• Turkey is testing a new digital-identity-linked CBDC…
  • How generative AI will transform the fashion industry…
  • Specialized semiconductors can now mimic the human brain…

Dear Reader,

Earlier this year, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the White House announced they were establishing a Disinformation Governance Board. Its goal was to “coordinate countering misinformation related to homeland security.”

Moments after the announcement, the internet and social media lit up like a wildfire. After all, who decides what is and isn’t disinformation? 

And as we all learned during the pandemic, “disinformation” turned out to be anything that wasn’t consistent with the desired political narrative.

Yet the issue was even larger than that. After all, political narratives can change as quickly as the seasons. So what anyone agrees with today might very well become disagreeable a few months from now. 

Part of the announcement was the appointment of Nina Jankowicz, who joined the Disinformation Governance Board as its executive director. One would think that the smartest appointment for such a role would be a worn, weathered, and neutral objectivist.

But Jankowicz was precisely the opposite.

In an ironic twist of fate, Jankowicz’s active social media presence was revealed to be deeply biased and often not representative of what one would consider appropriate for an executive director role. This resulted in quite an embarrassment regarding the appointment – and a significant loss of credibility to the initiative.

However, the bigger reality was that most people don’t like the idea of a small group of individuals deciding what information we can and cannot see. 

Irrespective of our own views on life and government, most people prefer to have access to information and then make decisions for themselves. And for many of us, this issue speaks to our constitutional rights.

The peaceful protest from this heavy-handed attempt to manipulate and control what we all see on the internet was swift and effective. Within a few weeks, the Disinformation Governance Board was “paused.”

One would have hoped that would be the end of it. After all, the proposed board wasn’t received well at all. So why not move on and focus on issues that voters would like?

But that didn’t happen. While the plans for the board were “paused,” the DHS kept moving forward quietly in the background.

And thanks to documents released from a lawsuit filed by the Attorney General of the great state of Missouri, we now have a feeling for how far the government has gone to control information.

For anyone who cares about freedom of speech and hates the idea of an Orwellian dystopia… it’s not good.

The DHS is now aggressively focused on targeting “inaccurate information” on topics that include: “the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines, racial justice, the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the nature of U.S. support to Ukraine.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, these are some of the most controversial topics concerning the current U.S. administration. And that makes the DHS’ actions even more concerning.

Part of what’s resulted from the lawsuit involves new information about a special government reporting system established by Facebook.

Documentation of Facebook’s Government Reporting System

Source: The Intercept

Its purpose is to facilitate the fast takedown of any information the U.S. government doesn’t want us to see. Similar collusions have taken place within Google and Twitter as well.

The scale and scope of how we’ve all been manipulated is hard to fathom. 

Two years ago, the topic of a large underground effort between the government and big tech to control us all was positioned as a conspiracy theory. Most thought that something like this was unfathomable, or impossible to implement.

Now we not only know that these things are true, but that they’re documented as systematic processes with clearly defined workflows under widespread use. Those who rang the alarm bells years ago weren’t so crazy after all.

I hate to say it, but if we the people allow our individual rights and freedoms to be taken from us in this manner, the world that Orwell envisioned will no longer be fiction.

Fortunately, Elon Musk’s vision for Twitter is a huge step in the right direction. But what do we do about Meta (Facebook) and Alphabet (Google)? I wish that Musk could take them all over and clean them up as well. But we know that would never be allowed to happen.

In the end, I believe that the answer lies with innovation. There are challengers out there to Meta and Alphabet. And new ones will follow. In time, these giants will fall as better alternatives become available to consumers. 

And for those of us who care about our freedoms, I hope we choose to give our time and attention to those who will respect those freedoms rather than subversively work to take them away.

The dangerous seed for social credit systems…

Turkey’s central bank just presented its plan for a central bank digital currency (CBDC). And it’s deeply concerning.

They’re calling it the Digital Turkish Lira system. It’s not the digital currency itself that’s worrisome… It’s the fact that they want to integrate it with a digital identity system.

If we link a national currency with a digital identity system, we give the government the power to easily monitor and control all our transactions. This is exactly what the blockchain industry wants to avoid.

As we’ve seen over the last two years, there’s been a big push to censor opinions that don’t conform to the desired narrative.

Well, a CBDC tied to a digital identity could take this a step further. The government could simply freeze the bank accounts of anybody who expressed beliefs and opinions that it didn’t like.

And this, in turn, opens the door to all kinds of arbitrary controls.

Suddenly, a China-style social credit system would become possible on a national or even regional level (think of the European Union). This is where individuals are rated based on whether they do and say things that people in power want them to do.

Perform a desired behavior, get rewarded. Perform an undesired behavior, get punished.

A CBDC tied to a social credit score system would allow the government to strictly limit our travel and consumption patterns. It could stop us from spending our hard-earned money as we please.

We cannot allow this kind of system to come to the West. And that’s why Turkey’s announcement is so frightening. After all, Turkey borders the E.U. but isn’t a member yet…

And that makes it the perfect testbed.

E.U. leaders can observe Turkey’s CBDC and digital identity system, as well as its citizens’ response to it. Then they could potentially tailor their own system accordingly.

That could quickly lead to a centralized CBDC, and ultimately a social credit system for all of Europe implemented in collusion with the World Economic Forum.

That should be enough of a warning sign to send shivers down our spines. It’s critical for us to understand that initiatives like these are a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

And we need to make sure we’re not going to get eaten.

Generative AI will reshape the fashion industry…

On a much lighter note, I’d like to share an interesting application of generative artificial intelligence (AI) at work that I think will be easy to understand.

This is a topic we’ve been reviewing quite a bit these last few weeks. These are AIs capable of producing remarkable images and videos based solely on text input.

And there’s one company that’s going to completely disrupt the fashion industry with this technology.

It’s called CALA. This company helps people design clothing and manage the production and fulfillment process. It provides a classic software as a service (SAAS) model.

And CALA just partnered with OpenAI to integrate DALL-E into its system. We looked at some of DALL-E’s incredible creations several months ago.

With this partnership, CALA’s users will be able to put DALL-E to work designing clothing. Here’s how it works:

AI-Modified Apparel

Source: CALA

Here we can see CALA’s system. Users simply pick the type of clothing they want to work with – in this case, a button-down shirt.

Then anyone can simply provide text prompts using adjectives describing trims and features they’d like to see used in the design.

And then this happens:

DALL-E Clothing Designs

Source: CALA

Here are the designs that DALL-E produced using the above prompts. We can see they’re quite creative. And each design is unique.

If we look in the lower right-hand corner of the platform, there’s a “Regenerate” button. If the user doesn’t like any of these first designs, they can press that button to have DALL-E produce more.

What’s more, designers can take their own designs and “feed” those images to DALL-E. Then they can instruct the AI to come up with similar designs based on those inputs.

This allows brands with specific styles to quickly come up with new designs that are still aligned with the core brand.

So we’re looking at an incredibly powerful tool here. I have no doubt that this will take the fashion industry by storm.

And this is a great example of how generative AI can be used to enhance both creativity and productivity. It’s very practical.

I’m excited to see how the fashion industry receives this. And I expect we’ll see a wide range of other applications like this in the months to come.

The next generation of neuromorphic computing…

Yesterday, we talked about a huge development around data transmission technology. One that could lead to the next generation of fiber optics technology, and also reduce the amount of power consumption used to shuttle data around the world.

Today, we have another game-changing breakthrough. This time around, it’s a new computing architecture.

Researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) just designed a computing system that mimics how the human brain works. This research was published in scientific journal Nature.

The new computing system leverages something called neuromorphic chips. These are specialized semiconductors that have been around for years with a focused application in artificial intelligence.

In fact, Intel acquired a start-up called Nervana Systems for $408 million back in 2016 specifically to get access to its neuromorphic chip design.

The problem is those chips were designed on traditional silicon-based architectures. And relatively speaking, silicon chips require a lot of power.

NIST solved this problem by developing their neuromorphic system completely using light. Its system uses single photons that act very much like synapses in the human brain. This requires far less power to run.

As we know, the human brain is the most power-efficient computing system in the world. The brain is capable of remarkable processing capabilities while only requiring a tiny amount of power to function.

And yet NIST’s system does even better. It uses 0.3% of the energy required by a human brain. Yet it operates 30,000 times faster.

So this is the best of both worlds. It combines low power consumption with incredibly high computational performance.

Such a system could reduce the costs of training AI-based neural networks by over 99%. And remember, some companies spend tens of millions of dollars a year to train their AIs.

So this technology could completely transform the computing industry. It would be adopted widely for AI applications.

Rest assured I’ll be watching very closely to see if any company steps up to license and commercialize this tech. That company would make for an incredible investment target at the right valuation.

Regards,

Jeff Brown
Editor, The Bleeding Edge