GLACIER EXIT from Raphael Rogers on Vimeo.
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?
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.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:
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.
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.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.
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.”
Lie Deflector from MarkFiore on Vimeo.
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.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.
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.
