The Liar's Dividend

What it is, where you've seen it and why it's so dangerous

Sep 11, 2024

The Liar’s Dividend — what it is, where you’ve seen it and why it’s so dangerous 🤥 📉
Google’s monopoly trial is exposing Alphabet practices that most have never seen before 🎩 ⚖️
GrokAI is scraping your data — does open source mean zero guardrails? 🚧📊🚧
Donald Trump used AI to fabricate a Taylor Swift endorsement, it backfired fabulously 🐱ྀི 💁‍♀️
Escalating war over chip technology 🇨🇳⚔️🇺🇸

My Take:

Earlier this year, I made a confident prediction: deep fakes and AI would not have nearly as big of an effect on this election as the doomsayers were portending.

My reasoning seemed sound. Doomsayers have often been wrong in predicting the destruction new media would cause to democracy, civil order, and truth.

But I was only partially right.

A deep fake or AI manipulated image hasn’t meaningfully moved the needle in this election — but the haunting specter of this technology threatens to.

Former President Trump has been dismissing visuals he dislikes as deep fakes or AI manipulation – and with a deeply media illiterate public that is prone to confirmation bias, he’s kind of getting away with it.

After a video compilation showing a series of Trump’s gaffes and false statements was published, Trump took to Truth Social to claim that the video was made with AI. He made these claims in spite of the fact that every video from the compilation had been verified and previously reported on. When Trump was photographed with red splotches on his hand, a campaign staffer said it had been the result of a papercut. Trump insisted the splotches had never been there at all. “Probably AI,” he told Fox News.

As Vice President Harris has drawn larger crowds, Trump has started to claim that the crowds aren’t really there at all. “She AI-ed it,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, speaking of the crowds at an event VP Harris held in Detroit outside an airplane hangar in August. Of course, reality tells a different story. Thousands of people were at the event so there were thousands of witnesses and hundreds of different videos. The event was also well attended by press who confirmed the Harris campaign's estimates of around 15,000 attendees. This has not dissuaded Mr. Trump.

This strategy isn’t new. Trump has been using the “it’s just AI” defense since December 2023, when the Lincoln Project aired an ad against him. His recent claims about crowd sizes, however, seem to be gaining more steam than previous lies.

Last Friday, Trump even declared that a photo he had once acknowledged as real—one from 1987 showing him with journalist E. Jean Carroll, whom he was later found liable for sexually abusing and defaming—was now an AI fabrication.

"If voters tend to disbelieve anything they see and think that whatever they see might be faked, then they're going to distrust their own instincts as to what the truth is to be able to make competent decisions," UCLA Law Professor Rick Hasen told the WikiMedia Foundation.

Law professors Robert Chesney and Danielle Citron coined a term for this new phenomenon in a 2018 paper for the California Law review. They call it the "liar's dividend."

“Deep fakes will prove useful in escaping the truth in another equally pernicious way. Ironically, liars aiming to dodge responsibility for their real words and actions will become more credible as the public becomes more educated about the threats posed by deep fakes. Imagine a situation in which an accusation is supported by genuine video or audio evidence. As the public becomes more aware of the idea that video and audio can be convincingly faked, some will try to escape accountability for their actions by denouncing authentic video and audio as deep fakes. Put simply: a skeptical public will be primed to doubt the authenticity of real audio and video evidence. This skepticism can be invoked just as well against authentic as against adulterated content… Growing appreciation that deep fakes exist may provide a convenient excuse for motivated reasoners to embrace these dynamics, even when confronted with information that is in fact true.”

Of course, the work of winning this election is less about currying favor with those who have already decided to vote for you and more about engaging independents in swing states – who are far less likely to fall prey to confirmation bias and more likely to see this as strange behavior. That’s likely why even those within his own party are telling Trump to cut it out. Appearing on Fox News, former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy appealed to the former President to, “stop questioning the size of her crowds, and start questioning her positions.”

Of course, contesting the crowd size of a rally four months ahead of election day might seem like small potatoes, but it seems to me that this could be fairly strategic. Donald Trump is pilot-testing the efficacy of the liar’s dividend – and, at least within his own base, it seems to be working.

At last night’s Presidential debate, Trump once again asserted that he was the real winner of the 2020 election. He also planted a seed for sending elections to be certified by the legislature – insisting that’s what should have happened four years ago.

We already know that, even without the specter of deep fakes and despite losing an election, Trump can incite his supporters to violence (see: January 6, 2021). The question we ought to be asking ourselves is this: If Trump can play this sleight of hand with his followers today, what will he convince them of in the future?

Around the web:

News publishers in spotlight at Google’s latest monopoly trial via WaPo 🎩 ⚖️

Fiona Scott Morton, former chief economist of the Justice Department’s antitrust division, said there are few close parallels of a single company dominating the buy side, sell side and the exchange of a market. The technical obscurity of this sector, she added, helped Google build out this footprint without officials and the public understanding what was happening. “I don’t think if that happened in, say, cars or steel, that it would take very long for policymakers, enforcers, governments and consumers to say, ‘Wait, something’s wrong,’ ” she said.

What You Need to Know About Grok AI and Your Privacy via Wired 🚧📊🚧

Because Grok is so open and relatively uncontrolled, the AI assistant has been caught spreading false US election information. Election officials from Minnesota, New Mexico, Michigan, Washington, and Pennsylvania sent a complaint letter to Musk, after Grok provided false information about the ballot deadlines in their states… Vast amounts of data collection are another area of concern—especially since you are automatically opted in to sharing your X data with Grok, whether you use the AI assistant or not.

Taylor Swift has endorsed Kamala Harris. Donald Trump has only himself to blame via The Guardian 🐱ྀི 💁‍♀️

In her endorsement, Swift addressed the grotesque AI-generated images that Trump himself shared two weeks ago, which falsely depicted her as a clownishly tarted-up Uncle Sam, and her fans as Trump supporters. “It really conjured up my fears around AI, and the dangers of spreading misinformation. It brought me to the conclusion that I need to be very transparent about my actual plans for this election as a voter,” she wrote, signing off as “childless cat lady”.

Come work with me!

Apply to super{set} VECTOR

A 12-week fully-paid launchpad for technical product leaders to receive direction, build magnitude, and co-explore company creation alongside super{set} - Apply at superset.com/vector