Omohundro
Recent AI systems can create fake images, sound files, and videos that are hard to distinguish from real ones. For example, Lyrebird's software can mimic anyone saying anything from a one minute sample of their speech, Adobe's "Photoshop of Voice" VoCo software has similar capabilities, and the "Face2Face" system can generates realistic real time video of anyone saying anything. Continuing advances in deep learning "GAN" systems will lead to ever more accurate deceptions in a variety of domains. But AI is also getting better at detecting fakes. The recent rash of "fake news" has led to a demand for deception detection. We are in an arms race between the deceivers and the fraud detectors. Who will win? The science of cryptographic pseudorandomness suggests that the deceivers will have the upper hand. It is computationally much cheaper to generate pseudorandom bits than it is to detect that they aren't random. The issue has enormous social implications. A synthesized video of a world leader could start a war. Altered media could implicate people in crimes they didn't commit. Governments have tampered with photographs since the beginning of photography. Stalin, for example, was famous for removing people from historical photos when they fell out of favor. The art world has had to deal with forgeries for centuries. Good forgers can create works that fool even the best art critics. The solution there is "provenance". We not only need the work, we need its history. But provenances can also be faked if we aren't careful! Can we create an unmodifiable digital provenance for media? We describe several approaches to using blockchains, the technology underlying cryptocurrencies, to do this. We discuss how the time and location of events can be cryptographically certified. And how future media hardware might provide guarantees of authenticity.

Day
Mel Day will discuss the role of amateur and collective singing in deepening dialogue among potentially insular groups and in civic engagement as it has evolved in her own work and in select resonant cultural and historical contexts. She will share her current project, “Wall of Song” with artist Michael Namkung, recently exhibited at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, and how they’re gathering hundreds of voices to build a “different kind of wall” that brings us together instead of dividing us.

Merencillo
I will share first-hand experiences with the evolving technology of AR/VR hardware and software through events and major conferences that took place in the Bay Area this past year. Events include the VRX USA, World's Fair Nano SF, Game Developer's Conference, ALT+CTRL, Silicon Valley VR Expo and XTech Expo. At these events, I demoed technology and spoke with developers and designers who are creating new methods for users to experience digital reality systems in ways that we thought would only exist in futuristic movies. Through VR haptic technology we can feel the 3D objects in VR with our fingers or feel the vibrations of the VR environment through our chest, by using wearable EEG sensors we can visually monitor our brain activity through an app or use our minds to manipulate objects in a game or control drones in flight, there is the ability to now smell in VR environments with microfans and artificial scents embedded in VR headsets, or attend holographic meetings in a virtual space where you can see the actual bodies of other people and not just their artificial avatars. The Bay Area has numerous events and opportunities to experience the possibilities and potential of AR/VR technology. We live in an area where we can learn about where this technology is going and what our future reality may become.