Deathbots and the future of the Internet

The rise of AIs that can imitate humans has led to questions about what the future of the internet will look like. Video by Joel Ehsman.

Transcript

00:00The act of speaking with the dead is not new but evolving technologies have

00:04started to change a process that's been in place for hundreds if not thousands

00:07of years using AI. Professor Katina Michael from University of Wollongong

00:12says the social implications of emerging technologies. They have a huge bearing on

00:18our emerging technologies in fact emerging technologies cause social

00:23implications and AI is pretty much the next big wave of technology. I decided

00:29to try a DeafBot out. After signing up I was asked a series of questions about my

00:34life from childhood memories to what I do for work. Hit the pink button and tell

00:38me something about your life starting with this phrase. The first major news

00:43event I remember as a child was... The Boxing Day Tsunami. I distinctly remember

00:49my mom watching the news as it happened. The bot itself is very basic.

00:58It cannot make me say anything I hadn't already said to but other programs out

01:01there promise to do even more. In between questions the program will ask me to say

01:05phrases it would use to communicate. Next pressing the button to start and stop

01:10say the exact phrase that I'll give you in the pink bubble then hit play. So what

01:17does the future of the internet look like with AI? I asked Professor Michaels

01:21what she thought. The internet will continually develop over the next 10

01:25years. We have to be really careful that it is not riddled with disinformation

01:30because we're using it for collective intelligence purposes. So I definitely

01:34think there'll be more deep fakes. Very hard to distinguish between what's real

01:39and what's not real. It's fabricated. Even human beings as they portray to be

01:44humans but they're actually machine agents.