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AI Crime

A School Principal Was Framed With an AI-Generated Rant (cbsnews.com) 26

Posted by EditorDavid from the words-in-your-mouth dept.
"A former high school athletic director was arrested Thursday morning," reports CBS News, "after allegedly using artificial intelligence to impersonate the school principal in a recording..." One-time Pikesville High School employee Dazhon Darien is facing charges that include theft, stalking, disruption of school operations and retaliation against a witness. Investigators determined he faked principal Eric Eiswert's voice and circulated the audio on social media in January. Darien's nickname, DJ, was among the names mentioned in the audio clips he allegedly faked, according to the Baltimore County State's Attorney's Office.

Baltimore County detectives say Darien created the recording as retaliation against Eiswert, who had launched an investigation into the potential mishandling of school funds, Baltimore County Police Chief Robert McCullough said on Thursday. Eiswert's voice, which police and AI experts believe was simulated, made disparaging comments toward Black students and the surrounding Jewish community. The audio was widely circulated on social media.
The article notes that after the faked recording circulated on social media the principal "was temporarily removed from the school, and waves of hate-filled messages circulated on social media, while the school received numerous phone calls."

The suspect had actually used the school's network multiple times to perform online searches for OpenAI tools, "which police linked to paid OpenAI accounts."
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A School Principal Was Framed With an AI-Generated Rant More

A School Principal Was Framed With an AI-Generated Rant

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  • Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do....

  • Source? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by slack_justyb ( 862874 ) on Saturday April 27, 2024 @04:23PM (#64429974)

    circulated the audio on social media

    People, please, I'm fucking begging you, stop eating the whole fucking ham on anything and literally EVERYTHING you read, see, and hear on social media.

    The article notes that after the faked recording circulated on social media the principal "was temporarily removed from the school, and waves of hate-filled messages circulated on social media, while the school received numerous phone calls."

    We're fucking doomed this election cycle and every single one thereafter. Social media is a goddamn blight. It isn't so much the being able to post shit randomly, it's the being able to post shit randomly, and then some fucking algorithm that can get it into the face of a million more people if it'll get the hate boner going. It the fact that we've got software that's been trained to prioritize eyeballs among all other things, no verify, no need to have history, and people defend this software as "well the public has to learn". If we have bad software, we don't change the fucking people, we change the goddamn software. How the hell did anyone forget this?! If you open a one-day account that has zero backing information, you too can have your shit spread to ten percent of the entire planet if you just satisfy our money, er, advertising, er, popularity algorithm. There is zero justification for this outside of it's making someone some cash.

    I don't mind online forums, but if a forum has the ability to dump the worst of the worst (because that's popular at this moment) onto the default thing that millions of people who might not have even subscribed to that topic see. THAT IS A PROBLEM. When the software is picking what I should see, that's the big problem. And if I have to click "I'm not interested in this" 500 times because "the algorithm" that's not the person, that's the software. I remember that when we had popups, we didn't go "oh you should just not go there or you should just get better at dismissing popups", we fucking made a popup blocker.

    That's the massive problem of social media versus something like online forums. Online forums you get what you get. Social media is filling your feed with anything that will appeal to people who want to spend at most five seconds on something. So it's obvious, quality is NOT the priority. So the fact that so many people will take something that so downplays actual quality as something to attempt to ruin a person's career over it with literally a single source. BUT All that said, I'm not going to downplay it. It's 50-50 on these fucking people who ate this shit at face value and the social media networks that ensured this bullshit got in front of as many eyes as possible.

    • No the problem isn't social media. Most people post responsibly but it's about 2% who were poorly patented that just want to watch the world burn. We should zero in on that small percentage

      • No the problem isn't social media

        You miss the point.

        Most people post responsibly but it's about 2% who were poorly...

        And that's where you miss it. For sake of argument, let's say your 2% is correct, just as a gimme for you. Social media will take any ONE of that 2% and promote it to billions of people on the planet IF that one person appeases the algorithm.

        That is broken software no matter how you slice it.

    • At the heart of democracy is an appeal to the will of the people. Given how rubbish people are, this is a deeply flawed idea. Sadly it's the least bad option, but let's not pretend it's perfect.

    • By the time election season rolls around virtually everyone is going to have been exposed to some ai fakes. It's not at all unusual for a high-ranking individual in the company to be suspended pending an investigation. Investigation was conducted and he was put back in place. Meanwhile this story is making the rounds and hundreds of thousands of people are going to see it.

      All in all it'll be fine. The sort of person who is foolish enough to vote based on a deep fake is going to get a hell of a lot more a

      • The problem is that so often fakes are tricking the major media. For example, the local station here in Seattle are claiming that republicans with guns are blocking the Oregon borders beating teenage girls if they donâ(TM)t submit to a pregnancy test. That obvious fake news, but too many of my friends fall for that garbage.

    • You want to know what your biggest problem here is? Assuming ANY of this you’re ranting about, is NOT by design.

      The current tool/weapon we call “social’ media is used, abused, and enjoyed by many an owner (and Government, hence the legality of all this) who have made billions from it. Which profit is the entire point of social media. It sure as hell hasn’t made people more “social” staring at a phone screen all day.

      If you want morals and ethics, go to church. We only

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mjwx ( 966435 )

      circulated the audio on social media

      People, please, I'm fucking begging you, stop eating the whole fucking ham on anything and literally EVERYTHING you read, see, and hear on social media.

      The article notes that after the faked recording circulated on social media the principal "was temporarily removed from the school, and waves of hate-filled messages circulated on social media, while the school received numerous phone calls."

      We're fucking doomed this election cycle and every single one thereafter. Social media is a goddamn blight. It isn't so much the being able to post shit randomly, it's the being able to post shit randomly, and then some fucking algorithm that can get it into the face of a million more people if it'll get the hate boner going.

      The net result of this is to make people will distrust the source. This is how it's always worked when something lends itself to obvious BS. The faux moral outrage is unnecessary as it ultimately is a self correcting issue.

  • Whenever I heard a story like this I think of how Neal Stephenson outlined the consequences of all of this nicely in his 2019 novel "Fall."

    Eventually our "feeds" will get so clogged with fake news that we'll have to hire someone to filter it for us, lest we end up being suckered into believing so much nonsense that we're too afraid to leave our homes.

    Unfortunately, I fear many will just keep getting tricked into believing all kinds of lies just like this in our new world of the 30-second news cycle.

    • I never read the book, but what I see isn't so much people afraid to go outside physically as they are afraid to look outside mentally. Regardless of all else, people can see (1) scary stuff a'happenin out there, and (2) all the noise and social/media BS.

      Averting eyes is the easiest course of action. Why go through the effort of weeding out the BS, for the reward of some highly depressing insight into how fucked things are? It doesn't compute mentally, emotionally. Only to a masochist. Knowledge brings pain

  • No surprise he was so easily caught.

    • It sounds like he used commercially-available tools, that probably add watermarks, that he probably paid for using his own credit card, on his employer's internet connection.

      I think if someone was slightly smart about this, they could make it a success.

  • Key takeaway: don't gather your torch and pitchfork posse until you can verify things are real.

  • A youtuber named Mark Dice predicted this would happen 5 years ago.

    He plays part of the recording in this video:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36sr2QgE-cg

  • FBI and a university analyzed it, but with what tools or is it professional opinion? If it was via air detection tools, what are those tools looking for specifically? And can someone remove those telltale signs so it can't be detected as fake?

    • The fact that the teacher in question swears any oath that he didnâ(TM)t send these messages, witnesses saying that he never expressed any opinions like that, and the obvious fact that he would have to have been an utter moron to send this. So without any technical examination. It would be most likely that the messages are faked.
      • This is a chilling reminder of the potential dangers of AI misuse. It's disturbing to see how technology can be weaponized to spread hate and manipulate situations. As a law student, I'm particularly intrigued by the legal implications of this case, especially regarding cybercrime and digital evidence. I was recently working on a law assignment about similar issues and stumbled upon a resource at https://essays.edubirdie.com/l... [edubirdie.com], which was helpful. It's crucial for authorities to stay vigilant and for pla

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