Partner Charles B. McKenna, a member of the Firm’s White Collar Criminal Defense and Investigations Group, co-authored an opinion piece with former New Jersey Attorney General John Farmer, Jr. entitled “Artificial intelligence is scarier than what you’ve seen at the movies.” Posted on April 16, 2023 on nj.com, the article discusses the “very real likelihood that AI will completely erase the blurred line between information and misinformation.”
In the article, Charlie and John discuss ChatGBT, describing it as both a technological breakthrough and also a potent opportunity for manipulating the truth and spreading misinformation. They explain that ChatBGT can “talk to you effortlessly and mostly fluently in about 50 languages. It will continue with full confidence on topics ranging from public health to applied mathematics. However, it could also be completely wrong.”
Providing examples of recent falsified photos that were mostly created as comic elements, including Pope Francis in a full-length white puffy coat and sharing a beer at a Burning Man festival, they raise the alarm on deep fakes that will be more difficult than ever to distinguish from the truth in an already truth-challenged environment. They suggest that “it’s becoming increasingly difficult to imagine an AI-dominated future that isn’t entirely dystopian,” noting that “If somehow unchecked, AI poses the prospect of a future not anchored to any reality but one that AI creates, a hall of funhouse mirrors where humanity will wander lost, knowing that it what he sees reflected is distorted, but desperate to ever see the truth.”
John Farmer is currently the director of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University. Charlie McKenna previously served as lead counsel for former Governor Chris Christie and chief of the criminal division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Newark.
Read the full opinion piece at nj.com or here.
