Tag: state

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Deep Fake Threat

Our Western democracies are aware that “deep fake videos”, radio, online-newspapers and most of all social media platforms are all around us already. However, more scientific voices alert us that this threat to our easy or comfortable way of life to consume information eventually threatens the survival of our democracies. Previously, interference in elections used to focus on rigged election procedures, but in the 21st century powerful other alternatives can do the dirty job to bias elections against the original intentions of the electorate. The widespread use of AI will exacerbate the already practiced ways to produce deep fakes. In a preparatory self-test of an AI-assisted chatbot I was surprised myself of the quality of the output. A person not very familiar with my original voice in a second language would assume that it is me who is being interviewed in person. Based on a fake news text, any form will be automatically translated into voice only and/or video based on basic visuals.
Statisticians used to joke some decades ago: “Don’t believe in any statistics, unless you faked it yourself.” This is meant to encourage people to be aware of dangers of the use of statistics to influence opinions or official decision-making, like in policy making of central banks, which might be based on biased accounting for shrinkflation, cheatflation or greedflation to name just a few,
Hence, the need to strengthen awareness, analytical skills and critical thinking should be high on the agenda to defend our democracies. There are not only external military threats, but additional ones masked as internal threats.
(Image:: mice as humans in living room 2 couch potatos 1 on rocking chair, tea time)

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Political theory 2

Chris Brown (2004, pp. 289) comments on the tension between the notions of political theory and international relations in the Handbook of political theory. Whereas the former notion has a foundation in the “cause and effect” rationale, the latter notion has predominantly developed into an approach of “Realpolitik”. Realpolitik that starts from observed facts, normative or historical approaches rather than scientific methodologies applied in “natural” sciences. The link of this approach to the theory of democracy is obvious, but it is also under a lot of discussion within the disciplines concerned.
One of the corner stones of political theory in international relations is the concept of the “balance of power”. Derived from a rational choice perspective this approach holds that states can only be controlled by other states and, taking this for granted, international relations are built on power relations. Therefore, moving away from a bi-polar balance of power to a multi-polar balance of power will entail some frictions. These frictions might be wars of independence where states attempt to relocate themselves within the new multi-polar world and space. Even “Brexit” becomes a strategic move to remain an independent power in the upcoming new multipolar world. Russia is testing this multi-polar world order right now. The big countries like Brazil, Russia, India, Nigeria and China, (which I abbreviate BRINC) have huge populations, country size and economic potential. From the Arab States certainly Saudi Arabia has the potential and is eagerly beginning to play a more important role in the world arena. Beyond capability it is a question of willingness to get involved in costly matters of world affairs.
In the 1940s, post-World War 2, the entry ticket into the Security Council of the UN required the possession of a nuclear weapon of mass destruction. As this technology and the ban of these weapons is no longer really working internationally, we shall have to rethink the requirement of an entry ticket. A radical solution would be to ban all countries who own nuclear weapons from the international assembly of the people of a peaceful world. In theory this sets an incentive to dismantle the deadly threats of nuclear weapons. As a side-effect, nuclear power plants used to enrich uranium for use in weapons would no longer be necessary as well.
Political theory allows us to rethink the bi-polar world, which is no longer bi-polar for some time now (perhaps only in the psychiatric sense of the word). The multi-polar world has to be prepared. It is a question of political design. The toughest issue is not only the design, but the implementation of the transition to distributed power systems with multiple rising and failing states or actors. It might get ugly before peace will reign.