canada and around the world are facing unstoppable species extinction, extreme weather events and flooding, widespread ocean acidification, mass displacement of people, epidemics of illness and disease, and an expanding civil war, we may have a hard time explaining to our children and grandchildren why we used taxpayer money to “rescue” an American company’s oilsands pipeline, despite wide opposition from Indigenous leaders, scientists and other citizens, and the fact that its construction undermined Canada’s international commitments to reduce greenhouse gases when it was still possible to avert catastrophe.

Perhaps we’ll just have to tell them that it was in the national interest, and leave it at that.

Michael Polanyi, Toronto

Thomas Walkom explains the Trans Mountain pipeline controversy very clearly. The hysteria around this project proves it is a last gasp of a dying industry. Unfortunately, the last gasp would involve more huge, expensive, damaging infrastructure, causing enormous environmental harm that Canadians would have to pay for, now and into the future. We have many difficult choices ahead as we change to a sustainable economy, but this choice is obvious: no new pipeline.

Martha Gould, North Bay, Ont.

If these engaged citizens are correct, perhaps the gasping you hear is not just those of a dying planet, but also a political party and government going the way of the dinosaurs.

Defining The National Interest

As the video included in yesterday's post shows, Justin Trudeau likes to defend the twinning of the Trans Mountain pipeline as in 'the national interest." The term itself is a contentious one, given its nebulous nature. For the Prime Minister, it seems to mean economic growth, moving Alberta's bitumen to port, and bolstering Rachel Notley's climate change initiatives.

As the following letter from a Toronto Star reader indicates, however, there is a more crucial definition that Mr. Trudeau and his fellow bitumen and pipeline enthusiasts are entirely dismissing, one that should take precedence:

PM’s pipeline woes of his own making, Harper, April 11

According to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, B.C. Premier John Horgan should compromise because this pipeline is in the national interest. Why is that? He doesn’t say.

I see the national interest as one where all of us move in a planned and purposeful way toward an economy that does not depend on oil and gas. In that world view, giving oil companies breaks on environmental assessments or emissions rules or buying pipelines so they can move their oil is against the national interest. It is the interest of oil companies not to leave stranded assets. The national interest is to move forward into a low-carbon future in Canada and around the world.

Mr. Trudeau speaks out of both sides of his mouth. “Yes,” he says, “we will meet our Paris targets.” Then he approves drilling in Nova Scotia, refuses to sign on to an Arctic heavy-oil treaty and permits Alberta oil to triple production of a very inefficient, high-greenhouse-gas emissions product, and approves a pipeline without ever reviewing its climate impacts or demonstrating that bitumen can be cleaned up.

Meanwhile we have never reduced our emissions targets as a country and are not projected to meet those targets any time soon.

And how can he say he has consulted with First Nations when the B.C. Federation of Indian Chiefs is standing at the Watch Tower, committing civil disobedience, and getting arrested to make their voices heard? Yes, let’s act in the national interest. Let’s all of us move toward a low-carbon future in right relations with our first peoples.

Rev. Frances Deverell, Nanaimo, B.C.

As The Mask Slips Away

My late father-in-law, a man of deep conviction and integrity, was fond of this saying: "Socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor."

Although he did not originate the adage, he felt it firmly described the thinking of those who control the levers of power, our governments. And now that his mask is slipping away, it seems an apt description of Justin Trudeau's true sentiments and the policy decisions he is making.

As preliminary evidence, sauce as it were to the great corporate feast, consider his Canadian Infrastructure Bank scheme, about which I wrote last year. While its ostensible purpose is to raise private capital to fund various projects to rebuild our steadily decaying roads, bridges, etc., it can also serve as a neat little package of corporate welfare:

Federal investments doled out through the government’s new infrastructure financing agency may be used to ensure a financial return to private investors if a project fails to generate enough revenues, documents show.

What investors have recently been told — and what the finance minister was told late last year — is that if revenues fall short of estimates, federal investments through the bank would act as a revenue floor to help make a project commercially viable.
Experts say the wording in the documents suggests taxpayers will be asked to take on a bigger slice of the financial risk in a project to help private investors, a charge the government rejects.

All of that perhaps palls, however, now that Kinder Morgan has issued a May 31 ultimatum to the feds, threatening to suspend construction on the Trans Mountain Pipeline twinning project unless the impasse between the B.C. and federal government ends. As a remedy, a strong dose of socialism is now being considered to protect Trans Morgan's nervous shareholders:

Finance Minister Bill Morneau says the federal government will act on the Trans Mountain pipeline project in “short order,” sending the strongest signal yet that it will move to financially backstop the project to reduce the risks for its American-based backer.

[Rachel] Notley has already said her government is open to buying the Trans Mountain pipeline — meant to move Alberta oil to port near Vancouver for shipment overseas — to ensure the expansion goes ahead.

Morneau, who has been in touch with Kinder Morgan officials, said earlier in the day that Ottawa is “considering financial options” to ease those concerns. Speaking later, he wouldn’t provide specifics but said there was a need to “derisk” the project so it can proceed.

Significantly, but not surprisingly, the Finance Minister

framed the issue as an economic one, talking about the need to enhance opportunities and good jobs while saying nothing about the concerns around the environment or rights of Indigenous Peoples raised by the project.

As usual, his boss, Justin Trudeau, continues to speak out of both sides of his mouth, claiming his environmental vision is bound up with an economic one, insisting there is no contradiction between the two.

Mr. Trudeau likes to talk about what Canadians know and understand. I suspect he is speaking of those Canadians who go through life blithely and willfully unaware of the immense peril our world now faces thanks to climate change, not those of us who understand that a drastic reordering of our priorities is crucial if we are to survive what lies ahead.