Show trials were originally made famous by the genocidal Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin (1878-1953). These were widely publicized trials of his political opponents who were accused of being “enemies of the state.'' Accusations inevitably produce convictions. The prisoners then marched in front of cameras and crowds, “confessing” their “crimes,” asking for forgiveness (which was never granted), and praising the regime for arresting and reforming them. Long prison sentences in forced labor camps and swift executions will continue.
How can AI help create victims? “Deepfake” video technology. We previously saw in “AI that impersonates humans needs to be outlawed” that extortion videos can simultaneously target millions of individuals around the world every day. Such fraud and crimes of aggression are very likely to occur at the “micro” level, which justifies outlawing AI systems that impersonate humans. Such technologies can easily propel oppression into the stratosphere.
Rapidly increasing confession coercion business
For example, China, under the rule of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), has long used the practice of forcing accused people to publicly confess to serious crimes and publicly shaming and humiliating them on video. .in we are harmonized: Life in China's Surveillance State (2020), Kai Strittmatter, a long-time resident of China, journalist and author, reported:
Since the summer of 2013, state broadcaster CCTV (China Central Television) has been providing viewers with a never-ending parade of people who have been arrested or previously “disappeared.” In the course of “interviews,'' filmed primarily in prisons, they play the roles of repentant criminals who confess their wrongdoings long before they even see a lawyer, let alone in a courtroom.
The Chinese Communist Party typically obtains confessions through direct torture and intimidation of family members. Strittmatter detailed how the Chinese Communist Party's Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) targets dissidents:
civil rights lawyer [who] They must live with constant surveillance and threats from family, friends, and landlords. They are regularly summoned for questioning, placed under house arrest, and held in secret or public prisons. Some people disappear without a trace for long periods of time, are tortured, or are locked up in psychiatric hospitals.
In the seminal book of 2018, Screenplay and direction: Behind the scenes of China's coerced TV confessions, researchers at Safeguard Defenders analyzed 45 televised confessions between 2013 and 2018, all of which were “routinely coerced and elicited through intimidation, torture, and fear.” I discovered that Communist Party police dictated the confession, and the regime used the video “as a propaganda tool for domestic audiences and as part of China's foreign policy.” As reported:
The interviewee explained how the police put him in a “costume” and took charge of his confession. Write a “script” for the confession and have the detainee memorize it. They were given instructions on how to “deliver” their lines, and in one case were even told to cry. If you are not satisfied with the results, you can order as many retakes as you like. One interviewee said it took seven hours to record the equivalent of just a few minutes of broadcast time.
Torture for confessions is common
As reported by Mary Hong, Epoch Epoch (April 6, 2023):
On April 4, Li Zhuang, a former Beijing lawyer, posted a video showing how local police in Li County, Baoding City, torture victims to extract confessions. Methods included waterboarding, prying open the mouth with a screwdriver, inserting a chopstick into the urethra, and giving the victim laundry detergent.
The Chinese Communist Party continues to use confessional videos for propaganda and population control. Safeguard Defenders reported on four episodes of CCDI that aired from January 6 to 9, 2024, and captured the lives of 29 people of interest in custody and many others not yet in custody. Featuring confessions. These were similar to the four forced confessions broadcast in January 2023, when most of the population admitted to serious crimes before going to trial.
AI can create deepfake confessions
Deepfake AI has allowed totalitarian regimes to cut out the middleman. Professional torturers will lose their jobs. AI-powered human impersonators can create videos of defendants confessing, crying, begging, or crouching. Every detail in the video is so real that even your relatives would believe it. And you don't have to actually threaten or torture them. Just let the AI learn your body, face, movements, and voice, then “disappear” the person. All the regime needs is a video file to broadcast across the country or the world.
It pays to make people disappear without torture, because the victims can never escape, smuggle messages, or otherwise expose the regime's modus operandi. Deepfakes give regimes all the propaganda and fear without the downside of living victims.
Political solution: public suicide
Let's consider the possibilities. If he's deploying an AI system to help his administration create confessional videos, why isn't he taking the next step? The poor “prisoner” will disappear without a trace anyway, but rumors of his survival may spread. The easy solution is deepfake public suicide.
The deepfake “person” confesses everything on video and then commits suicide on camera, either by ingesting cyanide or by cutting their own throat. People all over the country can watch it all and watch “the one” die. Rumors will not spread. No one will be searching for missing people in some POW camp. And the rule of terror will exceed even Stalin's wildest dreams.
The regime could create an AI system that would show a video of a group of defendants systematically shooting each other with pistols, with the last survivor blowing out his own brains. The viewer learns that each prisoner committed a cold-blooded murder and therefore each deserved to die. No one looks for them anymore. Their disappearance is understandable.
The mind-boggling victory of propaganda overload
Some might argue that people will realize that the video is a deepfake and ignore it. Maybe so. But no one really knows, because those who “disappeared” never return.
More importantly, as Strittmatter explained, public confessions and humiliating videos have propaganda benefits.
The main purpose of these forced televised confessions is to make an example of a small number of individuals, intimidate the larger community into towing the party line, and instill “discipline” and political loyalty in a broader industry/sector. It is. A small number of victims are used as tools to silence the larger communities they represent.
Even if public confession videos are released frequently, or if the people are overburdened with propaganda that the regime cannot counter, the regime still wins. Strittmatter observed:
This tactic also works for people who aren't fooled by the sight. [but] Watch it for it's theater of the absurd. The staged confession is chilling and serves as a convincing demonstration of an all-powerful tyrannical state, as it makes a mockery of every aspect of the rule of law. Only a madman would dare confront it. [Emphasis added.]
The ease with which state propaganda can be produced will lead millions to fully accept their own hopeless inability to know the truth. It doesn't matter, and it never will.
AI Video technology that impersonates humans promises a degree of terror control previously unimaginable.
earlier version First published in Epoch Times (2024/3/20)
