The Sniffer

Biological Computing and the Trouble with Watermarking

Episode Summary

Cathi Bond on synthetic, biological computing Nora Young on just how hard it may be to watermark deepfakes and other generative AI

Episode Notes

Hi folks!

Things get a little wild as Cathi Bond looks at Cortical Labs, which is researching how to design computational systems from a mixture of stem cells and a silicon substrate (via New Atlas). We take a speculative look at a potential future of biological computing.

Meanwhile, Nora Young looks at this Wired article on research into watermarking AI-generated images, and just how difficult that is turning out to be. How will we deal with the proliferation of deepfakes and similar forms of disinformation?