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Renowned astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson is perhaps best known for his podcast “Star Talk,” where he discusses various scientific topics with experts from around the world.
But he was also recently the victim of a deepfake video, in which he appeared to tell the world, after much careful consideration, that Earth was, in fact, flat.
Tyson, 67, is now on tour with his talk “This Just In: Latest Discoveries in the Universe!” He sat down with CBC News recently — and talked that deepfake video, what keeps him up at night, and how it feels to be called a “buzzkill.” The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Nicole Mortillaro: That deepfake that was just wild. How concerned are you about misinformation and disinformation going out like that?
Neil deGrasse Tyson: I’ve thought about this and the better deepfakes get, the more likely it … would be the death of the internet. The internet, you know, 1992 to 2028, and then it returns to just showing cat videos the way it once was. So I think it contains the seeds of its own unravelling if it continues in that way.
NM: You think the internet will die out?
NDT: If deepfakes are not constrained in some way … if you start doing that with politicians who are in sensitive areas of the world, where there’s unrest, where there are political tensions, it could be not only the unravelling of an informed democracy, it could be the unravelling of civilization itself.
WATCH | Tyson on trying to tell what’s real:
NM: So what do you think about scientific literacy and critical thinking? Are they under threat?
NDT: It’s not that there’s less critical thinking. It’s just that, if you’re not a critical thinker, the consequences to you are greater: in your health, in your security, this sort of thing. And in science class, they don’t teach — in school in general — they won’t teach critical thinking and maybe it’s time that becomes an entire class. I think the education system needs to shift in response to this.
NM: Let’s get into the space stuff. Because this is my stuff.
NDT: Bring it on.
NM: What maybe keeps you up at night about the universe, about the cosmos?
Astrophysicist and science educator Neil deGrasse Tyson sits down with the CBC’s Nicole Mortillaro to talk about his recent experience with a deepfake of himself, exciting developments in space science and what he really thinks about being called a ‘buzzkill’ for his sideline scientific commentary of movies.
NDT: I wonder whether we are smart enough to ever figure it all out. Why should we … have just enough smarts to figure out the universe? Might it require a more intelligent alien, for example?
It’s like the proverbial blind men touching the elephant. You know, there’s the toenails and the tusk and the tail and none of their descriptions match each other. And so they’re scratching their heads without seeing the entire coherent elephant … How blind are we with our feeble intellect, relative to what might be necessary to figure out the universe? I stay awake at night, wondering that.
NM: Something that has fascinated me was the fact that we didn’t know that those little fuzzy things in the sky, and seen in telescopes, were actual galaxies until 100 years ago. And now we’ve taken pictures of black holes at the centre of galaxies. We’ve taken a big leap in just even a hundred years. Do you think there’ll be as big as a leap in the next hundred years?
NDT: I don’t see why not. I mean, look at what we knew 100 years ago compared to what we knew in the year 2000. And what did we know in the year 1900 compared with the year 1800 … I think there’ll be breakthroughs. I don’t know that there will be [breakthroughs] … and I’m not here to list what the problems will be 75 years from now in the year 2100, because that’s a fool’s errand.
NM: I’m going to ask you a little sensitive question here. You’ve earned a reputation recently of being a buzzkill. How do you feel about that?
NDT: If I highlight something in a film that would or could be another way, I’ll only do so. So I will highlight something that, had the director, writer, producer gotten the science right, they could have told a better story. That’s where I’d take issue. Don’t tell me, ‘Well, I don’t want to be constrained by the science.’
About being a buzzkill, I don’t want to be treated any differently from how you might treat someone who’s a car expert, let’s say, and then there’s a period movie that takes place in 1958, let’s say, and then, parked on the street, is a 1962 Chevy Bel Air. You would say, ‘Hey, you know your car.’ That person would be respected for knowing that … But when I point out that BB-8 [from Star Wars] is a rolling spherical metal ball that would have skidded uncontrollably on sand, you’re going to say I’m a buzzkill? I just want the same respect you give others who carry expertise into the cinema.
