Seeing is no longer believing. We have computers and computer programs that can mislead the most skeptical of us. Familiar faces and unmistakable voices can be manufactured and manipulated to make claims or take positions that are entirely incompatible with the beliefs of the people who appear on the television or computer screen. We have entered the era of the deep fake.
Voices, faces, movements and other characteristics of the people being counterfeited may be more accurate and convincing than actual recordings. The fakes will not have the distortions, errors in synchronization, and interruptions typical of newsclips and recorded interviews. We may see Warren Buffet peddling penny stocks or bitcoins or politicians admitting they took gold bars in lieu of cash bribes. Clumsy efforts to distort what we have said or done may now be replaced by flawless fabrications that are distributed at Internet speed.
Compounding our inability to distinguish fake statements from real statements is the inclination of prominent people to ‘talk nonsense.’ Few voters were spared the endless string of absurdities and fabrications spoken by former Representative George Santos. Comedy routines based on his statements deviated only slightly from the lies he invented daily. Elon Musk’s actual comments strain credulity when he endorses patently antisemitic posts on his platform “X” and then advises the advertisers abandoning “X” to “Go f-ck yourself.” This material seems more improbable than fakes made using his image and voice, and yet it is indeed the real Musk talking trash.
Centuries ago, counterfeiting was mostly limited to objects of obvious value. Money, art, rare books, precious stones, and precious metals were frequently copied by individuals hoping to fool the buyer into believing he or she was getting authentic goods, rather than worthless fakes. Technology helped identify many of these false ‘treasures,’ but now technology is helping to frustrate efforts to establish what is real and what is not.
Not many years ago, a superb counterfeit copy of Galileo’s historic book “Starry Messenger” [Sidereus Nuncius, published in 1610] almost sold for millions of dollars, but an astute expert noticed an errant ink spot shared with an authentic copy of the classic. A computer forgery of the classic could be [and probably will be] designed to look for telltale markings that belie its authenticity and which are easily overlooked by a human forger.
The claims that a stolen artwork is the ‘one and only’ painting of the Mona Lisa may soon become as numerous as the claims that pizza shops all over New York City are the “Original Ray’s Pizza.” Buyers of stolen art want to believe they have obtained a priceless masterpiece, just as pizza lovers want to believe they have found the Holy Grail of dough and tomato sauce combinations. Computer technology may produce more convincing versions of La Giaconda than Leonardo da Vinci, and millionaires will embrace their fake paintings with all the enthusiasm of people with wonderful secrets.
Our technology has overtaken our reality testing.
We are especially vulnerable to false claims because we readily embrace what agrees with our biases and challenge what undermines our prejudices. These are not conscious choices. They are reinforceable preferences that we acquire in many ways.
Deep fakes exploit our vulnerability to lies. If the lie fits with our bias, we not only accept it, we defend it. Henry Ford, the American auto manufacturer and lifelong antisemite, published and endorsed the fictional account of an international conspiracy by the Jews to dominate the world. This was called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and had already been repeatedly debunked as a fiction and a fraud long before Ford decided to claim it was proof of an international conspiracy. His prejudice would not be undermined by mere facts.
Spokespeople for our politicians advised us years ago that there are ‘facts’ and ‘alternative facts.’ They will tell us what we should believe and may provide the videotapes, recordings, and other documentation needed to end all inquiry and discussion. The legendary “Big Lie” from the early Twentieth Century [that German Jews were responsible for the defeat of Germany in World War I] has been replaced by thousands of little lies that oppose what our senses and commonsense tell us.
Alex Jones insists that the Sandy Hook massacre never occurred. Mark Meadows tells us that the former President sincerely believed that he had won the Presidential election of 2020 despite his phone calls asking for changes to the vote count. The speaker of the House of Representatives informs us that the authors of the Constitution and Bill of Rights really did not mean to establish a wall between religious institutions and the government. The former President insists that we must abandon the Constitution and restructure the government along totalitarian lines to ‘make America great again.’ An army of politicians assures us that the chaos at our southern border has nothing to do with the multibillion dollar trade in narcotics that millions of Americans finance with their purchases of illicit drugs every day. The flood of misinformation in our daily discourse is obscuring what is real and what is nonsense.
Galileo dared to publish what his scientific inquiries had revealed about the true relationship of the planets to the sun, and the powers that be in 1610 placed him under house arrest because his findings differed from the mandated ‘facts.’ He escaped being burned at the stake for heresy because he had influential friends. Those Americans who insist on searching for facts, rather than accepting fakes, in the years to come may not be so lucky.
Dr. Lechtenberg is an Easton resident who graduated from Tufts University and Tufts Medical School in Massachusetts and subsequently trained at The Mount Sinai Hospital and Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in Manhattan. He worked as a neurologist at several New York Hospitals, including Kings County and The Long Island College Hospital, while maintaining a private practice, teaching at SUNY Downstate Medical School, and publishing 15 books on a variety of medical topics. He worked in drug development in the U.S., as well as in England, Germany, and France.
