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The Current Transcript for July 20, 2018

Host: Ioanna Roumeliotis

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

Why tracking 'hate incidents' that don't break the law is crucial to tackling rise in hate crimes

Guests: Sarah Hagi, Irfan Chaudhry

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A video circulated that suggested I was a pedophile. Would you say that, you get on Twitter and argue you're not a pedophile? I mean there's no excuse for that. There's no defense of that.

IOANNA ROUMELIOTIS: That was Michael McFaul a former U.S. Ambassador to Russia and vocal opponent of Vladimir Putin, on being the target of a deepfake video. Coming up in half an hour, we look at the Orwellian world of deepfake videos, where what you believe you are seeing may not be real at all. Then we're back with Mic Drop, where Canadian teenagers tell their stories.

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I was screaming at the top of my lungs. How the hell could you have done this? You've ruined me. My dad's going to kill me. Bawling my eyes out hysterical.

IR: In today's show teenagers talk about being caught between two worlds: the anxiety and sadness of being collateral damage when parents are in conflict. That's in our last half hour. But first...

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VOICE 1: You're dealing with a Canadian woman and I'm not going to be talked down to.

VOICE 2: Well you're the one who turned around and talking to me.

VOICE 1: You laugh all you want. You know what? That's a prime example of why we don't want you here.

IR: From racist rantings in Lethbridge, Alberta to a vicious attack against a Muslim man in Mississauga, Ontario. Canadians are asking, if hate is rising in this country. That's where we begin. I'm Ioanna Roumeliotis and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current. Mohammed Abu Marzouk was returning home from a picnic on Sunday with his family in Mississauga, Ontario when he was attacked. The vicious beating nearly claimed his life. He is now in an intensive care unit after several surgeries. Two brothers were arrested following the attack, which Peel Police say they are investigating as a hate motivated crime. Mr. Marzouk's wife Diana Attar described what happened.

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DIANA ATTAR: I say please don't touch him. Please don't hurt my husband. [Crying] I have two beautiful little kids. Don't hurt my husband. I don't have anyone except my husband. He keep kicking. [Inaudible] After that I saw the police. I run to the police. I say please please help us please. When I turn my head back, I saw my husband falling down. And he is bleeding too much from his ear. I can't believe this things are happen for us. Because we Arab. We are wearing hijab. [Inaudible]

IR: Just days later, a man in a London, Ontario Sobeys grocery store, refused to let another customer leave. The man reportedly called the victim an illegal immigrant.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Please leave the country.

VOICE 2: Don't touch me.

VOICE 3: He can't make a citizen's arrest.

[Inaudible]

VOICE 3: But then you called the police on him.

VOICE 1: Will you call for me?

VOICE 3: Yeah lets go. Don't touch him. Why are you touching him?

VOICE 2: You're assaulting me.

[Indistinct chatter]

IR: And then there was this from May, in a Denny's restaurant in Lethbridge, Alberta.

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VOICE 1: Sit down.

VOICE 2: You want to see a Canadian woman. [Indistinct chatter] I was born and raised here.

VOICE 1: We were.

VOICE 2: You [bleep] weren't.

[Indistinct chatter]

VOICE 1: This is my country.

VOICE 2: No it's not your country.

VOICE 1: It is my country.

VOICE 2: No it's not your country.

VOICE 3: Call the cops.

IR: Incidents like these seem to be increasingly shared on social media. And Statistics Canada has released data that police reported hate crimes are on the rise. Many Canadians are feeling vulnerable, and anti-racism advocates are concerned about what is fueling these racist incidents and hate crimes. And what can be done about it. Sarah Hagi, is a writer in Toronto, who has been thinking a lot about these issues. She's with me in our Toronto studio. And Irfan Chaudhry, is Director of the Office of Human Rights, Diversity, and Equity at MacEwan University in Edmonton, and a hate crime researcher. He's in our Edmonton studio. Hello to both of you.

SARAH HAGI: Hi.

IRFAN CHAUDHRY: Hello.

IR: Sarah Hagi I was looking at your face as those clips were running and you were shaking your head. What do you think is fueling incidents like the ones we just heard about?

SARAH HAGI: I mean I feel like there's probably a lot fueling these incidents. There's an extreme anti-Muslim rhetoric, that has been growing in the U.S. and I mean in Canada in a way. Where I believe that a lot of people are afraid of Muslims, they don't understand Muslims, and you know they're straight up racist. So I think that has obviously a lot to do with it. And I guess I was just shaking my head because you know I'm Muslim. It's so insane to me that this happens. And you know you go through these moments where you feel like just like a normal person walking down the street or living your life, and then you're reminded that oh! this could happen to anyone. This could happen to you, because you know you see these viral videos and stories.

IR: Irfan Chaudhry, how do you make sense of it?

IRFAN CHAUDHRY: Yeah I don't to be quite honest. I think I share the similar sentiment in terms of you know, I just still can't believe these things are occurring in 2018. You know we are more open to the fact when we see things that unfortunately happened in Mississauga as the very very extreme end of hatred. But I think the incident in Lethbridge, the incident at the Sobeys, that was referenced earlier are just some of the reality of the situation I think we're observing and I think it's because of social media becoming a lot more and more visible. And so it's just a really difficult thing to try to comprehend in a time when we hope we're better than this.

IR: Irfan Chaudhry I'll just pick up on that point. There has been a rise in police reported hate crimes in Canada over the past several years. What do you think those numbers indicate? Is it more of an awareness? Or do you think there's actually more of these incidents happening?

IRFAN CHAUDHRY: Yeah I think anytime you look at an increase in any type of reported crime it's usually important to consider that there's been awareness increases. There could be campaigns. There could be other initiatives that allow you know general Canadian citizens to be more aware of what to do and to report some of these incidents. So I think a lot of the increase that we do see, within the hate crime stats in general, is likely due to awareness of reporting. And also I can speak from the Alberta context, a lot of work has been done within the province to try to ensure that law enforcement is equipped to adequately address some of the concerns as well. And I think this is also something we're seeing nationwide.

IR: Sarah Hagi what patterns or links do you see between these incidents and other things happening in Canada today?

SARAH HAGI: Well I mean going back to the most recent you know extreme hate crime. We can go back to you know January 2017 when Alexandre Bissonnette went into a mosque and killed six people worshipping. Six men injured way more. And you know was stated that he wishes he could had killed more. And to me, when you look back at I guess just reading his testimony and his confessions and all the court documents, you see that there is a bit of a clear path that he followed to get to where he is. You know. He was reading a lot of you know I would say right wing extremist literature online. He was you know participating in these discussions. He was you know getting radicalized as a white supremacist. As someone who is anti-immigrant, anti-muslim, possibly anti-black. And you know he was even quoted himself saying, he felt compelled to do this because of the day it was the day of the travel ban. The Muslim travel ban when Trump announced it. And Trudeau responded saying that immigrants were welcomed in Canada. It scared him. And that is the day he chose to you know perform this massacre. So to me I mean you could look at an extreme example of that or you can look at just kind of the things we see online, where you know there are these very right wing, very conservative kind of views people have against immigration. Against Muslims. Against you know people of colour. And to me that's kind of where it starts. Just based on what I've read and what I've observed.

IR: You know you did observe something too. You went to a rally that was held against M-103, which was a motion put forward to condemn Islamophobia last year and other kinds of racism. What did you see there at that rally?

SARAH HAGI: You know what I saw at that rally, it was in a way it was shocking because I mean I knew these sentiments existed. I just didn't know how many people, how many just regular looking Canadians would go to a rally to oppose Muslims. And one thing that they repeated very often was, we have a right to hate. It's our right to hate who we want. This is justified and to them it wasn't really a matter of you know seeing people as people, it was more, to me it felt like they were looking at Muslims as though we weren't people but more just represented an ideology that they you know pinned on us in a way. So to me it starts off with those things, where it's you know I'm not going to do anything against them, but it's my right to hate them. It's my right to say I don't want them in my country. I don't want these things happening. And then it leads to these instances in my opinion.

IR: Irfan Chaudhry how do you see the idea of free speech fitting into this conversation?

IRFAN CHAUDHRY: I think that's where it's really clouded a lot of the tension between free speech versus hate speech. You know it's really interesting just referencing Sarah was just talking about, in terms of you know my right to hate and you know I think that's where we really have to have further conversations around what that actually looks like. Because you know the examples of you know the Quebec mosque shooting and the physical violent hate crimes that we hear about, you know like I mentioned earlier those are the more overt forms of hate. But we also have to start paying attention to some of those subtle forms. And you know often times these rallies when they do have either covert or you know overt xenophobic, Islamophobic messages that are on signs or in chants or in rallies. I don't think we can sit back and say, you know this is just groups that are expressing their freedom of expression. I think we have to relook at the underlying content of how that's impacting communities especially communities of color and communities of immigrant background. To reaffirm how those protests regardless of the size of individuals that are there, are creating that unwelcoming space for individuals. And I think what ends up happening too, is when you have those public protests where people go out and you know protest against M-103 or other immigration related policy and reform, you have others who might even not be as vocal to start to feel empowered as well. And so they started to think, well you know if others are doing in a public space then you know I know others are thinking and feeling the same thing I am. And it starts embolden some of those vocal minority as well and I think that's where we really have to start empowering ourselves. As you know general peace building, peace loving, multicultural Canadians to ensure that the narrative of hate does not come across as perceived as the norm.

IR: Those narratives that you're talking about. You've talked about how it's important to track those as well and you've built a website to track hate incidents in Alberta. Stophateab.ca. Why do you think it's important to track hate incidents or occurrences and not just hate crimes?

IRFAN CHAUDHRY: Yeah I mean there's a number of different reasons that help in terms of generating understanding of the climate of hate, I guess you could say. I mean we just have to look back again at the unfortunate situation that happened at the Quebec City mosque, where prior to the shooting itself over the several year period before that, there were a number of you know things that occurred at the mosque where you know graffiti was put on the mosque. The most recent before the actual shooting itself, was a severed pig's head that was left outside the front doors of the mosque. And so I think those forms of you know especially in that example overt forms of bias are really integral to keep an eye on, because it's almost a way to understand the climate of hate within that context. And so when we think about hate incidences versus hate crimes, I often go back to an analogy that a colleague of mine Barbara Perry, who is a leading hate crime researcher out in Ontario you know she talks about the slaps versus the punches right? So the punches being the hate crimes, they are more obvious. They're more physical. They're more violent. They're the ones that we hear more about. But the slaps are just as impactful. Right? So even though they might not meet the threshold of a crime per se, they're still being fueled by forms of bias. And there's really interesting framework that can be used around understanding bias indicators that we use for the website. When people do document something, we kind of read through the narrative and we want to make sure that there's at least two or more biased indicators present within the narrative itself. And that's how we're able to validate the information. So I think that's where we want to start looking and not just seeing the hate crimes themselves as you know the be all and end all. I mean that's the extreme form of what happens with hate unfortunately. We also want to start being mindful of some of those more subtle covert and even overt forms of discrimination.

IR: What kind of incidents are you tracking? What are you seeing?

IRFAN CHAUDHRY: So a lot of what we're seeing are you know things where someone's walking down the streets and you know they are a racialized person or are they are a person that might be practicing wearing the hijab, and some kind of derogatory slur is thrown in their direction. And because of the way our current laws are set up, there's technically nothing illegal about that. And so there's a limited involvement that police can even get into, because they're obviously bound by the Criminal Code. So a lot of what we're seeing are those you know smaller forms of micro aggressions or racist or discriminatory language that's being utilized in public spaces. And then like we said for us we're able to document that. We vet the data. And then we also have as live of a map as possible, where people can visit the website and just kind of click on the spaces that they see on the map to get a better understanding of what was reported. And so I think that's where we are really interested in learning more about some of those you know, they don't hit the criminal threshold but they for sure hit the hate motivated threshold. That we really want to make sure that you know community members are aware of, but also our politicians and our law enforcement and our government. So we can start lobbying for further resources. I know that's something in our province that our provincial government, about two weeks ago, released a pretty strong strategy around combating racism and discrimination in our province. And so it's one of those things where we're able to further continue that work. But have community stories so to speak of a crowd sourced map of, these are things that are happening in our provinces, not things we're hearing you know in other cities. It's not things happening in other countries. This is happening in our own province.

IR: Sarah Hagi we can't see Canada in isolation, especially we see similar patterns like this in the United States. But there is a certain kind of Canadian pride, almost a complacency if you will, that we're nicer and that there is this #meanwhileinCanada points out to Canadians acts of kindness if you will. What do you make of that contrast?

SARAH HAGI: You know it's really funny because I don't think there are many you know Canadians who are marginalized, who would use that hashtag. Because we do see so many very extreme things happening in the United States. With you know Trump. And you know ICE. And all these things that are very very overt and happening right now. I think it gives Canadians this kind of false sense of you know, things like that they don't happen here and we're better off because we have this you know Liberal government and we're nice to each other. And it's just a very surface level view at what happens in Canada, and what goes on without really contextualizing you know things like we were just talking about. You know things that happen daily on the street. You know our legacy of colonialism. You know these instances of hate crimes, we really see them as isolated incidents rather than things that keep recurring. And I think you know as long as people are holding onto this, nice stereotype, we're never going to really be able to tackle these things that happen. And I think you know even with what happened in Mississauga, I didn't see it everywhere you know. This was a very overt instance of hate, where it wasn't ambiguous. We have quotes of what they said. We have witnesses. But it just kind of feels like something that you know people see it and they say, oh this is bad, you know like this happened and it sucks. But they don't really see it as something that maybe there is something more we should be looking at as Canadians. And I feel like even going back to an extreme case after the Quebec City thing, you know I really thought it would be an opportunity for us to look at what Muslims in Canada face. Look at you know Islamophobia. Xenophobia. And I feel that those conversations never really happened.

IR: What do you face? You're a black Muslim woman and you wear a hijab.

SARAH HAGI: Yeah I mean I don't walk around everyday experiencing racism or you know I guess people who are openly racist or openly Islamophobic. But you know I am on Twitter. I am a publicly facing person and you know to me now, it's almost normal, for every time I say anything remotely political or you know remotely anything to do with identity politics, to have people you know either come at me for being Muslim or being black or for being a woman. And like I said it's not like every single day I'm living in fear or anything. But small things happen that remind you like, oh people don't see me as a normal person walking down the street with a regular daily life. You feel like a target almost sometimes. And in situations like this, that kind of remind you like what could happen, like I'm sure you know the man in London, Ontario didn't expect something like this to happen to him on his daily just getting something from a grocery store. But things like that remind you, this can happen to me. You know someone could deny me service, because I'm Muslim. Someone could say I'm going to deport you. And things like that have happened in the past, where you know even with other Muslim women I know, someone would come up to them and say, you got a bomb under there? Or you know just these small instances. But it's so easy to forget because we aren't having these continuous discussions. You know people don't want to confront this truth. And I think as soon as Canadians get rid of this whole, we're nice we're better than the US and comparing ourselves to America or comparing ourselves to other countries, you know we're never going to get past these things.

IR: It's a fascinating discussion and we are unfortunately running out of time, so I'm going to have to thank you both. Sarah Hagi for coming in. Sarah Hagi is a writer in Toronto. Irfan Chaudhry is Director of the Office of Human Rights, Diversity, and Equity at MacEwan University in Edmonton. The CBC News is next. Then, the real human costs of new technology that blurs the lines between reality and illusion. We'll explore the threat of deepfakes. I'm Ioanna Roumeliotis and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

Back To Top »

The fight against 'deepfake' videos includes former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul

Guests: Hany Farid, Gaurav Oberoi, Aviv Ovadya

IR: Hello I'm Ioanna Roumeliotis and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current. Still to come. We'll bring you another episode of Mic Drop, stories from Canada's teenagers. Today, teens caught between two worlds. But first, when technology erases the lines between reality and fakery.

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We're entering an era in which our enemies can make it look like anyone is saying anything at any point in time. Even if they would never say those things. For instance they could have me say things like Killmonger was right, or Ben Carson is in The Sunken Place. Or how about this? Simply, President Trump is a total and complete [bleep]. Now you see, I would never say these things, at least not in a public address, but someone else would. This is a dangerous time.

IR: No, that was not former President Barack Obama. But it sure sounds and looks like him in the video you just heard. It's actually actor Jordan Peele, showcasing how realistic so-called deepfake videos can be. Deepfakes are the latest weapon in a campaign of deceit and disinformation in cyber war. New apps and artificial intelligence are so sophisticated now, virtually anyone can unleash videos to make it look or sound like anyone is saying or doing anything. Michael McFaul knows firsthand what it's like to be a target. This week the former U.S. Ambassador to Russia made headlines when Russian President Vladimir Putin made it known to President Trump he would like to have his security people interview the outspoken diplomat. The bad blood goes back to when Michael McFaul was posted to Moscow between 2012 and 2014, when he says Russia was starting to experiment with these kind of videos and he discovered just how far some would go to discredit him.

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MICHAEL MCFAUL: A video circulated that suggested I was a pedophile. Would you say that, you get on Twitter and argue you're not a pedophile? I mean there's no excuse for that. There's no defense of that. Even talking about it, even with you right now it's this weird thing. Like people hear that word and they think, oh my goodness what could be going on? Why are they saying this? So it's effective. Disinformation as effective propaganda, works. Of course it was frustrating to us as a government and it was a difficult narrative for us to combat, because remember they have all the television stations under their control. And we did push back and we pushed back with facts.

IR: Michael McFaul says his concern about deepfakes goes far beyond his own reputation.

SOUNDCLIP

MICHAEL MCFAUL: You know the discourse around politics is going to become, I think, tragically even more polarized. It'll be very easy to dismiss what is the truth in the future. And we're already in that world but it's going to get worse. So when Donald Trump is recorded saying some really horrible things about how he treats women, for instance that happened on our presidential election in 2016, it's going to be easier in the future for him or other people like that to say, well that's fake. That's not really me. And how are we going to be able to know? It's really blurring what is fact and what is fiction. And I think that's a pretty scary world.

IR: The Pentagon is taking this escalation in cyber warfare very seriously. And it is looking to DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, to come up with a way to combat this new form of high tech fakery. This month DARPA is challenging its researchers to tackle the threat of deepfakes. Hany Farid is one of the researchers working with DARPA. He is a professor of computer science at Dartmouth College and he specializes in digital forensics. Hany Farid is with us from Berkeley, California. Hello.

HANY FARID: Hello. Good to be with you.

IR: Thanks for coming on. First off, how do you define a deepfake?

HANY FARID: I think it's important to start by saying fundamentally there's nothing new about deepfakes in the sense of, it is simply trying to create fake content. Whether that's an image or a video. What is new, is the mechanism by which it is doing it and the ease with which it is doing it. And in particular what a deepfake is, a computer system that simply takes an input from the user data, images, and video, and synthesizes the fake video or the fake image that you want. Essentially taking the artist and the expert out of the loop of creating fake content. And that is why it is such a threat. Because prior to deepfakes, it was extremely time consuming, difficult, and it required a lot of skill to create compelling and sophisticated fakes. And now the computer is essentially taking over for the forger and creating that fake content similar to what you saw with the Jordan Peele video.

IR: Is that why they call it deep?

HANY FARID: Yeah the deep part is referring to the type of what's called a neural network, that is synthesizing this content. So what you should know about neural networks is, for decades we've been using these in the field of artificial intelligence and machine learning. But because of the relatively new advances in computing power and relatively new access to huge amounts of data, we have able to make those neural networks much larger than they have been able to in the past. And that has given them much more powers so the deep is referring to the size of these neural networks that synthesize this fake content for you.

IR: How realistic are the fakes that these algorithms are producing?

HANY FARID: Yeah that's the right question to ask. So I will say, today, they are not perfect. But here's what I can tell you is, we shouldn't worry so much about where the technology is today. We should worry about where it is going. And what I can tell you is, having watched this technology closely over the last year or so, it is accelerating at a very dramatic pace. Every few months the videos that are being synthesized are becoming more sophisticated and more realistic. Every few months the audio synthesis is getting better and better. And so you can see the threat growing very quickly. So there is almost no doubt that within a year or so, well in time for the next national election at least here in the U.S. this is going to be a real threat.

IR: You know we contacted David Doermann, he's a professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Buffalo and an outgoing program manager at DARPA's Information Innovation Office. He said, as you say, that the technology has moved much more quickly than anyone expected and it's very disturbing.

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DAVID DOERMANN: We can deal with one or two at a time, which is what we've seen so far. But when someone gets the ability to generate, for example an entire event to start civil unrest, countries might act on this type of material before they really realize that it's not real. So that's the primary concern that they're going to use this type of stuff for propaganda. And that's really hard because we're trained sort of to believe what we see. You know we know that people can lie by speaking, but when we see something we tend to believe it. And that's what makes this a little bit scarier than other things we've seen in the past.

IR: Hany Farid how concerned are you about the potential political and social issues deepfakes could create?

HANY FARID: I'm extremely concerned and I don't think it's an abstract concern. I mean we've already seen how this type of fake content fake news is leading to disruptions in democratic elections. We have seen it lead to violence in Myanmar and Sri Lanka, most recently in India. And the thing you have to understand about this content is, that the content itself is dangerous and is a threat. But when you pair that with the speed and the scale at which that information can be disseminated on social media, and the fact that the social media companies are aggressively promoting this content because it engages users and it reached clicks and shares and read tweets, that threat is incredibly significant. And I will tell you I've been working in this space of digital forensics for over two decades now. The threat for me has always been primarily in the legal system. How we use digital evidence. And Professor Doermann is right. When we started this DARPA program, this was barely on our radar. And within two years this has become a really new threat and it has moved from, we are worried about evidence in a legal setting to we are now worried about national elections and violence against our citizens. And suddenly that threat is very real and it is significant. We are used to just watching, listening, and believing. And suddenly that is not going to work anymore no matter how good the forensic techniques get. We have to change on many fronts in order for all of us to get control on this. What I see is a growing and very real threat in the coming year.

IR: And on the work that you're doing, trying to detect these deepfakes, what kind of techniques are you developing?

HANY FARID: I should mention there's this interesting tension in the work that we do, because as we publish and talk about the techniques we essentially arm the adversary. Because the way these machine learning techniques work is, they can learn not just to synthesize the content that is fake but then to circumvent detection. And so there's this growing tension between people in my space, who do the forensic analysis, in terms of publishing this information and making it publicly known. And that's a really interesting sort of struggle that we're facing with. One of the things that we are looking at is physiological responses. So things like when you breathe, there is a very specific sound that is at a very periodic pace. Your heart rate changes the colour, because of the way the blood pumps in and out of your face, changes the color of your face ever so slightly at a very regular pace. And there are other physiological signals that are very innately human, and those tend to get disrupted when the computer synthesizes content in very subtle ways that are not necessarily visible to the eye. And the first set of techniques that we are going after with some of my colleagues is, looking for those physiological signals and making sure that they are intact. Now of course as I said earlier, once we tell you that, then that the deep neural networks are synthesizing.

IR: You're tipping off the bad guy.

HANY FARID: Exactly. And that's the arms race that we're going to be in. The scary part here is, in the past the arms race was that the forger had to get more sophisticated, now it's just the computer algorithm just has to learn one more thing. And that's a real significant challenge for us in the forensics space.

IR: You know you talked about how accessible this technology is as well. How realistic is it to prevent it from being used by someone who has harmful intentions?

HANY FARID: I think it's completely unrealistic. The cat is out of the bag. This technology has been released. We are not going to unwind it. So we're going to have to deal with it. And this is why part of the responsibility for this must fall on social media. And I think if we are going to legislate, I think that's the space we have to start thinking about is what is the responsibility of social media which is now the dominant platform that people are digesting news. But I think it's something that we have to address very seriously.

IR: What do you think technologists and researchers should be asking themselves when they're developing this kind of technology or sharing it?

HANY FARID: So we have a little bit of a model here which is, if you go back to the Manhattan Project and the development of nuclear weapons, the dropping of the atomic bomb really led to some serious soul searching among physicists. And I think that we as scientists have to understand that the technology that we are developing can be used in harmful ways. And I think to pretend somehow that, we are above it all that we are simply advancing technology in science and you know bad things may happen but that's not our problem, I think it's a bit of a cop out. So I'm not advocating that we as technologists not develop technology or that we not release technology, but I'm advocating that we atleast think about it. One of the things that we've been advocating at Dartmouth and are working on developing is, ethics training for the next generation of computer scientists and technologists. How do we make sure that they are thinking about these issues? Because frankly a lot of the trouble we have gotten ourselves into over the last few years, with Facebook and with Google and with Twitter and etc, is that the people running these companies and the people working these companies have not been thinking hard enough about how their technology is going to be misused and is going to lead to harm. And I think that is a fundamental change in the way Silicon Valley is operating. And I think we have to acknowledge that technology has a dark side to it. And to pretend that technology is inherently good, is going to make everybody happy, is incredibly naive. And I think we have to do better than we have over the last few decades.

IR: Well thank you for your thoughts. It's a fascinating topic and quite scary.

HANY FARID: It's very good to talk to you. Thank you.

IR: Hany Farid is a professor of computer science at Dartmouth College, who specializes in digital forensics. He's in Berkeley, California. While many worry deepfake videos can have serious political consequences, my next guest sees some benefits to the technology. Gaurav Oberoi is a developer and entrepreneur who has experimented with deepfake technology including making some deepfake videos and sharing them online. He's in Seattle. Hello.

GAURAV OBEROI: Hi Ioanna. Thanks for having me.

IR: What do you think about what Hany Farid said?

GAURAV OBEROI: Oh I think you know there's a lot of truth to what he said. In the short term for society, this sort of technology is probably going to have net negative consequences. But I think in the long run, this is not going to be as big an issue. You know in many ways I look at what's going on and I wonder how much of this is about creating fake content? Well we've had things happen here in the States, like the Birther Movement, challenging whether Obama was actually born here in the States. And no real fake content had to be created there. And then there's this other aspect which is, for a long time we believe that what we were seeing on social media accurately reflects the thoughts and perceptions of our friends and neighbors and you know reputable news outlets. And now we look at our news feed and say, hey maybe I can't really trust what's going on. And we've all woken up to that fact.

IR: Well you've shared some of your step-by-step instructions online on how to make your fake videos. Do you worry about them being misused by people with harmful intentions? And consumed by people who might not be as sophisticated as the people you talked about earlier?

GAURAV OBEROI: Yeah I mean certainly that's probably going to happen. My instructions were taking code, that has already been shared and does the bulk of the hard work, and really wrapping it into some scripts that make it easy to explore and see how realistic images can be created. So there are people who have made it a lot easier. And this technology was out there before, I sort of came along and published this. So I'm not sure I added to that, but I think every technology can be used for constructive and destructive purposes and we're going to see that certainly happen here.

IR: What made you want to experiment with it?

GAURAV OBEROI: Well there was certainly a gee-whiz factor. I mean it started with, sometime in 2016, we started seeing algorithms come out that you could teach them you could show them lots of van Gogh paintings and then you could give it a photograph, and it would turn it into a van Gogh painting. So it was very interesting to see this. And what attracted me to it was, sort of saying well what are potential commercial applications for this technology?

IR: Now one of your more high profile videos is the one with Jimmy Fallon and John Oliver. Can you describe the video you made?

GAURAV OBEROI: Yeah so I took a few shots of Jimmy Fallon. I swapped out his face with John Oliver's, where he's dancing and lip syncing. And what happens is, the algorithm actually learns how to recreate John Oliver's face and mimic the expressions that Jimmy Fallon has made. The results were quite convincing.

IR: When you do experiment, are using it to convey a message or are you just having fun with it?

GAURAV OBEROI: You know there's certainly fun with it to say, wow! this is cool. But it's really about understanding what are the capabilities of the technology.

IR: You know you're having fun with this, but what lengths do people go to to push this technology do you think?

GAURAV OBEROI: There are always bad actors. And you know that was the origin of how this sort of hit the media and the world in a big way was, people were putting famous actresses faces onto adult videos. So certainly there are people using it for nefarious cases out there.

IR: What are some of the positives?

GAURAV OBEROI: I think today all the positives are around you know, fun. So putting Nicolas Cage into movies, I think there's somebody actually trying to generate a complete movie where every actor is Nicolas Cage.

IR: That has got to be a fan.

GAURAV OBEROI: There are probably use cases here for the advertising industry as well.

IR: Well what do you think about the idea that this technology should be regulated?

GAURAV OBEROI: Certainly we'll have to update our laws around libel and slander. Same goes for copyright and IP stealing. I can't take Nicolas Cage's face and put it on a T-shirt and sell it. And there already are a variety of algorithms that detect whether your music or your photo has been used by someone else. So I think those technologies will simply just adapt to this. And if people start using celebrity faces that technology will spot it and shut it down.

IR: Okay we'll leave it there. Thank you very much.

GAURAV OBEROI: Thank you.

GAURAV OBEROI: Gaurav Oberoi is the entrepreneur and residence at the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence. We reached him in Seattle. While some are debating the consequences of deepfakes, my next guest believes they are a sign that we're on the cusp of an information apocalypse. Aviv Ovadya is a Silicon Valley technologist, formerly the chief technologist at the Center for Social Media Responsibility at the University of Michigan's School of Information. He's in San Francisco. Hello.

AVIV OVADYA: Hi. Great to join you.

IR: Why do you see the rapid rise of deepfakes as part of an info apocalypse?

AVIV OVADYA: The way to think about this is, that we're sort of driving down a road and you can think about how drunk we can get before our chance of crashing crosses some tipping point. And our civilization is that car. Just like alcohol can make it harder to react and steer, changes to our information environment, also make it hard for us to react and steer to the things that are happening. And that road is getting more perilous. And so when I say info-apocalypse what I mean is, that we're getting closer to that tipping point where we cannot actually react to the challenges that are ahead of us. Because as it becomes harder to tell what's real and what's not, that impacts our ability to govern. Impacts our ability to make sense of the world in a way that we need to, if we want to make effective decisions.

IR: What are your most serious concerns about living in that kind of world where someone's face or voice can be manipulated so easily?

AVIV OVADYA: Yeah. So there's sort of two core impacts here. One of those is, that we can manipulate people into believing false things. The other one is, that people can not to believe things that are actually true. And that second one is actually really important. It can get to this extent where it's almost like reality apathy. People just sort of give up on knowing what's even happening. You know one politician, there's some evidence that they're corrupt according to this video, and then there is one for every other politician, the same exact video just with that other person in it. How do you know what's actually happening? And I think that risk of lack of accountability is at least as important. And it's not even necessary to even have this technology fully working for this to be a risk, because even now people are starting to doubt real evidence of things that have happened.

IR: You know people have been able to tamper with photos or voice recordings before this. So why is this more alarming to you? Is it the level of sophistication?

AVIV OVADYA: The level of video manipulation that we're able to do now, would currently cost millions of dollars if large production budgets or it would have up until fairly recently. And that means that it was very inaccessible. Like if you were maybe the Kremlin and you wanted to just do one or two or three of these, you could do it right? But it wasn't anyone in their basement literally going and doing this for fun, just to make things difficult. Or lots of people trying lets say at the Kremlin, many different things to see what works the best? What's the most convincing? What's the most disruptive? There's also this issue where video and audio are just more compelling. There's a reason why people like video ads, it's because it sticks into your head better.

IR: You know you talked about being on that highway, that perilous road, how quickly are we moving toward that reality?

AVIV OVADYA: From what I can tell, there aren't real barriers to this that we know of right now. So we already have things that are fairly good. They're not democratized. It's not like you can get something on your phone and record yourself with someone else's voice right now today. But there are companies that are advertising that, we will do that. They can basically do that. It's not super high quality, like almost now. With video it'll be a bit longer, before that democratized. Could be anywhere from you know zero months to five years, before we have extremely convincing deepfakes across all these medium.

IR: So how do you think this will affect people in their everyday lives?

AVIV OVADYA: So this technology has affects on sort of three major areas. One, is a way to affect our ability to govern and elect leaders. Another one, is our ability to hold people accountable for their actions. And this third one, which is more personal, is our ability to secure our own identity. Anyone can impersonate us. And concretely that can mean someone calling you as if they're your spouse asking for a bank password. It affects sort of what we can trust in our very day to day. And I think that's something that is beyond just what a video or audio thing can do. But how that actually integrates into our daily life, when we can't understand or we can't know ahead of time if something is from a reliable source, from a person that we know or not.

IR: Okay we'll leave it there. Thank you very much.

AVIV OVADYA: Thank you.

IR: Aviv Ovadya is a Silicon Valley technologist and tech impact researcher. He's in San Francisco. Coming up in our next half hour, we're back with Mic Drop. Stories and insights from Canadian teenagers. I'm Ioanna Roumeliotis and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

Mic Drop: Here's why The Current is giving a voice to Canadian youth

IR: Hello I'm Ioanna Roumeliotis and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current. On Friday's in the summer, we've been giving this part of the show over to teenagers. Shari Okeke and Carrie Haber, our colleagues in Montreal created and produced a podcast called Mic Drop. It's by and about teens and their real life struggles. And Mic Drop doesn't hold back. The podcast gives teens a little privacy, using only their first names or in some cases pseudonyms. That way, they can really open up about the private parts of their lives. Here are some excerpts from the CBC original podcast, Mic Drop.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: I felt humiliated. Disgusted. Angry. Well, angry at myself for not saying anything.

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VOICE 2: This is Mic Drop.

VOICE 3: Mic Drop.

VOICE 4: It's about us.

VOICE 5: Teens and our stories and what we've been through.

VOICE 6: What we are still going through.

VOICE 7: Without any adult interruption.

VOICE 8: Testing.

VOICE 9: Testing.

VOICE 10: Mic will drop in five, four, three, two.

VOICE 11: Drop the mic.

VOICE 12: This episode is about living between worlds.

EVE: I'm Eve and I'm 14. And I'm going between my mom's house, and every second weekend, I go to my dad's house. The two houses are so different. I mean mom's house, it kind of feels like a mini version of a dream house. Kind of how people imagine heaven to be like. You sit on clouds. Your bed is made of clouds. Waterfalls and rainbow colours. But it's kind of like, every day I get a new donut. With like jelly filling inside. And that's why I kind of feel at my dad's house. I feel like I get cabbage. Uncooked cabbage. It's not that good. When I'm with my dad I feel like I have to be two different people. Like I feel like I have to be calmer. Quieter. I can't say anything. But at the same time for me it's like, I have to be excited what he expects me to be exciting. Like I have to deal with what goes on between my dad and his girlfriend. And have to care about like her birthday. For example, if I forgot the exact day of her birthday and my dad called me he said, why didn't you wish her happy birthday? I had her number. You could have had asked me for her number and I said, well you and I don't talk during the week. Two weeks later when I usually go to my dad's house, on the weekend, she was over and I got her like a big teddy bear and a designer lip gloss. Took a thrust on my bank account money. But she seemed very happy, so my dad seems happy. But I'm not sure if he might use it against me later on, that the fact I didn't get her gifts in the first place. The kind of drama in my dad's world is like a having to be like this perfect image. As if like the people you see on TV. So it's like I'm always in a TV show, but can never get out of the TV. I'm like in shadows. It makes me feel stressed most of the time and sometimes sad. I'm usually myself when I'm home. My mom's house. That's what I mean when I say home. When I feel like me. I say what's on my mind, even though it's not always nice, I feel better and I laugh and then people laugh too because sometimes when I say something that's mean it ends up being funny. And I don't even notice. I'm like a quiet person and I observe. I like to observe. I'm not really comfortable come at my dad's. He has a roommate. And I don't really know him, so sometimes I feel like him being there is like an obstacle. When I want to do things and when I using the washroom or anything I feel like I have to like hurry and rush. I have to hide like a mouse. Let's say I have to take a shower or let's say my sister and I were taking a shower, we're girls, we can't just go in a room with our towels. We have to be fully dressed. Our rooms don't have a lock. And his roommate uses a drawer, that is ours. He uses it for his socks. So I'm always anxious that he will come in the room, if I'm trying to change or do work. I have to tell my dad. I am not going to tell him this weekend coming, but I'm going to tell him that I think, how I feel. So he knows because I feel like he doesn't understand me. Me going between two houses is kind of like an animation in my mind. I'm always in the loop hitting a wall constantly, that I can never get out of. When I go to one house, it's the beginning of the loop, and when I go to the other house it's what ties the loop together. So it doesn't stop. And so when I hit the wall, it's when conflict occurs in my life. Even though the teens living in two different houses they seem fine. They're not really fine. Even though they say they are. I say that I am fine a lot but I'm not. I believe this will happen until I'm 18, because I need to move out. So then I don't have to worry about going to two different houses, I actually have the legal option to not go, because I have my own house. I kind of feel excited for it to come, because I picture my place when I'm 18. Colorful. Bright. And very like, as if I was in the future almost. Everything will be nice. I'll have an indoor pool. I have my own house. Five floors. And I'll have my own gym. My own movie theater. It'll be like upgrading my mom's house in a way, so I feel hopeful.

[Music]

BEN: I'm Ben. I'm 16 years old. I'm in grade 10. I'm a soccer goalkeeper. I play for the Montreal Impact Academy. I'm right now leaving my history class, and I'm about to be going to soccer practice with my teammates. The program that I'm in, I do half school and half soccer, so I leave at 12:30 every day. I started as young as I can remember. You know three or four just played in the park with my parents and my brother. And it was actually called popsicle soccer. You'd actually get a popsicle at the end of the game. So that was amazing. In Ottawa, I started playing and getting higher level, and starting to play for some bigger teams. And eventually I got the opportunity to try out for the Montreal Impact Academy. Me making the team was just one part, but the biggest part was how my parents made these sacrifices. And my brother and I moved here for our respective sports. He does swimming and I do soccer. And I'm able to play at the highest level I can be, with some amazing players around me. Practices are from Monday to Friday. Then we have a game on the weekend. It's very intense. For the weekend I could be traveling to as far as Florida or South in the States, for games or tournaments, so it's important that I juggle and make sure that everything's cleared with my teachers and I'm bringing the right homework on the trips and making sure that I don't fall behind. Yeah at 16 it's a lot going on especially being in high school and having your friends starting to being able to go out and how I'm being pulled by each different world by the soccer world, the school world, the social life, and the social world. And being torn as if I have three arms. There have been scenarios where I've been out with friends, at a pool or at their house and I've been having the temptations or people encouraging me or asking if I want to go outside to smoke or you know have a drink. And I've been offered anything from alcohol to drugs as bad as marijuana. Xanax. But it's been proven that taking these drugs and drinking alcohol is going to influence my soccer and it's going to make me not perform at a level that I want to do. So if I'm offered, I'm just being honest in telling them that, it's not the kind of thing that I do, because I'm focusing on soccer and I want the path to be as bright as possible and not anything to interrupt it. The hard part for me is missing out on what my friends are having a good time, and when I come back on Monday to school, them all talking about what they did. And it's difficult to just smile and nod and say, oh maybe next time I can do it. And you know deep down maybe I know that there might not be a next time. But luckily, I've got the opportunity to travel and I've been able to see the competition around the world from Brazil all the way to England. Soccer has always been what I wanted to do and I'm willing to make the sacrifices that I have to do to play for the team and eventually hopefully sign pro.

[Music]

SARAH: When I'm at school. It feels like I'm really living in Canada. But then when I go back home, it feels like I'm living in Korea again. My name is Sarah. I'm 17 years old. I came to Canada, Montreal in January of 2016. I was shopping with my friend in St. Catharines streets, and three guys who look like college students came up to me and said "Ni Hao" which is "Hi" in Chinese. I'm Korean, saying Chinese word to me was very humiliating. They just laughed at me while I felt disgusted. Angry at myself for not saying anything. I cried a lot. And I thought, why am I crying? I came here to stop crying. I suffered from depression when I was in Korea. Korean school is very stressful. Like basically everyone studies as if there's no tomorrow. I stayed at the library till 2:00 in the morning. I only had four or five hours of sleep every day. I thought I was like the studying machine. I talked to my parents and my parents said, if you keep living in this country I don't think you can do what you want to do and like your life quality will be like really bad. They've experienced the same thing when they were high school students. So my parents decided to move to Canada, so that I become happy again. I become bright again. The differences between Korean school and Canadian school is class discussion. In Korea we just learn things for tests. But here we actually read books and discuss about it. So what I was really surprised was, when I first did the discussion I was like I didn't know what to talk about and I didn't know how to express my feelings or opinions. But here everyone knows how to express their opinion and like the other thing that I was really shocked about was, how people were talking about sexual issues very freely. Like if you say a word like sex in Korea, everyone will be blushing. Koreans are like conservative but here everyone is open minded. I love being open minded. Like one girl from my class said I have a transgender mom. In Korea like it's impossible to say that.

GARY: Anxiety, the best way I can describe it is, like when you're having a panic attack. It's like when somebody comes out of a corner and screams. Boo! It's like startling. Just your heart beating really fast and you knowing that something could or you thinking that something come out right now and kill you. But it's like that every millisecond. Just a constant stream of. Boo! I'm Gary. I'm 14 and I'm in Grade 9. I was diagnosed in Grade 3. And I think it's normality now for kids to have A.D.H.D. I was super disorganized. Super like tickey, even more than so than now. My mom used to come, like when she picked me up from school, to go to my locker to open it and you know get my jacket get my clothes and all that. And she would always call it Hurricane Gary, because of how stupidly messy it was. My parents got divorced when I was five. And I have very few memories of my parents being together. First it really wasn't that bad. They were friendly. They were nice. And then my father, he got a new wife. And that's when they really started you know drifting apart, when he changed a lot. I would say my dad is a chameleon, because he changes his personality based on who he's with. So when he was with my mom, he was a lot like my mom and when he is with this woman he's a lot like this woman. My dad is very manipulative person. A very emotionally abusive person. He'll tell you to do something and then he'll get mad if you do it and then he'll get mad if you don't do it. He just tries to find ways to set you up to fail, just so he can get angry at you to fail. He moved to Toronto and he was trying to get me to move with him, even though that would be a horrible thing. Again with him just constantly trying to manipulate my mind. Trying to get me to think exactly like him really. My dad tried to make me feel like my mom was a bad person. He was the good parent and my mom was the evil parent. And I shouldn't listen to her and all her ideas are bad. Everything she said he would say the exact opposite thing of her. When he said those things I would really think that he was right. And so I basically really fell for almost everything he said. I was convinced that my mom was a bad influence on me, even though at the same time my mom was the only one I could talk to you about how terrified I was of my dad. Oh I have to go dad's house again and you know, another weekend of me being screamed at for all of my imperfections. I noticed I hated that. It was horrible. In grade 7, for my A.D.H.D meds I had a dose going up from 52 milligrams or whatever to 70 milligrams or whatever. That really had a huge affect on me. And I became completely sad. Stressed. And I guess that made me kind of get all of the anxiety that was kind of like a sort of stuffed up inside of me for the years before. If anxiety is like lighter fluid, depression is a match. And you know anxiety makes you scared of everything. And then when you're sad and scared at the same time, you just have no idea what the hell to do. You just want to curl up in a ball and let yourself rock away. The toughest moment, that my depression was peaking was when I was at my camp. Which is the best camp in the world. It's like my Disneyland. I love it. And I was having panic attacks like every night. I would have to go to the infirmary. I couldn't sleep in my tent. Because after camp I would have to go be with my dad. Because in the summer we do two weeks at my mom's house - two weeks at my dad's house. So I would have to go see him after I knew that. And it was horrifying to me. The idea of that. I was stress eating. I was curling up in a ball. Just trying to not think of anything. When I came back from camp I had said so, when am I going to go see dad? My mom sat me down and said, I'm not letting you see your dad anymore because he's not a healthy influence on you and he's just making you sad. She was absolutely right. But it was terrifying. Cause my dad gets rid of everybody in his life. And he doesn't care. It's like you were in my past life. You're gone. You just snap a finger and I wouldn't be in his life anymore. And to not have a dad is hard. And so I flipped. I was in a state of hysteria. I was crying. I was screaming at her. I'm sure the neighborhoods heard everything. I was screaming at the top of my lungs, how the hell could you have done this? You know you've ruined me. You know my dad is going to kill me. Bawling my eyes out hysterical. After my anger settled down, I realized that my mom had done the right thing. I knew it was unhealthy for me. She knew it was unhealthy for me, but it was still intense depression. Still sad. Unhappy all the time. I described being depressed as, you having a cloud around your head at all time. You can't see anything except for what's bad. I would just be curled up in a dark room under my blanket in the fetal position, just not wanting to talk to anybody and not wanting to see anybody. Just kind of in a state of self loathing. And then when I actually got up to do something to take my mind off of everything, it would usually be videogames. At first therapy to me to sounded like a bunch of bullshit. It's just some old guy you're paying 200 bucks a session, to talk with. And I've had a few therapists that either weren't matches for me or were just really bad at their job. Really unfriendly. People who shouldn't be working with children all the time. But I found a great therapist, a great doctor. He was the one who really helped me. The main lesson I've learned is not don't judge a book by its cover, but don't judge a book by its first chapter. Because I experienced therapy. And I hated it. And then I tried it again. And I tried a better one. I tried a newer one, and I liked it. I enjoyed it. It helped me. So sometimes like in a book you will read the first chapter and you'll be like, wow! This is horrible. And then you read the second chapter, you really get into it. Life has been on an incline and it's just getting better and better every day. The one thing that I think teens with depression need to hear is, that there are other people like you who are struggling just as much. And you might feel alone, but you're really not. Find somebody that can help you, help yourself. A therapist. A school guidance counselor. Parent. Legal guardian. Sibling. Friend. Just find somebody you can talk to, that could help. Because talking to somebody has helped immensely. You just got to be patient. Just know that it does get better.

VOICE: If you need someone talk to you about anything. Kids Help Phone is available 24/7. It's free and confidential. 1-800-668-6868. And they also have a free app that you can download. It's called Always There. Or you can live chat with the counsellor on Kids Help Phone website. Kids Help Phone 1-800-668-6868. Mic Drop is produced in Montreal by Shari Okeke and Carrie Haber. Associate producer on the series is Jeff Shane with editing and mixing by Crystal Duhane. Look for CBC Mic Drop on Instagram and wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also reach us on micdrop@cbc.ca.

IR: We'll link to the podcast on our website and we'll bring you one more episode of Mic Drop, next Friday. That's our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio 1 for q. Gina Yashere has a new standup special on Netflix, and a regular slot on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. Coming up next on q she talks to guest host Talia Schlanger. And remember you can always take The Current with you to go on the CBC Radio app. It's free from the App Store or Google Play. Well U.S. President Donald Trump famously told the world he had all the best words, but apparently the words "would" and "wouldn't" are not among them. The President said he has made an honest mistake this week, when he said he had no idea why it would have been Russia that hacked the 2016 election, at his now infamous press conference in Helsinki with Vladimir Putin. He now says he meant to say "wouldn't." But it came out "would." It was he explained a double negative thing. To help clarify the situation, CBS's The Late Show with Stephen Colbert went back in time to Schoolhouse Rock! We'll leave you with their explanation of double negatives. I'm Ioanna Roumeliotis. Thanks for listening to the summer edition of The Current.

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Friday July 20, 2018 Full Episode Transcript

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