Econ_May_26

16 Leaders

The Economist

May 26th 2018

forms mandated by the peace deal, such as updating land re-

cords and property tax. Colombians are right to wonder

whether Mr Uribe would have too much influence over a

Duque presidency.

Mr Duque shares Mr Uribe’s disdain for the peace deal and

will weaken it if he becomes president. That would not rekin-

dle all-out war. But it might prevent a peace agreement with

the

ELN

, a guerrilla group that is still in the field.

Mr Petrowould be a worse president. His plans include the

self-defeating notion of pulling Colombia out of the oil busi-

ness, its chief source of exports. His term as mayor of Bogotá

wasmarked by clasheswith the city council and disputeswith

contractors, one of which left rubbish uncollected. His oppo-

nents compare him to Hugo Chávez, who launched next-door

Venezuela on its course towards economic and political disas-

ter. That is an exaggeration. But neither Mr Petro’s tempera-

ment nor his ideas equip him for the presidency.

Colombians’ hunger for change is understandable. Income

inequality, though falling, is the second-highest inLatinAmeri-

ca. Schools and health care are not good enough. Corruption is

a running sore. People are angry that the peace accord has not

ended the violence in the countryside and allows

FARC

lead-

erswho have committed crimes to sit in congress.

Other candidateshavebetter answers tomost ofthese com-

plaints than Mr Duque or Mr Petro. Humberto de la Calle, the

government’s chief peace negotiator, is aworthy aspirant. Ser-

gio Fajardo, a mathematician who has put clean politics and

education at the centre ofhis campaign, looks as ifhe has a bet-

ter chance. A former mayor of Medellín and governor of the

department of Antioquia, he has shown that, unlike Mr Petro,

he can run a government successfully. Unlike Mr Duque, he

would seekto improve the implementationofthe peace agree-

ment, not undermine it. He gets our vote.

It’s not Venezuela

Even if thewrongmanwins, do not despair for Colombia. Un-

like Venezuela, whose president, Nicolás Maduro, has just

won a fraudulent election, Colombia is a solid democracy

with relatively strong institutions. At least the next president,

whoever hemay be, is unlikely to change that.

“D

EAR people of Belgium.

This is a huge deal. As

you know, I had the balls to

withdraw from the Paris climate

agreement, and so should you.”

It sounds like Donald Trump—a

bit, anyway. It is definitely a pic-

ture of Donald Trump. But the

person in the video, producedby sp.a, a left-wingBelgianpolit-

ical party, is not quite the American president. It is a computer-

tweaked facsimile, into whose mouth has been put a not-en-

tirely serious homily about Belgium’s carbon emissions.

Faked images are not new. Stalin airbrushed his enemies

out of history by having them removed from official photo-

graphs. Visual-effects studios in Hollywood transpose actors’

faces onto the bodies of fitter, more disposable stunt doubles.

But tinkeringwith video is hard. Doing it well requires special-

istswho are scarce and expensive.

Technology is making things cheaper and easier. The video

by sp.a is a “deep fake”—which draws on “deep learning”, an

artificial-intelligence technique used in everything fromrecog-

nising faces to playingGo, a complexboard game. To produce a

deep fake, all you need is a piece of free software, some pic-

tures of the personwhose face youwish to transpose, an exist-

ing piece of film to paste it into and a script for your digital cre-

ation to read. The computer takes care of the rest. And unlike

special-effects artists, computers are cheap andwidespread.

For now, the results are often amateurish. The video of Mr

Trump is suspiciously blurry. His speech is stilted. His mouth

moves inodd, not-quite-humanways. But as algorithms are re-

fined and computing power gets cheaper, that will change. A

previous demonstration, involving an ersatz Barack Obama

and considerably more care, produced slicker results. Pictures

and video will become like text: easier to fake outright or to

shade in subtleways that exaggerate or downplaywhat is real-

ly happening. The video, sp.a says, was not intended to de-

ceive. The game is given away near the end, when Mr Trump

says: “We all knowclimate change is fake—just like this video!”

But not everyonewill be so scrupulous.

This prospect would be worrying at any time. It is particu-

larly unwelcome now. The internet has already given parti-

sans and provocateurs a cheap and effective way to spread

written rumours and untruths. Faked videos will be similarly

easy to disseminate, but will be more powerful precisely be-

cause people have not yet learned to mistrust film and sound-

tracks. Just imagine themayhem sown by a faked video show-

ing Mr Trump confessing that he had taken money from

Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin.

The camera often lies

What to do? Ideally, people will adapt, becoming more scepti-

cal, and theworldwill be quick to apply the lessons from“fake

news”. But that will be hard. Technologies such as encryption

and digital signing can help trace a film or picture back to a

trusted source, although malicious actors will have no incen-

tive touse them. Fact-checkingwill devotemore time tovideos

and pictures as digital fakery becomes widespread; but such

services can only ever be reactive, sending the truth panting

after a lie that is already halfway across the world. Journalists

and bloggerswith a reputation for accuracymight see demand

for their services rise—though only if people want truth rather

than titillation or confirmation of their biases.

Before the era ofmassmedia, mass literacy and cheap com-

munication, knowledge of the world was foggy. It was a strug-

gle to sort fact from rumour. Cheap, high-quality propaganda

risks making the truth harder to find, further debasing demo-

cratic politics. Technology could make the global village feel

more like a fearful, distrusting swamp.

Truth and technology

Cinema, not vérité

Afaked video ofDonald Trump shows howAIwill make propaganda cheap and easy