[FRIAM] From Merle--AI News

[Steve Smith]

> Extortion is illegal, no?

Apparently there are both federal and (all 50) state laws against 
(im)personation (to achieve gain or cause harm).   As far as I know this 
doesn't keep Halloween stores from selling Richard Nixon and Donald 
Trump masks,  but *might* have something to say if they were realistic 
enough to pass for *real* in casual contexts.

Extortion as in this case would be on the more extreme end of "intending 
harm" and "achieving gain"?   Does the (im)personation qualify as 
"aggravated"?

An early application of DeepFake photo/video was to generate mashup 
pornography  and much of that is pursued under "defamation" rules...   
the same was what applied to hand-work in a film print lab and air-brush 
artistry.   It has added an extra degree of freedom for generating 
"revenge porn" as one might guess.

During Gulf War zero, LANL was developing simulation models of human 
vocal tracts so as to allow for on-demand deepfake audio with Saddam 
Hussein as the reference example (and likely prime target).  Back then 
digital radio/encryption were not ubiquitous. This work was declassified 
a decade later...  or maybe I just thought it was/should-be?

Presumably a studied voice-actor could have faked DeStefano's daughter's 
voice to a suitable degree for the purpose, but the lowering of 
thresholds seems to be what might need attention? There are lots of ways 
to cause dangerous explosions...  the fact that a stick of dynamite with 
a fuse on one end and a match make it "trivial" differentiates the need 
for regulations on that from say "pressure cookers" ?  I'm glad I can 
buy a pressure cooker without a background check and (mostly) glad that 
to acquire dynamite (or most other highly convenient/concentrated 
explosives) requires some scrutiny by my community (via the ATF, etc?).

Farmers who use both fuel oil and Ammonium Nitrate Fertilizer for their 
work (aka ANFO when mixed and ignited properly) are often resentful of 
this oversight.   I don't know that Tim McVeigh had an easier time 
renting a big box truck to deliver a load of same than the guy in Boston 
a few years ago 
<https://www.boston25news.com/news/how-rental-rental-trucks-have-became-a-terrorist-weapon/636149105/>?   
I *do* think airliners filled with jet fuel are more respected than they 
were before 9/11 but then so are box-cutters...

I think most laws about "aggravated" assault/homicide/rape/??? specify 
"deadly weapon" of which we have a conventional range of "usual 
suspects" (gun, knife, poison, bludgeon) and another range of 
unsurprising examples (moving vehicle, etc.)  and more esoteric ones 
("frozen limp noodle or drinking straw fired at high speed from a 
pneumatic tube" or "falling piano", or "exploding pressure cooker with 
failed pressure valve").

Maybe the much-feared <scare quote> _/!Nanny State!/ _</sq> will 
institute a new department of "Women, Fire and Dangerous Things" 
<https://bookshop.org/p/books/women-fire-and-dangerous-things-what-categories-reveal-about-the-mind-george-lakoff/6803422?ean=9780226468044>?

>
>> On Jun 16, 2023, at 1:32 PM, Merle Lefkoff <merlelefkoff at gmail.com> 
>> wrote:
>>
>> 
>>
>> Here in the U.S., Jennifer DeStefano, an Arizona mother, testified at 
>> a Senate hearing this week about her harrowing experience with a 
>> deepfake scam that tricked her into thinking her daughter had been 
>> kidnapped. DeStefano says the fake kidnappers demanded a $50,000 
>> ransom before she got in touch with her daughter, who was in fact 
>> safe and sound.
>>
>> *Jennifer DeStefano*: “It was my daughter’s voice. It was her cries. 
>> It was her sobs. It was the way she spoke. I will never be able to 
>> shake that voice and the desperate cries for help out of my mind. 
>> It’s every parent’s worst nightmare to hear your child pleading with 
>> fear and pain, knowing that they’re being harmed and that you’re 
>> helpless. The longer this form of terror remains unpunishable, the 
>> farther and more egregious it will become. There is no limit to the 
>> depth of evil AI can enable.”
>>
>>
>> Is it already too late to design any kind of regulations?
>>
>>
>> -- 
>> Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
>> Center for Emergent Diplomacy
>> emergentdiplomacy.org <http://emergentdiplomacy.org>
>> Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
>>
>> mobile:  (303) 859-5609
>>
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