Cancel Culture: Putin Fears Artificial Intelligence May Erase Russia

As Russia continues its fight its war against Ukraine, its president fears artificial intelligence could attempt to “cancel” Russia.

Knewz.com reported that Vladimir Putin is promising a new Russian strategy to promote AI, to be announced shortly.

Putin recently spoke at an AI conference in Moscow and accused Western AI developers of ignoring Russia’s culture and language.

“The monopoly and domination of such… alien systems is unacceptable and dangerous,” Reuters quoted Putin as saying.

He added that some AI systems “reflect that part of Western ethics, norms of behavior, public policy to which we object,” according to the Associated Press.

Putin called it “xenophobic” to have algorithms that “can indicate to a machine that Russia, our culture, science, music, literature simply do not exist,” because they are based on data in English.

While China and the U.S. have become AI leaders in recent years, Russia has seemed more concerned with what Putin calls the “special military operation” in Ukraine.

Western countries have responded by imposing sanctions on Russia, some of which block AI partnership agreements.

Putin said the answer to developers who might attempt “cancel culture” against Russia is not to cancel AI.

“You cannot ban something,” Putin declared. “If we ban it, then it will develop somewhere else and we will fall behind.”

So Putin says he will sign a decree “in the very near future” updating Russia’s AI plan. He wants that to include more access to supercomputers.

But some people see a deeper plot in Putin’s AI announcement. They think the Kremlin could use AI to keep Putin in power, even if he dies.

“It is 100% possible that you could keep someone living within a deep fake for as long as they wish to push… videos out,” ESET Global Cybersecurity Advisor Jake Moore told Britain’s Express tabloid.

Such videos may sound like a modern version of “Max Headroom.” But Moore says the deepfake technology is increasing.

It was used against the mayor of London in early November. Someone spread a phony soundbite of Sadiq Khan calling for Armistice Day to be postponed because of a pro-Palestinian protest.

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Front Page Detectives has reported extensively on suspicions that Putin has at least one “body double” who makes appearances on his behalf. But Moore says AI could be a better explanation.

“You argue that he should look older now,” he explained, “but you can just age them within the algorithm to carry on as you would expect them to look.

“People are going to fall for it because I don’t think people are aware that this deepfake technology exists and how good it is.”