Nice find! As a philosophy graduate with an ongoing interest in ethics I have much enjoyed the series myself. I believe that the writing team included professional philosophers to help generate and critique the plot, so there's a lot of academic depth hiding just beneath the entertaining and absurd surface. It's quite fun trying to spot the philosophers/schools of philosophy being called upon in each episode, as well as in the broader trajectory of the plot.

Hi Matt,

I enjoyed reading your post. I completely agree that using DeepFake for harassments in on the rise. Criminals and attackers are always on the hunt for new ways through which they can target their victims. One of the most concerning factors is that DeepFake technology is widely available (Ahmed, 2021).

As this technology advances it will become more and more difficult to differentiate between a real and a fake video or audio. I have seen videos on YouTube regarding DeepFake and it is scary to see how real they look. With further advancements and perfection of this technology, criminals will use this to their advantage and can cause serious harm by targeting government officials or tarnish someone’s reputation.  I believe there should be strict laws on misuse of such technology and the content should be regulated by tech companies creating such technologies.

An interesting post by Norton giving some more insight on DeepFake technology: https://us.norton.com/internetsecurity-emerging-threats-what-are-deepfakes.html#made

References

Ahmed, A. (2021, March 9). Social Media Users Warned Of Deepfake: The New Conartistry Tool. Digital Information World. Retrieved from https://www.digitalinformationworld.com/2021/03/social-media-users-warned-of-deepfake.html

I enjoyed this, too, and I didn't make the connection with last week's work: thanks for the reminder. For those not wanting to watch (or wanting to know more about it) there's an overview of the special at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bo_Burnham:_Inside

When my kids came to have a look at my half-finished new office (formerly bedroom) a couple of weeks ago they observed that it looked very much indeed like Bo Burnham's room: a lot of cables, microphones, cameras, musical instruments, lighting, computers, monitors, a chair, a desk, and not much else. I felt quite pleased.

Thanks Matt, I have been looking for something to watch on Netflix.