[HN Gopher] Facebook is researching AI systems that see, hear, r...
___________________________________________________________________
Facebook is researching AI systems that see, hear, remember
everything you do
Author : coldcode
Score : 141 points
Date : 2021-10-17 12:31 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theverge.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com)
| fithisux wrote:
| ... and don't forgive, unless you buy the "premium" version.
| arpa wrote:
| No, thank you. But I suspect people would still accept and use
| that tech just like they have accepted always-online/always-
| listening digital assistants.
|
| Just imagine the possibilities of large-scale manipulations, tho!
| fctorial wrote:
| Do you use history in your shell?
| CGamesPlay wrote:
| I do, but I don't upload it to any other parties.
| danShumway wrote:
| What exactly is the comparison here?
|
| Remembering my shell history for commands I run locally on a
| single computer, stored in a format I can control/edit, that
| is never transmitted to other people or used for advertising,
| that is fed into a simplistic history algorithm I have
| complete control over, and that I can toggle on and off at
| will even for individual commands -- that's the same as a 3rd
| party analyzing on remote servers everything I _look at_
| while I 'm walking around the real world?
| jmfldn wrote:
| When I read articles like this I experience a mini existential
| crisis that we could be heading to some very dark places
| technologically.
|
| I don't need to go into the reasons why it's bad. For anyone
| who's aware of the last 15 years of social media critique or
| novels like Brave New World, it's obvious that this would be a
| dystopia multiplier. Ad tech on steroids. If you think the
| manipulation is bad now just wait until this data is fed into the
| ML models.
|
| If you must have everything you see, do and say recorded then
| please, for the love of god, let's use non-profit, open source /
| free software platforms where we own our own data.
| still_grokking wrote:
| I'm already looking forward to brain-internet interfaces.
|
| Does FB invest also in those?
|
| Just imagine, all the possibilities!
|
| [Do I need to mark this as sarcasm?]
| 908087 wrote:
| As a society, we've been sleepwalking into a very dark place
| technologically for well over a decade now, and those of us who
| have tried to point that out have been routinely shouted down
| and called luddites for it.
|
| I fear we're far past the point of no return, and there is no
| escape from the disaster we've created even for those of us who
| have avoided participating ourselves.
| radmuzom wrote:
| In addition to being a "dystopia multiplier", I predict this is
| going to cause a lot of social problems going forward. This is
| what the Black Mirror episode "The Entire History of You"
| warned us about.
| sneak wrote:
| In one generation in the US we went as a whole society from
| most private p2p conversations not being logged and monitored
| and recorded by the government, to most private p2p
| conversations not only being logged and monitored and recorded,
| but available to the state at any time without probable cause
| or a warrant (FISA Amendments Act).
|
| iMessage, WhatsApp, Gmail, Facebook Messenger, Instagram: all
| of these are stored on the server effectively unencrypted (in
| the case of iMessage and WhatsApp, via the chat backups, a
| backdoor to the e2e encryption they promise). The state has
| access to all of them at any time. To top it off the carriers
| and a million different apps are constantly logging your
| location history for all time, for every member of society.
|
| If you think that isn't one of the most useful and powerful
| databases in the history of mankind, I question your
| imagination.
|
| The massive damage, which may just be existential, is not
| apparent to the USA just yet, but it will be eventually.
|
| The balance of power has shifted even more dramatically than
| just about ever before in history, in any country in history.
| Alarm bells should be going off left and right but nobody seems
| to care and it's just business as usual.
| ianlevesque wrote:
| WhatsApp just fixed that by encrypting its backups too.
| https://faq.whatsapp.com/general/chats/how-to-turn-on-and-
| tu...
| _Understated_ wrote:
| It's Facebook! How can you trust them?
|
| If you honestly believe them then I've got a bridge you
| might wanna take a look at...
| still_grokking wrote:
| The key handling is (as always with this big corp "crypto")
| murky to say the least.
|
| FB effectively still controls the encryption keys.
|
| Coincidentally nobody of the usual suspects complained that
| "the terrorists are going dark".
|
| Putting this facts together I'm assured the crypto can be
| broken at will.
| sneak wrote:
| Is it opt-in? If so that means ~0% of people will be using
| it, so all your chats will still be backed up non-e2e by
| the other side of every conversation.
| jmfldn wrote:
| Agree. We desperately need something like Tim Berners Lee's
| Solid. A way for us to take control from the centralised data
| silos owned by big tech. I know its almost mission impossible
| to turn the tide, but if the alternative is giving in then
| engineers worried about this must fight for alternatives,
| however grim the odds.
|
| As for this specific issue, of course there are the usual
| massive issues around data privacy. The major issue I was
| alluding to here is ad tech AI processes being fed an
| unimaginably rich source of intimate data. It's a horrifying
| prospect.
| 01100011 wrote:
| > most private p2p conversations not being logged and
| monitored
|
| FWIW, I think telephone company billing records have been
| doing this for nearly a century. Sure, it wasn't the official
| government policy, but the data was recorded. ECHELON has
| been around quite a long time as well, and that was indeed
| government monitoring of large amounts of international
| communications.
|
| I'm not trying to normalize it, just adding some context.
| sneak wrote:
| I meant content, not metadata.
|
| Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp chat backups, iMessage chat
| backups (incl all geotagged photo attachments), et c.
| [deleted]
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Sure.
|
| Though metadata is often more useful than content. And
| the point is that telco providers, government agencies,
| and all those who've hacked into them, know of phone
| calls made from numbers you no longer remember you had.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| I'm ... "only" ... aware of US call history data being
| available dating to the 1980s, through the "Hemisphere"
| programme:
|
| https://www.eff.org/cases/hemisphere
|
| There may well be earlier extant data. It was probably
| tabulated either on punch-card or magnetic tape, and
| certainly _was_ used for billing purposes. Prior to the
| 1980s, large-scale data preservation was quite expensive.
|
| If anyone has information of earlier comprehensive call
| history data surviving to the present, I'd appreciate being
| illuminated.
|
| More citations of Hemisphere and call history data in an
| earlier comment:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22208434
| LuisMondragon wrote:
| AFAIK the chat backup is optional. I've never stored a
| backup.
| sneak wrote:
| Everyone you chat with does (because it's on by default),
| making your choice irrelevant.
| [deleted]
| decasteve wrote:
| Social media have become Bradbury's parlour walls.
| mgreb wrote:
| Wait, are such devices even legal? Looks like walking spy-cam to
| me. I want to know if someone records video/takes picture of me.
| With this glasses you can`t tell if you are being filmed.
| blackoil wrote:
| Is it illegal to shoot videos in public place without
| permission of all present ? Private places may have their own
| rules. Also this is R&D, long way before such questions matter.
| jjulius wrote:
| Nah, these questions matter now.
| picardythird wrote:
| Don't you think answering these questions should guide the
| R&D?
| de_keyboard wrote:
| In most western countries it is legal. I'm not sure it should
| be, given recent technological advances.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| Yes, there is a "right to panorama" in most countries. However
| this dataset has been recorded with the _express permission_ of
| all the people involved. Which is different to the imagenet,
| where they just crawled a whole bunch of images and called it a
| day.
|
| Second, you need to take the "Argh its facebook, boo hiss" hat
| off. Then apply some critical thinking. an AR world that is
| connected to the physical _requires_ this kind of thing. Your
| device need to anticipate what you are going to do so that it
| can work out the probability of your need and act on it. Like
| Jeeves, but less able, and more annoying. As its ML, it need a
| massive dataset to train on. this is <0.5% of that dataset.
|
| Depending on how things are done, if facebook are first to
| market with a usable AR system, they will be forced to have
| anonymisation built in (as in remove faces at the sensor level,
| unless you have permission to remember). Apple will have a
| showy "pixelation" layer, that is mostly ineffectual, but will
| PR it out to make them seem like they've cured cancer. Google,
| if they ever manage to get back into AR will just make things
| cheap and let the shitty android marketplace spy on what ever
| they like.
|
| You will also have to remember that the power budget of these
| glasses is absolutely fucking tiny. All day screen, SLAM, AI
| and possibly music will need to all fit in to ~2-5watt hours.
| This means that virtually everything will need to be on device.
| (dropping to the cloud eats a boat load of power.)
|
| Now that's not to say that 100% accurate [if thats even
| possible] "diarisation" won't rip society apart.
|
| There are lots of questions that need to be answered, the
| problem is, tech journalists are ill equipped to ask them. Most
| of the teams designing the glasses are well meaning, but their
| targets and life experience has not equipped them to do a good
| job at ethics.
| TeeMassive wrote:
| > Episodic memory: What happened when (e.g., "Where did I leave
| my keys?")?
|
| > Forecasting: What am I likely to do next (e.g., "Wait, you've
| already added salt to this recipe")?
|
| > Hand and object manipulation: What am I doing (e.g., "Teach me
| how to play the drums")?
|
| > Audio-visual diarization: Who said what when (e.g., "What was
| the main topic during class?")?
|
| > Social interaction: Who is interacting with whom (e.g., "Help
| me better hear the person talking to me at this noisy
| restaurant")?
|
| Now consider the fact that Facebook is actively suppressing some
| subjects from popping up in their users' feed. If users becomes
| reliant on this AI to initiate, guide and execute most day to day
| tasks then Facebook will literally have the power to make certain
| aspects of their users' life disappear.
|
| For example, you have a contact who criticizes Facebook or their
| business partners too much? Don't remind them of their birthday.
| dylan604 wrote:
| It just seems like the people at FB have watched Black Mirror and
| decided they want to do all the things they saw.
| shimonabi wrote:
| That "social credit" episode was really creepy.
| [deleted]
| hetspookjee wrote:
| Sometimes I dream of a Facebook machine; e.g. the eerily creepy
| recommender for your next best action, but than with an objective
| function not to optimise the recommenders revenue (by being as
| effective ad seller as possible) but rather changing the
| objective function to optimise for health, wellbeing and
| happiness. Now surely it is far from trivial to define these, but
| atleast you can make a start somewhere:
|
| - You could factor in the cost for environment per each
| recommendation and have that drive down the score of a
| recommendation: I think the "fast-fashion" idiotic anti-
| environmental trends would die out fast than.
|
| - You could factor in, based on some overarching theme of ethos,
| that each person needs to eat healthy and recommend the right
| healhty food at the right time; instead of recommending the next
| best McDonalds burger to an already obese person.
|
| - Take into consideration, based on studies, what actual heatlhy
| behaviour looks like, and try to fit that to a person - with
| respect to their actual persona and state of health (which are
| obviously known already given that each bit of you is pretty much
| on the street already)
|
| I could go on, but in truth, a personal recommender that would
| know me better than I even would, and would optimise towards
| happiness and greatness, instead of # shit sold like it currently
| is, would already be a tremendous improvement. Surely, this idea
| is also far from original, but I hope that we someday get to such
| a thing. Atleast a thing that stops recommending environmentally
| destructive behaviours like buying so much stuff I don't really
| need.
| istorical wrote:
| I find it absolutely painful that our recommender ML based
| content discovery streams like YouTube and Tiktok and Instagram
| don't have multiple 'hats' you can put on and take off, in the
| sense of saying 'hey TikTok, I'm feeling frisky, feel free to
| send me those thirst trap videos now', but then 30 minutes
| later you can say 'OK TikTok, I know I watched a bunch of those
| dancing videos, but can you send me the educational stuff now'.
| Ditto IG, YouTube etc. Like 'hey YouTube, engage education
| mode', 'hey YouTube, engage self-improvement mode', 'hey
| YouTube, I just wanna relax and laugh'.
|
| I know that there are categories, even auto-generated
| categories on YouTube, but they aren't that great or all
| encompassing. My biggest critique of present personalized ML
| content streams is that there's no two-way communication. I
| can't tell IG that yes I wanna see big booties right now, but
| no I don't want to see them five hours from now. Or I want to
| see aquaponics right now since I'm on a learning binge, but
| later tonight I don't need more technology and science, I just
| need to laugh and unwind.
|
| Our actions, our content consumption, is not allowed to be one
| and done. Every move you make is seen as a signal to the
| algorithm that you want more of that all the time. The closest
| thing we have is incognito mode, or maintaining multiple
| accounts for different purposes. But why can't you look at an
| ex on instagram one time without them showing you that person
| everytime you open the app for 5 years. It's really toxic and
| unsustainable that all of your actions are seen as 'yes, please
| more of this all the time'.
| jorpal wrote:
| Anyone remember StumbleUpon? You could easily edit your
| interests and get different types of content. It was the
| pinnacle.
| clairity wrote:
| > "...in the sense of saying 'hey TikTok, I'm feeling frisky,
| feel free to send me those thirst trap videos now'..."
|
| i once pitched this type of user experience (for the general
| case, not tiktok, which didn't exist at the time) at a
| hackathon competition, and it was popular enough then to win
| us some free stuff. the demo we hacked together was very
| rudimentary, but had we gotten a little further along with a
| proof of concept before falling apart, who knows what might
| have happened...
|
| the biggest challenge was actually licensing costs and rights
| management, not the recommendation engine (though that was
| challenging too).
| mertd wrote:
| > changing the objective function to optimise for health,
| wellbeing and happiness.
|
| Whose? Individual or group wellbeing? Optimizing for one can
| lead to very suboptimal outcomes for the other.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| This feels like the argument about weather the self-driving
| car should hit two grandmas or the guy in the car. The
| discussion is not productive, because the answer that saves
| the most people is to get self-driving cars on the streets as
| soon as possible.
|
| As for the answer to your question, just go for best
| wellbeing for the individual. Happier, healthier, less obese,
| fitter, non-smoking people are also a net benefit to society.
|
| Assuming the technology works at all.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| Unfortunately I think we live in a society where the people who
| could use this the most are the people least able to afford the
| costs of such a service.
| [deleted]
| dado3212 wrote:
| FB has gotten roasted for doing emotional manipulation in the
| past: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/06/28/faceb
| ook.... Not confident that the company trying to specifically
| target emotions (even ostensibly happiness) would be taken that
| well.
| Frost1x wrote:
| I'm not sure it would matter. The general population that
| compose Facebooks revenue stream don't seem to care. We keep
| hinting at these ethical conundrums that invisibly regulate
| massive businesses when they simply don't. It's not just
| tech, it's big businesses in general. The ethics only matter
| if a large enough population of the consumer and product base
| both care and act. Only demand matters and if demand doesn't
| care or you can manipulate the demand not to care, you can
| get away with about anything that isn't explicitly illegal.
|
| I suspected Facebook does the work you referenced but I had
| no idea they actually did and had any flack about it. I'd
| like to think I'm a fairly tech savvy and an informed
| consumer (especially around issues like this), maybe I'm not,
| but if I am, what hope do you have of the general population
| caring when they aren't even aware as a first hurdle before
| the other massive hurdles of getting them to care enough to
| act.
|
| The fact is that this type of work isn't regulated. Funding
| agencies regulate human subject work for your typical public
| funded research work and require a lot of informed consent.
| The leverage they use is that should you violate these terms,
| you may have current and future funding pulled, may be black
| listed across multiple agencies, and may find it difficult to
| pursue any career in research in the future involving human
| subjects. There are lots of disincentives not do this on the
| premise of manipulating your resources.
|
| Meanwhile, entities like Facebook have piles of such
| resources and have a vested interest in all sorts of this
| questionable work. Pretty much nothing prevents them from
| doing it since they're self funding. Unless you can remove
| their self fundability, it will continue. This goes back to
| problem of needing consumers to vote with their wallet in an
| effective manner.
|
| The other option is to create the explicit policy protections
| in law to regulate these activities but as a society, capital
| has convinced everyone that all regulation is evil and will
| only hinder consumer/citizen progress. You need not only
| policy but real enforcement teeth as well that create
| disincentives that are catastrophic enough not to tempt risk
| for the potential gains.
| hetspookjee wrote:
| I do not believe Facebook as a company would be possible in
| generating such a thing. And if they could I can only be
| cynical about it. I rather put my faith in the open source
| community where people tinker on their own algorithms, and
| provide their own data. I am sure the first initiatives are
| already on their way regarding personal recommenders. But I
| don't know any. If anyone does, please recommend :)
| rumblerock wrote:
| I'm certainly wish this were possible, and people who left
| would probably go back to the platform if it reformed itself in
| this direction. But as the years go on all I see are more and
| more catastrophic impacts from short term thinking and near
| term profit generation, whether it's Facebook, climate, VC-
| funded startups or the current supply chain crisis.
|
| Perhaps the public consciousness around the unhealthy design of
| existing social media is approaching a point where a new
| Facebook-like social network could actually achieve a critical
| mass of users. On the order of years I think it'll happen (like
| rates of smoking cigarettes), but how long that will be who
| knows. I can only hope it comes in the next few years as I fear
| the destructive ripple effects through culture and society are
| only getting worse.
| moogly wrote:
| WW3 might be against Facebook.
| kwertyoowiyop wrote:
| All I need is to see people's names right above their heads.
| jstx1 wrote:
| It should only cost you half of your remaining life span.
| [deleted]
| pesenti wrote:
| I support Facebook AI. The actual news is that we are releasing
| an extensive egocentric dataset with associated tasks for the
| research community. Collecting such dataset in a private and
| responsible way is a significant challenge. Happy to answer any
| questions.
|
| https://ai.facebook.com/blog/teaching-ai-to-perceive-the-wor...
| amelius wrote:
| Glad for you that you collected such a nice dataset.
|
| Wouldn't it be nice if selected external researchers too could
| collect data on the Facebook platform with the explicit consent
| of users?
| pesenti wrote:
| Here is a link to all the tools we provide:
| https://research.fb.com/data/
| knownjorbist wrote:
| Maximizing a manipulation engine is not what we as a species
| need to be investing any time or effort into.
| Hnrobert42 wrote:
| What are you all doing to allow those of us that don't want to
| be a part of your utopia to opt out?
| pesenti wrote:
| I encourage you to read the details of the news, in
| particular how the data was collected with full consent from
| all (something that most research datasets don't do well). It
| doesn't answer your question directly but gives you an idea
| on how we think about these issues. AI-powered wearables will
| have stringent privacy guarantees, both for the wearer and
| the people around.
| thr0wawayf00 wrote:
| HN user asks a simple and direct question to Facebook's VP
| of AI:
|
| > What are you all doing to allow those of us that don't
| want to be a part of your utopia to opt out?
|
| Answer from Facebook VP of AI:
|
| > I encourage you to read the details of the news that
| doesn't actually answer your question but gives you an idea
| of how we think
|
| I'm glad to see that even on a industry-specific forum like
| Hacker News, we can't get straight answers from people like
| this. Giving people "an idea of how we think" seems like a
| great way to stay vague enough that your thinking can
| change however it needs to over time to fulfill your
| business objectives, health or safety of the community be
| damned. Facebook doesn't need to give us vague "ideas", it
| needs to provide straightforward answers to straightforward
| questions.
|
| > AI-powered wearables will have stringent privacy
| guarantees, both for the wearer and the people around.
|
| Reading a sentence like this from a Facebook exec
| completely stretches credulity for me. I have zero
| confidence that your definition of "stringent privacy
| guarantees" is anything close to something that actually
| benefits the community as a whole.
| pine390 wrote:
| This reminds me of the squid game when they say "You
| signed a disclaimer of physical rights today, didn't
| you?"
| dang wrote:
| Please don't attack people like this when they post to
| HN, regardless of how you feel about their employer. You
| may not owe $BigCo better, but you owe this community
| better if you're participating in it. When something
| remains unanswered, it's enough to ask substantive
| questions respectfully.
|
| We don't want HN to be a hostile place that tars-and-
| feathers people who show up to explain another side of a
| story--especially not on a topic they know about. For
| most of us, our work is what we know the most about.
| Therefore, people showing up to discuss something related
| to their work are among the highest-value contributors HN
| can have. We don't want to discentivize that, and
| attacking them for it goes directly against the mandate
| of the site. You don't have to agree, obviously, but you
| do have to stick to the site guidelines. (Btw, that also
| means that you shouldn't be posting generic-indignant
| rants here.)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?query=disincent%20by:dang&dateRan
| ge=...
|
| Edit: I just noticed that you got much nicer later in the
| thread. That's way better--thanks.
| still_grokking wrote:
| > "gives you an idea of how we think"
|
| It's the usual trick to be able to say afterwards: "I
| didn't say _that_! You just made up some interpretation.
| _I 'm_ not responsible for _your interpretation_. "
| saiya-jin wrote:
| I mean, what do you expect. This is public forum, he
| comes honestly unanonymously in front of huge crowd
| already in _very_ negative mood towards this. You can 't
| be a VP of such a thing in one of the richest companies
| globally ever, and not know how to play politics and
| lawyering safely.
|
| pesenti - I have respect that you come forward like this
| and attempting to push mankind's boundaries.
| Unfortunately, FB is probably the second worst company
| ever (first could be Palantir) to take on this. I don't
| trust them a attometer, and never will. Any attempt to
| change this attitude always ends badly, see ie Carmack.
|
| Very mixed feelings is probably the best description I
| can give.
| thr0wawayf00 wrote:
| I expect that those who have power should bear the
| responsibility of being asked hard questions and
| answering them honestly, because a society which
| discourages us from asking difficult questions of those
| in power is doomed to fail.
| pesenti wrote:
| The question was about opting out of our "utopia", I
| wouldn't call that a "straightforward question". If you
| do have a straightforward question, especially about this
| or another specific project, I can try to provide a
| straightforward answer.
| thr0wawayf00 wrote:
| Great! How do I make sure that nothing about me ever
| passes through a Facebook server/ETL job/datalake/neural
| net/whatever? Can that even be guaranteed? Is Facebook
| generating a shadow profile on me or using data I've
| generated either myself or through friends that have
| taken pictures/videos/etc of me, and if maybe, how do I
| opt out?
|
| Facebook just released Ray Ban smart glasses that don't
| look any different from standard Ray Bans and don't
| provide a solid design affordance to communicate to
| others when they're active, so I don't really get the
| feeling that Facebook cares at all about who is being
| swept up in their systems.
| pesenti wrote:
| No, that's not a reasonable assumption. Photos or videos
| of you are likely on Facebook's servers, uploaded by
| friends or others when you are in public.
|
| What I can assure you though is that if you are not a
| user, we are not recognizing you in these pictures and
| videos. We won't do that without explicit consent from
| users.
| thr0wawayf00 wrote:
| Thanks Jerome, I really do appreciate your answer and I
| know I'm probably not the most fun person to talk to.
|
| I do have a follow-up on this if you'll entertain me: why
| is it that Facebook stores content of people that it
| doesn't recognize?
|
| Granted, I'm but a lowly web developer, but it seems like
| creating business logic that automatically removes
| content with people that aren't Facebook users would be
| pretty straightforward to implement. You've already
| solved the hardest part of that problem, the facial
| recognition, so why not go all the way?
|
| Moving forward, you'd have a really simple approach to
| privacy that's transparent and people understand without
| needing to get into the weeds.
|
| Receiving assurance that I'm not being recognized in
| photos and videos isn't very comforting when I see
| Facebook releasing products like the "smart" Ray Bans.
| Recognizing people in images is only one of many types of
| data that Facebook gleans from that content, and I don't
| want anything involving me being processed in any way by
| that company, whatsoever.
| still_grokking wrote:
| > Recognizing people in images is only one of many types
| of data that Facebook gleans from that content, and I
| don't want anything involving me being processed in any
| way by that company, whatsoever.
|
| Which is a basic right under GDPR.
|
| No private entity is allowed to store or process data
| about you for their purposes without your consent.
|
| Did FB just said they are doing it though?
| still_grokking wrote:
| What does "we are not recognizing you" mean? Of course
| you can't "recognize" someone you don't know, so what do
| you try to say here?
|
| Do you gather data about those "unknown" persons.
|
| Do you try to match information about "unknown" persons
| form different sources?
| wonderwonder wrote:
| Thanks for answering questions. In regards to this. If I
| have a Facebook account, and then close it, is my
| existing data in Facebook's systems erased including
| image recognition / tracking based preferences, etc?
| jjulius wrote:
| >I encourage you to read the details of the news, in
| particular how the data was collected with full consent
| from all (something that most research datasets don't do
| well).
|
| I don't care to hear about the consent you received for
| this controlled study. I care to hear about how I/we can
| opt-out from something like this when it is eventually
| deployed in the wild en masse as part of an actual product.
| I'm pretty sure that's what OP was also asking about. Can
| you elaborate on that?
| pesenti wrote:
| It's hard to elaborate on something that's not developed
| yet.
|
| Here are the principles we are using when developing
| these products:
|
| https://about.facebook.com/realitylabs/responsible-
| innovatio...
|
| In practice, it will mean that some things you will know
| about, but don't necessarily give consent (i.e., someone
| taking a picture or a video of you), while other will
| likely require consent (i.e., recognizing you in these
| pictures/videos).
| still_grokking wrote:
| > In practice, it will mean that some things you will
| know about, but don't necessarily give consent (i.e.,
| someone taking a picture or a video of you)
|
| This would be outright illegal in the EU.
|
| Even someone is taking photos / videos of me this person
| is not allowed to share those with third parties without
| my consent.
|
| If this content is going straight to FB this wouldn't be
| legal in the first place.
|
| Of course FB is fine with that as they just shift the
| responsibility for the illegal actions onto the person
| who is uploading things without consent. (Same "trick" as
| with phone contacts upload).
|
| FB is using a legal loophole here. Nobody will sue his /
| her friends. And even if someone tried, it's after the
| fact anyway: FB can't be forced to "unlearn" the gathered
| information.
| mdoms wrote:
| Do you think that most people believe Facebook privacy
| guarantees are worth the bits they're written in?
| pesenti wrote:
| No but they should:
|
| https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-
| releases/2019/07/ftc-i...
| prox wrote:
| Facebook got a penalty, but the main gripe is probably
| that it shouldn't have been necessary to give one in the
| first place. I think what is on everyones mind is : "how
| can we trust a company that has a bad track record?"
|
| I think in the coming years FB should invest more in a
| public conversation on these issues. How can we meet the
| future in a way that our data is in factuality is our
| data, even though it's stored by a third party such as
| yourself.
|
| Especially in light of in the FB model, where the user
| seems to be the product, and advertisers the client.
| pesenti wrote:
| My point in linking to the settlement wasn't about the
| fine, it was about the guarantees, oversight, and
| accountability that came with it. Read the FTC news
| release, and you'll see that these are pretty extensive.
|
| And I agree completely on the public conversation, this
| is why we released this dataset and why we are doing
| project Aria.
| prox wrote:
| Understood, and I reread the article just in case. My
| point is/was that it must come as a natural impulse to be
| privacy sensitive. Privacy hopefully becomes part of the
| culture / dna of Facebook, not just because the FCC and
| the privacy board are looking over your shoulders, so to
| say :)
|
| How do we prevent becoming "walkable surveillance
| machines"? How can we control the scope and and the issue
| of consent? These are more rhetorical questions, but
| hopefully it is part of the dialogue internally at FB.
| pesenti wrote:
| These are great points. And yes, we'll only get there if
| it becomes part of the culture, which this is trying to
| communicate:
|
| https://about.facebook.com/realitylabs/responsible-
| innovatio...
|
| but I don't expect you to take it at face value yet, we
| have a long way to go.
| picardythird wrote:
| One of the features outlined in the article for this post
| was for the glasses to remember things that other people
| said. How would such other people who don't want to be
| recorded for these purposes opt out?
| KaiserPro wrote:
| This is a static dataset. You'll want to ask that
| question about "Project Aria".
|
| for example, can FB provide a list of recording locations
| and times, so I can request my image/audio removed?
|
| How good is facebook's anonymisation system? what % of
| faces can be removed (on average)
|
| Has every single piece of footage captured with Aria been
| anonymised?
| pesenti wrote:
| From https://about.facebook.com/realitylabs/projectaria/
|
| "Participants will only record in either Facebook offices
| (once they reopen), wearers' private homes (with consent
| from all members of the household), or public spaces, and
| won't record in private venues without written consent
| from such places. Before any information gathered in a
| public place is made available to our researchers, it
| will be automatically scrubbed to blur faces and vehicle
| license plates."
|
| So we anonymize all the content collected in public. I
| don't have the stats for the face blurring algorithm, and
| while you can ask for your data to be removed, we don't
| provide locations/times. These are good suggestions
| though.
| still_grokking wrote:
| > So we anonymize all the content collected in public. I
| don't have the stats for the face blurring algorithm
| [...]
|
| I see some contradiction here.
|
| You don't know "the stats for the face blurring
| algorithm" but you're saying you "anonymize all the
| content collected"?
|
| If the stats don't say it's 100% (which is impossible
| afaik if done by machines) you obviously don't anonymize
| upfront all the content collected.
| pesenti wrote:
| That's a good question and I don't think we have all the
| answers yet. But I expect that many functionalities will
| need to request and get consent from 3rd parties.
| still_grokking wrote:
| If you can't answer this particular question after you've
| already advertised that feature there are only two
| possibilities to explain this knowledge gap:
|
| 1. You don't think upfront about the consequences your
| products have for people's privacy.
|
| 2. You don't care about the consequences your products
| have for people's privacy, and leave the particular
| details for the lawyers of how such products could still
| be distributed legally.
|
| Which of this explanations should we prefer?
| pesenti wrote:
| Which feature are you talking about? This is a research
| project, not a product. The point of research projects is
| to investigate and figure out answers we don't have
| today.
| still_grokking wrote:
| > One of the features outlined in the article for this
| post was for the glasses to remember things that other
| people said.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28898645
|
| So just to be sure: Is this feature one of the goals of
| this research, yes or no?
|
| From the same post:
|
| > How would such other people who don't want to be
| recorded for these purposes opt out?
|
| To make the obvious very explicit: The previous question
| (which you just praised as a "good question") is about
| this feature. Wasn't this clear to you until now? I'm
| wondering. This is a simple conversation thread not hard
| to follow.
| rapnie wrote:
| > I support Facebook AI.
|
| As VP that doesn't suprise me. The problem is trust, and it
| is continuously eroding further and further the more we get
| to know how your company operates.
| dabbledash wrote:
| >> It doesn't answer your question directly
|
| Then how about you try again and answer it directly this
| time?
| dannykwells wrote:
| This comment needs a serious disclaimer that you are a VP of AI
| at Facebook. Its implied in the above, but such serious COI
| requires acknowledgement.
| nbzso wrote:
| I support free and open web. We are in defining point in time
| in which a possible tech dystopia is upon us. No paycheck or
| "advancements" will remove the dangers and damages done by
| greed and machinations of few to Big to fail companies. No
| dataset or "business" existence is rationalization for creating
| a system of data-hoaridng and data exploitation.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| What is your price?
|
| Who knows it with greater accuracy, you, or FB?
| [deleted]
| blunte wrote:
| Regardless of who provides this, and even irrespective of
| marketing concerns, there most likely will be data leaks/theft.
| Imaging having audio+video recordings of what you see and what
| you say in the hands of the wrong people. And "the wrong people"
| could be a wide array of different parties, from banks to police
| to political enemies to nosy neighbors and beyond.
|
| Granted, many of us already collect and give away significant
| amounts of very personal data, some of which regularly gets
| leaked or stolen; but first person video and audio recordings?...
| scary.
|
| And then with Facebook... I trust Zuckerberg with my life data as
| much as I trust his choice in hairstylists.
| [deleted]
| goldenkey wrote:
| It's so strange how everytime I get a Facebook link from someone,
| it requires me to login to read more than 1/4 of it ( and it's
| cut off just at the right place to entice ) and then before I
| know it, I'm looking at a bunch of silly unread notifications and
| terribleness in my feed. It's strange, like a realizing I was
| hypnotized for a second. I immediately log out and close the
| window as I snap out of it. Facebook is truly...a cancer. Do not
| give me the whole song and dance about how their targeted ads
| help small businesses. 99% of the stuff I've seen on FB,
| business-wise, is ads for shady products, scams or schemes.
|
| They took a truly golden opportunity to connect people and
| ravaged it, then turned to acquiring every possible competitor
| they could, as their main product turned into hot garbage.
|
| Even AOL garners more of my respect than FB, how is this even
| possible?! FB needs to die like AOL died. It'll only take the
| boomer generation to die out. Unfortunately, Instagram is still a
| decent property, probably because they didn't let Zuckerfuck fuck
| it up. Expect Instagram to become cancer too once FB is no longer
| the main profit center.
| achenet wrote:
| This reminds me of the Ted Chiang story The Truth of Fact, the
| Truth of Feeling.
| throwawaymanbot wrote:
| Of course they are... I wonder if they are doing this already and
| are trying to find a way to justify it by saying.. ohhh it was
| the AI... not us...
| fergie wrote:
| There is no way that this will ever be legal in the EU.
| h2odragon wrote:
| Apparently whoever paid for the most recent "Facebook is Bad"
| media hate package, only bought the 3 day ticket. Cheap bastards.
| knownjorbist wrote:
| Facebook is consciously aware of the fact that they're
| optimizing a manipulation engine that has outsized net-negative
| effects on societies worldwide.
| lucasverra wrote:
| Who would benefit from that service? Maybe PR services
| companies? "See what is happening to Fb, we can help you avoid
| that Mr other dodgy Tech"
|
| Who else?
| blackoil wrote:
| Traditional Media. Politicians. Competing Social Networks.
|
| Also other tech. companies as FB is sucking up all
| media/political/people's energy and the rest can cruise
| current wave unharmed.
| faeyanpiraat wrote:
| What social networks are you referring to?
| pessimizer wrote:
| Not worth asking. It's part of a bizarre theory that Big
| Media is not only a single cabal, but that cabal is
| constantly whiteboarding attacks on the tech companies
| that have bought large pieces of it.
|
| I think it's for two reasons: 1) it's scarier to think
| that Big Media and Big Tech are getting along swimmingly
| despite a few minor conflicts and necessary keyfabe for
| the plebs, and 2) people who do horrible things for money
| in Big Tech want to feel better about themselves, and
| want people to think well of them (not like they think of
| people who worked at AIG, Arthur Andersen, or
| Countrywide.)
| sabujp wrote:
| if you use fb, unfollow everything and everyone and then either
| selectively follow what you like or don't ever follow anyone
| again :
| https://gist.github.com/renestalder/c5b77635bfbec8f94d28#gis... ,
| it will greatly reduce your time on fb.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| I hope it remembers why I deactivated my FB account.
| mlok wrote:
| When you deactivate your FB account they keep all your datas. I
| hope you know that. Deleting your account should delete your
| datas, though. (But I don't 100% trust they do. And maybe some
| national agencies keep a copy)
| dataviz1000 wrote:
| So you are saying that you hope it remembers why you went to
| https://www.facebook.com/deactivate where you deactivated your
| account without deleting your profile?
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| Gys wrote:
| You will be replaced internally by the same AI impersonating
| you. To keep the ads running.
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| I wish you so many upvotes for this comment.
| throwinawaysoon wrote:
| upvotes: thoughts and prayers of the internet
| tomjen3 wrote:
| Maybe, but they make people feel a little better and cause
| no lasting harm in small doses, so why not?
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| Amen.
| vstm wrote:
| Maybe Facebook can create an AI that also sends thoughts
| and prayers to whoever needs it. It's also probably easier
| because most people remember why they need the thoughts and
| prayers.
| klyrs wrote:
| Only God can read the inputs to /dev/null
| yes "Dear $diety please protect this machine and save
| this lowly process from the OOM killer" > /dev/null
|
| You don't need facebook for that.
| ToddWBurgess wrote:
| And this is why you need ad blockers and privacy protection
| plugins for your web browser. If you can't stop Facebook snooping
| on you at least make it hard for them. As my grandfather taught
| me, "if you can't win then make it hard for the other guy to
| win."
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| I don't like this pattern in calls to action. The pattern
| starts with an implicit hopelessness of affecting any external
| change and results in all responsibility being assumed by the
| individual.
|
| This is an antipattern of change. It does not need to be
| perpetuated because it reproduces the permanence of the
| constructs we want to dismantle. Even more importantly, these
| entities are fully aware of this and craftily guide the masses
| toward individual responsibility as a default, knowing that it
| won't affect real change. The antidote to this is critical
| collective action which realizes the impossibly of change as
| itself an impossible stance to take.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Change isn't caused by strength of belief; it's _magic_ that
| only works based on how hard you believe in it.
|
| Collective action doesn't do itself, and the words
| "collective action" don't constitute a plan. Individual
| evasions at least make things more expensive to do.
|
| Also, individual action doesn't crowd out collective action.
| Not protecting yourself doesn't create collective action. A
| concrete plan with concrete individual actions to take
| creates collective action. Individual sacrifice to create
| institutions creates collective action. IMO you should be
| ready to tell people where to show up before you tell them
| not to help themselves.
| jensensbutton wrote:
| Anyone mad at the universities that actually collected this data?
| Or just Facebook?
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