This is good news. The misuse of AI threatens the integrity of our elections and our ability to trust anything that is communicated to us other than in person. Justice was served!
The man responsible for a political robocalling hoax aimed at New Hampshire voters has been fined $6 million by the Federal Communications Commission.
Steve Kramer, the New Orleans-based political consultant who has admitted his involvement in the hoax, must pay the fine for violating the federal Truth in Caller ID Act, which makes it illegal to make automated telephone calls with intent to defraud or cause harm. The FCC says that it will hand the matter to the US Justice Department if Kramer doesn’t pay up in 30 days.
The hoax occurred in January, when New Hampshire voters received robocalls in the runup to the state’s primary elections. The calls, which featured a computer-generated voice that mimicked the voice of President Joe Biden, urged voters not to cast ballots in the primary.
Kramer hired New Orleans magician Paul Carpenter to create the recording with help from ElevenLabs, a company that uses artificial intelligence to generate highly realistic simulations of individuals’ voices. Carpenter has said that he didn’t know Kramer’s plans for the AI recording. Kramer has claimed that he did it to demonstrate the dangers posed by computer-generated “deepfakes.”
Lingo Telecom, the Missouri phone company that sent out the robocalls, agreed to pay a $1 million fine last month for its involvement in the hoax.
In addition to the FCC fine, Kramer faces 13 felony counts of attempted voter suppression in the New Hampshire courts, as well as 13 misdemeanor counts of impersonating a candidate.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
To my dear friends on this blog. Just a note to let you know that I live in St. Pete but have evacuated to my daughter’s house in Clearwater, which should be safer. Wondering today whether I will have a place to go back to, but it’s just stuff, right? I did get my guitars and a couple pieces of artwork out. Like an idiot, I forgot all my document except a driver’s license.
I don’t often share my religious beliefs here, and I am far from being conventionally religious. However, I think that the determinists and materialists are completely wrong. I share the widespread indigenous view that everything is the consciousness of the One, the same view held by the Lakota and Cherokee (my ancestry) and many other native American tribes, by the early and renewed (in our time) Shintoists, and by the Greeks and many other Western peoples in the earliest days of their extant history. I have been working on a series of video lectures called Christian Existentialism, to expound this view and show how it is confirmed by actual science today, as opposed to the Scientistic and breathtakingly of date religion of materialism. Scoff if you like, but listen to my lectures when they are available. I am saying prayers today to the Great Spirit–the Wakan Tanka, the Lakota called the One, for my friends and neighbors. Blessings on you all. Here, from Oleyesa’s The Soul of the Indian, 1903:
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The original attitude of the American Indian toward the Eternal, the “Great Mystery” that surrounds and embraces us, was as simple as it was exalted. To him it was the supreme conception, bringing with it the fullest measure of joy and satisfaction possible in this life.
The worship of the “Great Mystery” was silent, solitary, free from all self-seeking. It was silent, because all speech is of necessity feeble and imperfect; therefore the souls of my ancestors ascended to God in wordless adoration. It was solitary, because they believed that He is nearer to us in solitude, and there were no priests authorized to come between a man and his Maker. None might exhort or confess or in any way meddle with the religious experience of another. Among us all men were created sons of God and stood erect, as conscious of their divinity. Our faith might not be formulated in creeds, nor forced upon any who were unwilling to receive it; hence there was no preaching, proselyting, nor persecution, neither were there any scoffers or atheists.
There were no temples or shrines among us save those of nature. Being a natural man, the Indian was intensely poetical. He would deem it sacrilege to build a house for Him who may be met face to face in the mysterious, shadowy aisles of the primeval forest, or on the sunlit bosom of virgin prairies, upon dizzy spires and pinnacles of naked rock, and yonder in the jeweled vault of the night sky! He who enrobes Himself in filmy veils of cloud, there on the rim of the visible world where our Great-Grandfather Sun kindles his evening camp-fire, He who rides upon the rigorous wind of the north, or breathes forth His spirit upon aromatic southern airs, whose war-canoe is launched upon majestic rivers and inland seas—He needs no lesser cathedral!
That solitary communion with the Unseen which was the highest expression of our religious life is partly described in the word bambeday, literally “mysterious feeling,” which has been variously translated “fasting” and “dreaming.” It may better be interpreted as “consciousness of the divine.”
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Or as Yeshua of Nazareth said, heaven is not in some far-off place. It is within you and all around you. It is THIS WORLD seen from a state of vision. We have but to make it so. The Church got this all wrong, of course, because it was about command and coercion and control.
In the Gospel of John, the Pharisees come to Jesus, trying get him to commit blasphemy so that they’llhave an excuse for turning him over for execution. They ask him, is it true that you’re running around telling people that you are God? He answers them, saying, “Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?” Yeshua was referring to Psalm 82: 6, in which God says, “I said, ‘You are gods. And all of you are children of the most High.”
He was, as Emerson said in his Divinity School Address, not making a special claim for himself. He was making a claim for all of us.
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Be safe, Bob. I pray your home isn’t damaged. (I would have taken the guitars too.)
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I have a classic L5 and one remaining classical that I built. Wouldn’t want those in harm’s way!
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Very cool that you could build an acoustic. I can barely “build” a partscaster electric.
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I studied lutherie for a good while when I lived in Boston. This is one thing, at least, that I can do well.
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Very cool. I paid $300 for a bone nut and a fret level last month.
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Where did you study that in Boston?
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Oh, and love to you and yours, Flerp!
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Flerp: My favorite Nephew makes top of the line classical guitars. Check out ZebulonTurrentine.com. Had to get in a commercial
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Roy’s nephew’s work is really good, too. Go have a look at his guitars. Impressive.
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Praying for the safety of all. About halfway across Florida my cousins live, and I am concerned that they might be hit with some strong wind even that far in.
Concerning American Native views of religion, I have always been struck by the odd contradiction in American history of religious freedom as viewed by the European and as viewed by the Lakota. Europeans accepted the idea of doctrine and saw religious freedom as defined by secular government not taking sides in doctrinal debates. By contrast, we learn from Black Elk Speaks, that the Lakota tradition was to allow the individual to experience some vision, and the rest of the group would help him build a dance around that vision. I can just see the pope instructing the cardinals to make up liturgical practice to celebrate the ideas of John Calvin.
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Black Elk says, we build our Tepees in circles, and we place them in a circle. The great hoop of the nation. Why? Birds also build their nests in circles because they have the same religion we do.
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Don’t leave out what the Deists thought, including Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, George Washington, James Madison, et al.
I think Deism had a serious influence on these men while they were writing the U.S. Constitution.
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Funny, I always thought deism was a cover story for the unbelieving founders.
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Glad to hear that you’ve moved to a safe place Bob! I saw a weather man break into tears when describing the colossal size of the storm. Take care.
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Praying for you and yours, and for all in the path of these hurricanes.
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Wishing you strong shelter from the storm, Bob, & the same to your daughter, family & friends. Stay safe & well.
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Do you know how your home is yet?
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Good. Shut this nonsense down.
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I think this is a very problematic technology. It challenges our notion of freedom of speech. To the obvious prohibition of crying fire in a crowd, somehow we must add using technology to cry in someone else’s voice. Using technology to spread false information has become a cry of fire.
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Hopefully the word will get out that using technology to influence an election will have dire consequences.
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This is really terrifying because I teach junior high, where they have pretty good technical capabilities and no sense. Some kid could ruin a teacher’s career so easily with this artificial “intelligence.”
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