[ACCEPTED] Echoes of Deception

[Kaschovia]

Not sure if this has been done yet, but it's pretty relevant at the moment.

Echoes of Deception

Validity: Has high technological advancement, intelligence, access to the internet, video games legal

The Issue: In a cabinet meeting today, an advisor played an eerily accurate version of a speech you never gave generated by an online AI text-to-speech model, which initially convinced a majority of those in attendance that it was actually you.

Option 1: "Do you understand how terrifying this truly is?" says your Minister for Averting Existential Crises @@RANDOMNAME@@, sweat dripping from @@HIS@@ forehead. "Earlier today I could've sworn I'd heard audio of you commentating an esports tournament alongside the leader of Maxtopia... so you're not planning on merging our militaries to take over the world? We need to ban all voice generation AI with immediate effect before this gets out of control. I shudder just thinking about what Blackacre would do with this technology."

Effect: virtual assistants are seen with increasing suspicion everytime they get an upgrade

Option 2: "I thought it was hilarious!" chuckles your office systems administrator @@RANDOMNAME@@ over a remote phone line, audibly tinkering with @@HIS@@ laptop. "I know it's daunting how quickly this technology is advancing, but think of all the industries that could benefit from it! Automated text narration for entertainment and video games, greater accessibility in education, the list goes on..." The same model used to copy your voice finishes @@HIS@@ sentence, "the advantages of using text-to-speech language models are numerous and provide limitless avenues for economic gain."

Effect: deceased politicians spam the public with thousands of AI-generated voicemails every day

Option 3: "There is more to this than meets the ears, my dear leader..." whispers defense intern @@RANDOMNAME@@, giggling manically from behind a door, "put this stuff in the hands of the police agencies, and all the criminals and wrongdoers across @@NAME@@ would have no chance differentiating our bots from their own voices! Not to mention uses for foreign espionage, intel gathering, and so much more... what harm could it do reserving this technology for the police and government? I don't see why the general public need it anyway."

Effect: criminals organize themselves via carrier pigeon to avoid lifelike police bots

Echoes of Deception

Validity: Has high technological advancement, intelligence, and access to the internet

The Issue: In a cabinet meeting today, an advisor played an eerily accurate version of a speech you never gave generated by an online AI text-to-speech model, which initially convinced a majority of those in attendance that it was actually you.

Option 1: "Do you understand how terrifying this truly is?" says your Minister for Averting Existential Crises @@RANDOMNAME@@, sweat dripping from @@HIS@@ forehead. "Earlier today I could've sworn I'd heard audio of you commentating an esports tournament alongside the leader of Maxtopia... so you don't plan on merging our militaries to take over the world? We need to ban all voice generation AI with immediate effect before this gets out of control. I shudder just thinking about what Blackacre would do with this technology."

Effect: virtual assistants are seen with increasing suspicion everytime they get an upgrade

Option 2: "Oh, come on, I thought it was hilarious!" chuckles your office systems administrator @@RANDOMNAME@@ over a remote phoneline, audibly tinkering with @@HIS@@ laptop. "I know it's pretty daunting how quickly this technology is advancing, but think of how many industries could benefit from this stuff! Online education, language studies, entertainment..." The same model used to copy your voice finishes @@HIS@@ sentence, "the benefits of text-to-speech language models are numerous and should be made open source for anyone to use."

Effect: deceased politicians spam the public with thousands of automated voicemails every day

Option 3: Your Minister of Finding Middle Ground, adorned in a pinstripe suit and bright red tie, lowers @@HIS@@ glasses tentatively to the edge of @@HIS@@ nose before speaking. "Surely we can find a middle ground here, @@LEADER@@. It's not like these models are fooling the entire country yet, but regulation is needed so they don't end up in the hands of malicious actors. We should reserve the most advanced ones for use by the government, and convince the public that the online models are as good as it gets."

Effect: rumours are spreading that artificial intelligence has already taken over the government

Option 4: "There is more to this than meets the ears, my dear leader..." whispers defense intern @@RANDOMNAME@@, giggling manically from behind a door, "put this technology in the police agencies and phone lines, and we'd have a lifelike voice generation tool to fool and weed out the criminals, naysayers, and wrongdoers across @@NAME@@. Not to mention its uses for foreign espionage, CCTV voice profiling, and interrogation methods... what harm could it do reserving this technology for the police and army? I don't see why the general public need it anyway."

Effect: criminals organize themselves via carrier pigeon to avoid lifelike police bots

Echoes of Deception

Validity: Has high technological advancement, intelligence, and access to the internet

The Issue: In a cabinet meeting earlier today, one of your advisors played an eerily accurate version of one of your speeches generated by an online AI text-to-speech model, which initially tricked a majority of those in attendance into believing it was actually you.

Option 1: "Do you understand how terrifying this truly is?" says @@RANDOMNAME@@, your Minister for Averting Existential Crises, sweat dripping from @@HIS@@ forehead. "Earlier today, I heard some audio of what I thought was you commentating a major online esports tournament alongside the leader of Maxtopia, only to find out in the comments that all of the voices were generated by artificial intelligence! Can you imagine if this technology got into the hands of Blackacre?! I shudder to think. We need to ban all voice generation AI with immediate effect before this gets out of control."

Effect: @@DEMONYMPLURAL@@ with particularly robotic sounding voices tend to avoid ringing up the government

Option 2: "Oh, come on, I thought it was hilarious!" chuckles @@RANDOMNAME@@, your office systems admin, tinkering with @@HIS@@ laptop. "I know it's pretty daunting how quickly this technology is advancing, but think of how many industries could benefit from this stuff? Online education, language studies, entertainment... that's at least three!" The same model used to copy your voice finishes @@HIS@@ sentence, "the uses of text-to-speech language models are numerous and offer limitless benefits to any government that actively encourages their integration in society."

Effect: thousands of automated spam calls from deceased politicians flood voicemail inboxes

Option 3: Your Minister of Finding Middle Ground, adorned in a pinstripe suit and bright red tie, lowers @@HIS@@ glasses tentatively to the edge of @@HIS@@ nose before speaking. "Surely we can find a middle ground here, @@LEADER@@. It's not like these models are fooling the entire country... yet, but it is important we regulate them such that they do not end up in the hands of malicious actors. I say we establish a regulatory commission to ensure these models are only used in a safe and authentic capacity, such as call centres, customer service companies, public announcements, and any other place we deem acceptable. You can start by shutting down all current online AI voice generation websites, and we can assess the situation from there."

Effect: speaking to an actual, sentient being is no longer an option in customer service

Option 4: "There is more to this than meets the ears, my dear leader..." whispers defense intern @@RANDOMNAME@@, giggling manically from behind a door, "put this stuff in the hands of the police agencies, and we'll have a direct voice recognition tool to weed out the criminals, naysayers, and wrongdoers across @@NAME@@. Not to mention the benefits for our foreign espionage, CCTV voice profiling, and interrogation methods... what harm could it do reserving this technology for the police and army? I don't see why the general public need it anyway."

Effect: monitored criminal phone calls sound a lot higher pitched than usual

[Kaschovia]

Any thoughts on this?

[Baroque States]

I find your suggested quandary to be unspeakably dexterous.

In English, I think it's good!

[Kaschovia]

I find your suggested quandary to be unspeakably dexterous.

In English, I think it's good!

Thank you! I can still see some minor fixes to the draft, so I'll get to those eventually, but I appreciate the positive feedback.

[Electrum]

I would love to see some humour on what ridiculous things the @@LEADER@@ said in their commentary!

Option 1 - I don't think the effect line works. Why would people with robotic voices not ring the government? Is it because they're banned? It doesn't really make sense.

Option 2 - Good, but 'actively encourages their integration in society' is a bit vague. Maybe talk about getting rid of government call centres with AI?

Option 3 - This is the most reasonable option but a lot of it is quite similar in option 2 because allowing it in 'call centres, customer service companies, public announcements, and any other place' is as good as integrating them into society. Like the effect lines could be swapped for these issues.

Option 4 - I don't understand. By putting this stuff in the phone lines Is this allowing AI to listen in on people's calls? Because that would be a bit different from an AI text-to-speech model replicating @@LEADER@@. Or does this mean using the voice AI to pretend to be criminals to disrupt their plans? If that were the case they would simply move to other forms of communication. Either way, this option might require a rethink.

[Kaschovia]

I would love to see some humour on what ridiculous things the @@LEADER@@ said in their commentary!

Option 1 - I don't think the effect line works. Why would people with robotic voices not ring the government? Is it because they're banned? It doesn't really make sense.

Option 2 - Good, but 'actively encourages their integration in society' is a bit vague. Maybe talk about getting rid of government call centres with AI?

Option 3 - This is the most reasonable option but a lot of it is quite similar in option 2 because allowing it in 'call centres, customer service companies, public announcements, and any other place' is as good as integrating them into society. Like the effect lines could be swapped for these issues.

Option 4 - I don't understand. By putting this stuff in the phone lines Is this allowing AI to listen in on people's calls? Because that would be a bit different from an AI text-to-speech model replicating @@LEADER@@. Or does this mean using the voice AI to pretend to be criminals to disrupt their plans? If that were the case they would simply move to other forms of communication. Either way, this option might require a rethink.

Added a line about what the AI-generated clip of the leader could've been saying, and I have also reworked the effect line for option 1. Option 2 has been reworked according to the feedback as well. I've also edited the other options so they're a little more distinguishable from each other.

[Kaschovia]

I've shortened the description slightly.

[Verdant Haven]

- In option 2, I'm not clear on how things like online education and language studies benefit from the specific ability to exactly copy other peoples' voices (which is what the dilemma is far more than just text-to-speech models in general). Can that be expanded upon?

- I'm still not understanding exactly how option 4 achieves what it claims. Is this about using it in a corrupt manner (creating fake "confessions" or inventing "compromising" recordings with deep fake technology?). How does it get used by the police to weed out criminals? Weed them out from what? And naysayers... is this domestic political repression on the table? All of those things are fine as options, but I don't know what the option is at present.

[Kaschovia]

- In option 2, I'm not clear on how things like online education and language studies benefit from the specific ability to exactly copy other peoples' voices (which is what the dilemma is far more than just text-to-speech models in general). Can that be expanded upon?

- I'm still not understanding exactly how option 4 achieves what it claims. Is this about using it in a corrupt manner (creating fake "confessions" or inventing "compromising" recordings with deep fake technology?). How does it get used by the police to weed out criminals? Weed them out from what? And naysayers... is this domestic political repression on the table? All of those things are fine as options, but I don't know what the option is at present.

I've edited both options for a bit more clarity.

[Kaschovia]

I would still appreciate feedback for this draft, as I believe it could use some additional insight. Thanks in advance!

[Australian rePublic]

If people are going to use AI for malice like this, why would laws prevent them from doing so?

[Kaschovia]

If people are going to use AI for malice like this, why would laws prevent them from doing so?

Because those laws would be enforced if the government chooses to punish or prevent malicious use.

[Verdant Haven]

- Options 1-3 are all pretty much fine, so I just want to focus on that last one. This is the first draft where I've understood that this was talking about social engineering the criminals into giving up their plans – I thought it was previously about eavesdropping or voice recognition or some other voice-adjacent technology plan. I think this is a valid suggestion now, but it does need some work to clean up the proposal so it's fully framed within that context. It's not so much about "planting it in the phone lines" as giving the police access to it so they can impersonate known criminals, and use phone calls to fool other criminals into giving up information (right?).

[Kaschovia]

- Options 1-3 are all pretty much fine, so I just want to focus on that last one. This is the first draft where I've understood that this was talking about social engineering the criminals into giving up their plans – I thought it was previously about eavesdropping or voice recognition or some other voice-adjacent technology plan. I think this is a valid suggestion now, but it does need some work to clean up the proposal so it's fully framed within that context. It's not so much about "planting it in the phone lines" as giving the police access to it so they can impersonate known criminals, and use phone calls to fool other criminals into giving up information (right?).

I've edited the 'phone lines' part out of the option and simply left it as putting the technology in the hands of police agencies. Not sure if that it what you specifically had in mind but I think it opens up the option for more use cases.

[Verdant Haven]

I've edited the 'phone lines' part out of the option and simply left it as putting the technology in the hands of police agencies. Not sure if that it what you specifically had in mind but I think it opens up the option for more use cases.

Did your intended edit take? The visible draft still very specifically talks about planting the AI in phone lines.

[Kaschovia]

I've edited the 'phone lines' part out of the option and simply left it as putting the technology in the hands of police agencies. Not sure if that it what you specifically had in mind but I think it opens up the option for more use cases.

Did your intended edit take? The visible draft still very specifically talks about planting the AI in phone lines.

Sometimes I accidentally edit the spoilered drafts instead of the current version, my bad! I'll fix that now.

Edit: the new option 4 for the current version should be up to date.

[Verdant Haven]

Ah, that's more like it!

- The new option 4 now makes more sense. I think the "criminals" line needs to end "...differentiating our bots from their own voices!" to make sure it's not comparing bots with bots.

- The primary challenge with this now is to draw distinction between options 3 and 4. Both involve reserving aspects of usage for the government, both involve elements of deception, and option 3 doesn't really say *what* the government would use it for, with the obvious things that come to mind being what option 4 then says. It might be worth combining those and retaining only three options – otherwise we do probably need some hand-holding about what the difference will be.

[Kaschovia]

Ah, that's more like it!

- The new option 4 now makes more sense. I think the "criminals" line needs to end "...differentiating our bots from their own voices!" to make sure it's not comparing bots with bots.

- The primary challenge with this now is to draw distinction between options 3 and 4. Both involve reserving aspects of usage for the government, both involve elements of deception, and option 3 doesn't really say *what* the government would use it for, with the obvious things that come to mind being what option 4 then says. It might be worth combining those and retaining only three options – otherwise we do probably need some hand-holding about what the difference will be.

I've changed option 4, now option 3, as you recommended. I've removed option 3 altogether as I agree with your suggestion to combine them. If the removal doesn't work or cuts out an angle worth keeping in, I can revise and add it back in with more clarity on the differences.

[Verdant Haven]

The first two options both mention video games in a way that probably suggest the nation needs to allow them (issue validity).

No further comments. Looks good.

[Kaschovia]

The first two options both mention video games in a way that probably suggest the nation needs to allow them (issue validity).

No further comments. Looks good.

Changed the validity to ensure video games are legal.

Thank you, hope to submit this soon if there are no further comments, although I understand there might be a lot of submissions from the issues contest so I might wait until the results are announced.

[Kaschovia]

I will move this into last call soon if there is no further feedback for another day or two. I plan to take a final look over the draft and then submit this one.

[Kaschovia]

Any final notes before I submit this? I plan on submitting within the next two days since the issues contest is now over.

[Kaschovia]

This is now submitted.