Welcome back to the second part of this recording on this paper on the epistemic promises and
parrots of deep fakes in digital life routes. We have covered quite a bit of material already.
We have talked a bit about what deep fakes are in the first place. We have talked about
some basic issues about the epistemology of film. We have then talked about the nexus
between knowledge and power through the lenses of the work of Michel Foucault, but also seeing
how this work can be updated to the case of digital life routes where then vocabulary like
data, epistem, and info power, surveillance, capitalism, these things can come in conjunction
of course with the talk about epistemic rights and epistemic justice and injustice. So that's
all in the background now. Let us now introduce an actual model, an approach to really capturing
what the epistemic promises and parrots of deep fakes are in digital life routes. So I call this
a model of epistemic actorhood and what it looks like. Sorry, so what it looks like is this, but
before I come to that, let me explain a little bit what the point of that is. So as you noticed
earlier when we discussed, as I emphasized earlier, when we talked about what's different in digital
life routes with all the data collection and we brought deep fakes in also is that there are
really various roles in which individuals are entering in epistemic debates about digital life
routes. So there is the individual as a knower, there's the individual as somebody as a known,
there's the episteme as whole, there's the overall collection of data that can be made about
individuals. And the model that I'm presenting here of epistemic actorhood tries to capture the
complexity of individuals being as epistemic actors in digital life routes where there's in particular
and that's really the genuinely new thing about digital life routes and the most different thing,
the thing that makes the most different from what we've seen in the past is this enormous amount of
surveillance and data collection that's going on. That's why there's these various roles we can
distinguish. Before I distinguish these roles, let me explain why am I talking about epistemic
actors here rather than agents. So an epistemic actor is a person or an entity who is integrated
or that is integrated into any kind of communication network, either as a seeker of knowledge or
information or a revealer provider as a knower or known, so to speak. So that's what an epistemic
actor is. So some kind of epistemic function. I talk about epistemic actors and therefore epistemic
actorhood rather than about epistemic agents and epistemic agency in a way in a Foucault spirit,
namely we often we normally don't have terribly much agency in these contexts in the first place,
even though we all think we have and our subjective experience of course is that we
have a lot of agency but really within any given epistemic, within any given knowledge framework,
within any given world view, we are filling roles. We are living up to expectations. We are going
about knowledge acquisition in certain ways as they are understood at the nexus to power in a
given age. And so that's a role we feel just like actors are playing in movies. So there is a we're
basically living up to somebody else's script and the same is also true in our role as knowns. So
there is certainly certain expectations that you are subject to in terms of what kind of information
you ought to reveal about yourself, what's appropriate, what kind of questions to ask about
other people. And again you are filling certain roles. You are meeting certain obligations. You
are normally not creating them. That is why epistemic actorhood rather than agency. So here
are the four different roles I think in which we in which we can see ourselves especially in a
data epistemic. Four roles along two different axes, two different dimensions. There is the
subject object axis. Are you somebody who is seeking something or are you somebody who is
revealing something wittingly or unwittingly? So subject object dimension and then the individual
collective dimension. So is this concerning your own way of going about things or your own way of
being affected or are you are you here seen in your role as part of the maintenance of the
of the whole world? So in that sense so the the individual subject can be a NOAA as seen as an
individual but is also as part of the episteme a maintainer of the episteme. So we all play a
certain role in maintaining the framework in which for the episteme in which we operate. And
similarly parallel construct for the object level. So you you can be known. You are a known. Things
are known out about you out there. Data about you. Your data are out there and at the same time you
are part of a you are part of your maintainer of a data pool. Your data are part of an overall pool
and much as you are a one maintainer among many of the episteme as a whole. So you are also one
maintainer among many of the collective data pool that is being generated by all our activities. So
these are the four roles of epistemic epistemic actorhood that one that one can distinguish here.
And let me just elaborate on each one of them a little bit more. So the the individual epistemic
subject that is the NOAA. That is somebody who operates within an episteme and as somebody who
operates within an episteme is expected to respect certain standards of inquiry
which are rationality standards. How best to obtain information but also then moral standards. What are
you? There are certain things you're not supposed to know. There are certain things you're not supposed
to ask. There is a societal division of labor involved. Some people are allowed to know certain
things. There is secrecy. So all of that formulates the kind of constraints that you are under
as a NOAA and you are kind of growing into this right through education, through picking up
standards from people around you. So you are as you grow up in a society you are figuring out
the norms of the episteme as they as they apply all around you and that includes also the appropriate
use of media. How do we get information? How do we handle books, newspapers, photos, videos?
So that it's part of figuring out your role as a NOAA. The expectations to you,
of you as a NOAA to you to figure out appropriate use of media. And all of that of course your role
as a NOAA is in the process of changing quite dramatically in digital life. So just think about
how people these days are going about getting information compared to how they did before the
digital age was fully upon it and how information is stored, how people are doing research, how
people are getting their news. So all of that is changing also what people are expected to know. All
of that is changing. So that's the role of NOAA. Then you also, so you're not just an individual
NOAA who operates within an episteme but you are also helping to maintain and perhaps establish in
the first place the standards of the episteme. So you are as the rules that are constitutive of
the episteme and your role also is to be part of that collective epistemic subject that is in a
way the bearer, the maintainer of the episteme. And in that capacity for example you are holding
others to certain standards. You are chiding others, you are criticizing, you are objecting,
you are dismissing, marginalizing people for not living up to the standards of the episteme.
Typically for almost everybody at any given point in time this role part of the collective episteme
is extremely passive. So we are complying. People are not normally rebelling against the knowledge
standards of their day. Some of course do and some therefore also change them. Some bring about
transformation. But normally we are cogs in a wheel and the wheel kind of does things in
response to macro movements but it's not the cogs themselves that have the active in this. But of
course we are seeing all around us that we are part of this change in the episteme. So the
establishment of something like a data episteme has happened around us in recent decades and so
now there is very different rules and standards how people again going back to what I just
discussed in the video case or how people use media. The episteme as a whole has been changing.
Many of your parents, certainly your grandparents haven't been googling anything.
You know those of us who are over 30 or 40 tend to have less much less information sent directly
to them from platforms and people who are younger than 30 and so on. So we're seeing these changes
in the episteme that we are also individually part of in a kind of a collective capacity and
normally very in a very passive manner. Then third role is the individual epistemic object or the
known, the person who is known, the information holder, provider. So we all are revealing
information, exubing information, passing on information, wittingly, unwittingly we are kind
of containers of data, wittingly or unwittingly and there's expectations on that also. So what
kind of information you are supposed to be revealing about yourself, what information
you're supposed to be revealing about others. So the role of a known is in fact quite a complex
one. So it's very sensitive and subtle stuff about how to manage your privacy, the privacy
of somebody else. We all get in trouble easily for mismanaging one's own or somebody else's privacy.
So yeah there's limits to what we are supposed to reveal about ourselves depends on whom we are
talking to. You can, there's again lots of subtleties there and yeah and these days as
as know us so obviously the debates about privacy have become quite quite big. So as know us
we are also subject to a lot of surveillance these days and again as a so not as know us as knowns
right we are subject to that. So the role of a known has become because of all these data
surveillance possibilities your role as a known has become incredibly much more important than
it's ever been in the analog world and you are contributing data to overall patterns as also
described in Shoshana Zuboff's book on surveillance capitalism that are then informing companies and
allowing companies to shape the future of business and also possibly the political future. So how to
manage data how to be in the world as somebody who is a container of data how to handle that
the right way has become enormously more relevant in digital life rights than has ever been in analog
life rights and that the parallel's role to the part of the collective epistemic subject is also
here you are also part of a collective epistemic object and as such so you are you know you are
part of the maintenance contributor of a pool of what is known about us collectively
and you know so and one capacity in which you are involved here is that we as a democratic demos we
as a you know the people around the legislator have to make rules about what companies can do
with data what governments can do with data and that is really the role of the collective epistemic
object of which we are all parts but in in most cases much as in the in the collective epistemic
subject counterpart in this case so as part of the collective epistemic object we are normally also
rather passive so very few people are shake us and make us there so the the hot shots that are
running big tech companies they are much more active you know as members of a collective
epistemic object the way it's unfolding than most of us are and of course that is also a problem
something that we would need to change so and again the the our roles as knowns both
individually speaking and collectively speaking that's really where digital life rights have
brought dramatic changes through this absolute abundance of data that is out there also data
that we are providing where you know there's so much so much data around there that through
clicking through lots of patterns that are reflecting clicking behavior those who have
that data and can cross-reference it to other things can infer a lot of things about the
emotional state of people doing the typing their feelings their behavior and so on so
so there is there is potential here there's things happening in the in the in the in this
whole area of epistemic object both subject both the individual and the collective that is really
that is dramatic and that is characteristic of the change that really fleshes out the change
that we are getting from moving our life activities into digital life rights so that's that's the
that's the basic model of epistemic actorhood they are sorry on this slide i see that the
the three and four four these points got confused about that and other side apologies for that
but we discovered so what what should be point four namely a model of epistemic actorhood that
is what we just covered and now we're moving on to how deep fakes commit epistemic injustices but
might also advance epistemic justice and now we are really bringing all of this home
to the actual case of defects so and the way to think about that is to think about how do deep
fakes affect us in these four different roles how do deep fakes affect our roles first of all as
noah says individual epistemic subjects well that's pretty straightforward right so you are
definitely wronged if you have the epistemic rights to certain bits of information and you
get a deep fake in return and therefore you're getting false or misleading information
you are also wronged in your role as a noah to the extent that deep fakes are basically flooding the
internet your digital life rights because thereby any roles in which you actually have to know
something in which you have to perform as a noah are becoming the more difficult to fulfill the
more parties are aiming to undermine that capacity and so obviously big threats here
through deep fakes for our roles as noahs but it's also important to notice that deep fakes are not
entirely bad news so in what deep fakes can definitely also do when deep fakes are fakes
right so they are they're falsifying something right so in that sense they're not they're not
granting immediate access to knowledge that's simply not in their nature but what they can
do is they can nonetheless empower people as noahs make it easier to realize the epistemic
rights if deployed in suitable ways so for example here's here three very different scenarios for
this so there is deep fakes can be used and have been used to bring fields like art or history
alive right so if you if you have video if you have a lot of footage of of artists or historical
figures you can make them come alive and you can you can reenact a lot of things and the way they
would really have happened you know and some museum a dalee museum in st petersburg florida
so not the russian st peter but st petersburg florida where they have done something like that
will servitor dalee they have put together a servitor deep fake life-size life-size statue
who is basically reasonably interactive can answer lots of questions and they have done that
from lots of hundreds of live interviews that dalee had given himself and so so there's a way
of creating the connection to history and art and therefore empower people that that weren't
there before it also helps people you know you can by by creating deep fakes you can put yourself
into all sorts of legitimate scenarios and create message and convey messages about yourself that
are actually that are that are actually accurate or help out with the conveyance of messages
famous example david deckham soccer player in in quite a number of languages conveying
health-related messages you know so that's a great thing if a famous footballer famous
soccer player is actually conveying useful information using the power of celebrity in
in sensible ways and thereby also then indirectly empowering people as as as know us by making it
easier for them to connect to information that's relevant for them and you all are familiar with
with the phenomenon of steven hawking basically having built his own voice recording device so
the restoration of voices is also something that these new media can can greatly help with and these
are three somewhat disparate very disconnected examples but it gives you a sense of how
there might be a lot of empowerment in people's roles as noah's also available through deep fakes
so that's the first role second role of the collective epistemic subject how do deep fakes
engage here well so here first of all again really bad news right so because of the arrival of deep
fakes what we what we are observing already and what we i think this this will be dramatically
upon us in the next several years this will be really really bad for election campaigns
all sorts of ways where all sorts of contexts where credibility can be undermined so video
loses this its status as an epistemic backstop yeah so and that that means a lot of things you
can you know the the worst thing here is probably that whenever some horrible revelation about
somebody in power comes out there's always a possibility of saying well that's a fake right
even donald trump has now been saying about the various infamous videos about him that they that
they probably were that they were at a stake right so there's always a plausible deniability
that in this age of people are getting their news from particular silos is really a is dramatic
in in its negative impact on on trust in society you know so trusted outlets media outlets will
just become much harder to maintain in any way and we might be increasingly come to a situation
where people can't or can no longer are no longer will no longer bother to separate truth from
falsehood you can fabricate a lot of things and you can always claim that other people fabricated
you know i could ask you how do you know you're not watching a deep fake of me doing this here
right maybe the person uh suma introduced myself never talked about deep fakes but somebody else is
impersonating how would you know that it's almost like the cards demon hypothesis coming true for
the world of video so truth finding in disagreement which has already been largely out the window
might conclusively leave us and that is of course maybe not conclusively but just kind of establishing
anything beyond doubt will will be ever hotter and in the fast moving world of politics and
internet media the whole the whole world of media and digital life worlds this will be
problematic hugely problematic now it's worth really reflecting on that right so loose of
video as an epistemic backstop it's also worth noticing so you might wonder how this is playing
out in historical context right so so you might wonder might wonder what kind of epistemic
backstops that people ever have before there was photography and video right what would ever have
served in that role and you know one thing to think about here of course is the oath right so
the oath certainly in medieval times had that kind of role so if you were a free person in the middle
ages and you swore to something that operated like something like a like a a backstop right so
and and that was because of the threat of hell that was behind that right so you actually took
an oath and you and you lied about it then you would spend a lot of time in hell and so that's
why it could fulfill this role the oath could fulfill this role of an epistemic backstop
and then basically i'd say for several hundred years we did we really didn't have anything like
this there was really there was there was there was just testimonial knowledge about things that
happened in distant places so i think that were written down things that were drawn and painted
they provide testimonial knowledge they there and there's no testimonial knowledge has a very hard
time creating an epistemic backstop it requires the particular circumstances of the you know the
religious connection that would make this happen for for an oath right so so once the oath had
lost this role even in christian societies right it became too obvious that this that backstop wasn't
really functioning well as a backstop so we for a long time there really wasn't an epistemic
backstop but what is important to notice is that for most of the time in which we have seen this
big time arrival of territorial democracies in the last 200 years right so for most of that
we did have photography and video certainly in the last several decades in the post-war period when
uh when the intensity of our of our societal living arrangements the intensity of democracy
came to its highest extent during that time we had video as an epistemic backstop and so
here we we have so that so for it specifically for our democratic societies that the loss of this
of the availability of an epistemic backstop is i think really problematic given that
it's in particular democratic debate that has really benefited from from having such a backstop
but even here the technology so this this is basically how the epistem is suffering right so
in our role as participants in the maintenance of the epistem the epistem itself is suffering
through the loss of a of of an epistemic backstop but the technology itself actually also can enrich
the the epistem in in in ways that i think we we just are starting to even comprehend so
for one thing by by being able to fake a person you can also fake medical data you can generate
this technology can generate medical health care data so you can you can learn about new ways of
treating diseases without actual patient data you are using the patient data from deepfake
patients you know so that is also that's also a possibility right as they as they are becoming
real right so they're also faking the human body and and its activities in such a way that it
generates the the relevant kind of data and that's that's just one example in which and we again we
are just starting to begin this where the episteme might also become enriched through through the
deepfake technology obviously not through their use in pornography and and disreputation but the
technology itself could be used this way then the individual epistemic object so the known or the
knowns what about them well one thing of course the the the for the time being at the very least
for the for the time being the the possibility of these pornographic videos is going to be
the damage done through that is going to be quite dramatic right so this is a
this is a this is a way really of of creating pornographic videos about pretty much whomever
the suitably knowledgeable person would like and the damage done to them the damage to them done
as a known is not even dependent on the accuracy of the of the the the the video because in the
and the au case as i mentioned earlier the it was actually reasonably clear and it would have been
clear to most viewers that this wasn't actually reina au but nonetheless her authority was
undermined her ability to be known the right way her ability to come across as a competent journalist
was undermined through the fact that a lot of people out there and that she knew there were a
lot of a lot of people out there were on this collective thing together where they had observed
her in a particular kind of setting and of course that is a that is a huge challenge in in this
era era where the still relatively fragile emancipation of women in public life is is
undermineable through this kind of depiction right so there's definitely a challenge to the
known in in this way and of course there's that's there's all sorts of ways of belittling
marginalizing dismissing people anybody who is in a in a in a in a marginalized role anyway deepfakes
might be able to much might might make all of this worse so the way you get to be known in society
can be very seriously affected by these deepfakes so then moving on to collective epistemic objects
so here of course what what we what we have here is that the that the way we are that that the way
we are generally known out in the world is actually dramatically changing you know so we
we all can come to be known we all will come will encounter each other knowing knowing that we can
all enter into the artistic and possibly also erotic publications of others the title that
originally brought deepfakes to a more general audience by a science by the name Samantha Cole
was we are all fucked we are all fucked was that title and so basically that's alluding to this
phenomenon that the way we are that that the way the way that being known to others rocks is now
also quite substantially changing through this shared understanding that we could all be
that we all are potential actors in in someone someone else's production in whatever way they
might want to to integrate us which obviously will will affect some people who are entering
other people's imagination more than others so some people will be affected by this much more
than than others but that that of course is a is a dramatic change in how we are known to others
what kind of privacy protection is even possible given this this fact that we can all be hijacked
dragged into somebody else's productions in this way and then also of course we are talking about
the the collective epistemic object is you know what what does this general question here always
in the background who is supposed to be controlling you know all these data that are generated in this
way right that's the big challenge anyway here so so deepfakes are just part of that right there's
all this information all these ways in which people are known out there how should the how
how should that collective epistemic object be regulated this is something that again
Shoshana Zuboff discusses in in surveillance capitalism now here too we can that you know
there's possibilities for empowerment so just like your role as a known can be undermined
there's information out you that gets bundled and collected and controlled so that's there's
all sorts of problems but of course the ways in which you would want to be known for legitimately
can can also hereby increasing their reach so there is more there's there's more that you can
do that can be done to amplify the the sides worth knowing worth projecting about you so
there's an example of an of an Indian politician who was able to India a country with a lot of
languages spoken that are not mutually that are not readily mutually intelligible so so as a
politician you could convey your messages in authentic way in deepfake ways to these people
but there would be your messages and you would be speaking to to your political clientele in a
language that is not actually yours but in this way to the extent that you have a legitimate
message so the extent that you have something that you would want to be known for legitimately that
can also be magnified so there's there is also that that kind of possibility obviously one comes
to a sense here that the that the threat potentially here is much larger that the
loss potential is much much larger but it is also very important to understand that we are just at
the beginning to to encounter this technology and that we shouldn't that we should very much focus
on thinking about what the ways in which which what the ways could be in which they can be used for
empowerment you know and then the last substantive topic we have come to the conclusion then
deepfakes and the future of human creativity that of course also one one thing really worth mentioning
here as you think about the generically about the use of media media can always be used in
in epistemic ways right you can convey something about the world or you can falsify that you know
so all of that you know assessment of media that comes up in by epistemic criteria but media and
really beginning with language can also be used in ways that are that are not about either either
depicting or falsifying reality at all language can be used to tell stories it can be used to
entertain people it can be used to convey lessons about life and fiction that can just be used to
to amplify a storyteller's love for developing certain human themes artistic possibilities so
poetry all of that right is fiction novels just you know is is is is there and so all media have
these creative roles to play in addition to the epistemic roles and these are these are not just
very important artistic outlets and creative outlets for us for ourselves but but there's
also things like parody satire caricature they're also very important aspects of democracy
because they have a way of normalizing powerful people and so you in in 16th century England you
would have been ill-advised to parody satirize or caricature Henry VIII or you know any other monarch
but that we can do that in in Germany to Angela Merkel is very healthy for for for German democracy
so so so in that sense creative use of media must not be lost sight of and of course that
that's also something that generates a lot of potential for deep fakes you know so so now people
have an entirely new kind of way of expressing themselves yeah so you can really what's what's
in your mind so far you could capture in language you could capture in paintings you could capture
in drawings now you can make videos around it right you can make videos in which you are embedding
yourself into footage you can create fantasies entirely from scratch so it is quite possible
that within a decade or so the technology will be so powerful that of course it will also be
possible to do the pornography and the the the the efforts are discrediting people that will be
you know that will be among the functions that you have but it there will be this chances are
there will be this enormous technological potential for people to become the creators of
their own videos and line in a in a very broad way so the kind of thing for which so far it really
took a a movie studio the kind of thing that they do in Hollywood so at a certain scale you can
everybody who is capable of using this technology which really a lot of people can do on their own
with all the outlet potential that that that that harbors so and I think I think that is also
something one should be somewhat open-minded about this right that there is that there is these new
ways of of projecting what is on your mind so it's kind of really bringing bringing that out
and then people's dreams and fantasies that it could be captured in movies you know are of all
sorts and in many ways the kind of thing that are not damaging to other people of course one thing
there's there's going to be you know there's probably going to be also studios that are willing
to do some editing and and improvements for you for your own cloud-produced videos and
and the challenge that would always be you know just to make sure that this can be cultivated
as a as a as a as a creative outlet but then also you know certain certain certain products
that you'd be making in this way obviously just like the products of your mind they should somehow
stick with you they should not spread and we would need appropriate regulation and constraints to
make that happen so that the negative effects are constrained while still harboring the potential
creative the creativity that uh that the deep fakes technology could bring now deep fakes
obviously is a rod that is meant to be negative and uh well the creator didn't maybe didn't mean
it negatively but it's it's been used because trump has been talking about fake uh and maybe
in uh in the future we talk about this in a slightly more neutral way as synthetic media
where then certain things must not be done with them and then need to be regulated as also in
the case of other media uh while whereas we still need to find we there's plenty of ways of
of using this technology also for empowerment and for empowerment of know us and knowns
while also contributing a lot to the unfolding of human creativity and so basically with this
already stated uh the uh the the conclusion here very tentative conclusion again the main
purpose of this paper is to help create an agenda there is genuinely mixed news coming out of this
investigation there's positive and negative consequences as far as these epistemic roles
are concerned obviously the downsides here are quite dramatic and we need to prepare ourselves
for our democracy is really entering rocky stages through the availability of deep fakes
i think we're going to see a flood of those uh in the next several years so there will a lot
of regulation will be required that these efforts of bringing people in distribute are also efforts
of integrating people into one's fantasy world and then spreading that is not unfolding in ways
that is damaging to people especially in their roles as know us and knowns but at the same time
these are technological developments and there's always with technology what good and bad technology
does in the world does not stand and fall with the technology itself where technology itself is just
its devices its appliances its possibilities its tools right it's i mean it's more than that
heidegger point right about how it's also shaping the future and that's all true but the point is we
at any given time we can pass laws and build institutions that are making sure that the right
kind of thing is done with the technology that epistemic rights and epistemic justice are promoted
that creativity is promoted rather than that epistemic wrongs are inflicted and that's basically
the task that we have here and it's a task that involves us first of all of course as citizens but
there's also important challenges here in epistemology and in moral and political thought and
and i hope i will get to discuss some of those with you when we meet not exactly in person but in
in the in this digital life brought in a slightly different way than than over
video thank you very much for listening to the second video
you