Deepfakes and other dangers of modern technology

Are we getting old or has our planet started to spin faster? For those of us who are long enough in the tooth to remember floppy disks and cassettes, it can be hard to cope with all these wireless chargers, augmented and virtual realities that modern technologies have brought us.

Things have gone so far now that you cannot even tell whether celebrities and politicians in videos are real or not — please welcome the disturbing problem of so-called deepfakes. What at first appeared to be an apparently harmless trick of a visual-effects artist who had created several videos with a very natural-looking computer-generated model of Tom Cruise marked the beginning of a new era of increasingly powerful — and potentially dangerous — technology. The level of detail is, nevertheless, rather stunning, as can be seen on the website of the ‘This Person Does Not Exist’ project, which posts images of computer-generated people — who do not exist.

Deepfakes have created a certain anxiety among politicians, since it is now possible to forge videos of real people saying just about anything. Moreover, it can be difficult to distinguish these fake videos from real ones, although there is some progress in combating deepfakes with complex detection algorithms that analyze light reflections in the eyes of those shown. This is just how quickly the world is moving.

While the problems posed by the emergence of powerful new technologies can seem, at times, somewhat frightening, we ought first and foremost to focus on the many positive opportunities they bring. Every new development affords us with myriad new ways to improve our lives, even if that may not appear to be the case at first glance. Here are 50 future unicorns, as identified by CB Insights and Fast Company, whose technologies demonstrate that the possibilities are truly endless.