[HN Gopher] Apple Vision predictive bio-feedback
___________________________________________________________________
Apple Vision predictive bio-feedback
Author : rmm
Score : 195 points
Date : 2023-06-06 09:09 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| thih9 wrote:
| It looks like this is mostly about patents. Apple has a history
| of doing lots of hardware and software research, not all of that
| gets to be part of an actual release.
|
| Is anything indicating that solutions mentioned in the post would
| actually become part of Apple Vision?
| euroderf wrote:
| > Other tricks to infer cognitive state involved quickly flashing
| visuals or sounds to a user in ways they may not perceive, and
| then measuring their reaction to it.
|
| Is this like how in the old days the movie theater flashed a
| single film frame of BUY POPCORN YUM.
| vincnetas wrote:
| "All of these details are publicly available in patents, and were
| carefully written to not leak anything."
|
| This part makes me sad about patents and original idea behind
| them. This actually is the opposite of original idea why people
| came up with the idea of patenting something. To spread the
| knowledge and to award inventors. Not to stifle the competition.
| c7DJTLrn wrote:
| Give away too much information and your technology will just be
| copied by some Chinese company.
| wil421 wrote:
| It's not the patent that's preventing him from speaking it's
| the NDA he signed with Apple.
| FabHK wrote:
| The sad fact is not that the author cannot speak about the
| invention (because of the NDA), but that the patent was
| carefully written not to disclose anything substantial about
| the invention.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Why is that sad? Partial information seems better then
| remaining 100% a trade secret.
| vkou wrote:
| No, it's worse.
|
| The point of patent protection is that you teach everyone
| how to build the thing that's being protected, in
| exchange for a monopoly.
|
| Not actually teaching people how to build the thing
| that's being protected, but still having a monopoly on it
| is the worst of all worlds.
|
| If you aren't going to teach us how to build something,
| don't expect patent protection for it. I'd rather you
| keep it as a trade secret, good, go do it, it's a free
| country, but then we can just reverse engineer it. If I
| don't have an NDA with you, I have no reason to keep
| _your_ trade secret... secret.
| justinator wrote:
| To be honest, I think it's a little dangerous he's saying the
| things he's saying, esp. the part where he tells people,
| "hire me to talk more".
| therein wrote:
| I was thinking the same. The Apple I know, starting with
| the orientation, puts incredible amount of effort into
| telling its employees that people will be coming to you for
| consulting gigs, hoping to steal their intellectual
| property.
|
| Sounds like he cleared the post with Apple, though.
| bdowling wrote:
| What he wrote was, "These details ... were carefully written to
| not leak anything."
|
| This is standard CYA language from an employee who doesn't want
| to get in trouble for leaking anything not publicly known
| (e.g., something not in a patent document).
| acomjean wrote:
| I worked at a large company with lots of patents. It was said
| some things they kept as "trade secrets" as to not alert the
| world to how they were doing things. Mostly I understood to
| have to do with the processes they were using for Chip
| Fabrication. I left long ago and they sold they're chip
| business...
| avianlyric wrote:
| I'm gonna avoid opining on the value of the patent system in
| general. But one way of reading this statement is that the
| patents were written to avoid leaking anything about what the
| technology was going to be used for.
|
| It's entirely possible that the patents created for the Vision
| Pro are good enough to recreate many of the individual
| components that have been patented, but don't help you assemble
| the entire product. Which I would argue is entirely within the
| sprit of the patent system. Just because you want a patent an
| idea a receive a monopoly on it reproduction doesn't mean you
| need give away the details of how your entire product works.
| Indeed you may probably wish to keep as much stuff a possible
| hidden a pure trade secrets, if you're confident that they
| can't be easily reverse engineered or replicated.
|
| But none of that diminishes the value of the knowledge shared
| in a patent. Nor does it inherently mean that the patents are
| written in a way to be entirely useless, they're just extremely
| specific and don't include broader context that isn't needed to
| reproduce the specific thing being patented.
|
| For example you could patent "estimating human emotional intent
| from body worn bio-sensors", without once mentioning its
| intended for use in a VR headset. Just because you
| intentionally avoid mentioning a VR headset doesn't make the
| information in the patent useless.
| doxeddaily wrote:
| >Which I would argue is entirely within the sprit of the
| patent system.
|
| I don't think so. The spirit of the patent system is you
| submit your product to them in the form of a working model.
| You get to patent that device. Tearing it apart into
| individual inventions to me is against the spirit.
|
| Of course none of this matters anymore, we are far down the
| rabbit hole.
| dilap wrote:
| well arguably here they are doing that -- w/o patent protection
| his NDA would probably completely stop him from talking about
| any of this
|
| (tho i personally still think the patent idea is probably
| misguided -- apple would develop this tech ANYWAY, and it will
| all become public knowledge once people play w/ the devices
| enough, so what are we really gaining here?)
|
| but still the argument can be made.
| evancox100 wrote:
| I could be wrong, but I took that to mean the tweet thread was
| written not to leak anything that wasn't already publicly
| available in the patents. Not that the patents were written to
| not disclose anything.
|
| In which case patent regime is working exactly as intended and
| promoting dissemination of ideas while still providing the
| (time limited) economic advantages to the inventor.
| justinator wrote:
| As is written, the subject of what's, "carefully written"
| are, "the details [...] in patents".
| bdowling wrote:
| The "in patents" modifies "available", not "details".
|
| Had he wanted to state that the patents were carefully
| written, he would have written "which", not "and".
| justinator wrote:
| Again, original sentence,
|
| "All of these details are publicly available in patents,
| and were carefully written to not leak anything."
|
| I'll simplify:
|
| "Details available in patents, carefully written to not
| leak"
|
| What's been written? The patent.
|
| What is in the patent? Details.
|
| How are the details written to not leak? Carefully.
| majormajor wrote:
| If not for patent protection they'd be trade secrets inside
| Apple and if anything they'd talk about them _less_.
|
| Whether or not those trade secrets were likely to leak before
| or after the expiration of the patent... well... in theory the
| patents mean you get the info out there even for the failed
| companies where leaks wouldn't be interesting. In practice
| you've got patent trolls.
|
| I think it would make sense to shorten the patent length for
| certain things, based on how fast the state of the art in that
| industry is moving, but it would be hard to make everyone happy
| with whoever was in charge of deciding those terms.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| Without patents: You are not provided any information, useful
| or otherwise. You can obtain this information any way you
| please, and use it. E.g.: reverse engineering.
|
| With patents: You are provided with useless information.
| Information that is literally deliberately designed not to be
| useful. You can't practically speak use it. If you _do_
| obtain the information in any other way, you 'll be sued into
| the ground. You'll be sued even if you've never seen the
| patent. You'll be sued even if your own invention is only
| vaguely similar. You'll just be sued, let's leave it at that.
| convolvatron wrote:
| don't forget willful damages. a long time ago I used to
| read the patents to understand the landscape and make sure
| my novel work was not infringing.
|
| now we all have to _never even look_, because that might
| support someone's claim that you were aware of their patent
| and chose to violate it anyways - triple damages
| gumby wrote:
| Actually his statement is entirely within the spirit of
| patents: the secret sauce is disclosed in exchange for some
| limited monopoly; since it's been disclosed people can talk
| about it and learn from it.
|
| (None of this comment should be interpreted as a defense of the
| travesty that the patent system has become)
| pornel wrote:
| But can they, really? The language of patents is an
| obfuscated legalese, further confused by many variants of the
| claims that may not make any sense. They're far far from
| anything educational.
| justinator wrote:
| I went to art school with this guy.
| [deleted]
| ugh123 wrote:
| next level humble-bragging. in post and his replies
| ripper1138 wrote:
| Totally. "10% of my life" sounds a lot more significant than
| "3.5 years"
| ricardobeat wrote:
| And he starts by saying he has worked on VR for 10 years, so
| the title immediately stops making sense until you get to the
| very end :D
| gopuck16 wrote:
| When someone starts a sentence like this, I think its fair to
| assume that they are bragging about other things as well.
| Dudester230602 wrote:
| "I was nearby when cool things happened, hire me now, need to
| pay Cupertino mortgage rate."
| astrange wrote:
| I'm not sure anyone under the age of 70 has a Cupertino
| mortgage.
| munificent wrote:
| "Well three and a half years is a long time in my life, it's
| longer than I spent getting my bachelors, or the two masters
| degrees I did at the same time. It's the longest I've worked
| at any job, and longer than most relationships I've been in."
|
| Dickens himself couldn't do a better character introduction
| than these two sentences.
| exitb wrote:
| Soo... is this real? Did those features really make it into the
| product as of now? I don't recall any of these details being
| mentioned.
|
| > measurements like eye tracking, electrical activity in the
| brain, heart beats and rhythms, muscle activity, blood density in
| the brain, blood pressure, skin conductance etc.
|
| The headset does not appear to track most of these things.
| joe5150 wrote:
| Not hard to imagine how tools to predict and manipulate your
| emotions might be useful in a device that even in the wildest
| dreams of its developers is mainly designed to provide an
| immersive environment for taking Teams calls and working on
| spreadsheets.
| noindiecred wrote:
| Oh so now the hot new thing is a computing device that actively
| tries to guess its user's emotional state (using various methods,
| including introducing new stimuli) and then then CHANGES ITS
| BEHAVIOR based on the results!
|
| The Free Software people were right - a device this intimate
| needs to have publicly available, verifiable source code.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| I already hate software that tries to guess my intentions from
| key inputs, now we're going to have the same "smart" behaviour
| expanded to my brain? I hope this can be turned off.
| NLPaep wrote:
| That's Left 4 Dead's "director"
| sangnoir wrote:
| > Oh so now the hot new thing is a computing device that
| actively tries to guess its user's emotional state
|
| It also induces different states by way of imperceptible
| stimuli and measured the response.
|
| The tweet got increasingly dystopian the more I read; spine-
| chilling stuff. Had this been about the Quest, people in this
| thread would be reasonably apoplectic. Imagine what Saudi
| Arabia or a Gambling or News app _could_ do with this.
|
| Fuck it, I'm going _Thiel_ , anyone want to cofound a security
| startup, HMU (law enforcement experience advantageous) - we'll
| make the Apple Vision the best interrogation tool on earth.
| Fifth amendment? _Pssh,_ the suspect won 't need to say a
| single thing.
| ribosometronome wrote:
| >It also induces different states by way of imperceptible
| stimuli and measured the response
|
| Are you sure? Am I missing that part? I see this:
|
| >Other tricks to infer cognitive state involved quickly
| flashing visuals or sounds to a user in ways they may not
| perceive, and then measuring their reaction to it.
|
| But that doesn't say they're inducing states but rather
| trying to figure out the state. Trying to understand if
| someone is mad does not seem quite as dystopian as trying to
| make someone mad.
| Jedd wrote:
| If you have the capability to measure state, and you have
| control over audio / visual input, then you necessarily
| have the ability, albeit via a probably alarmingly small
| number of experiments, to _induce_ (some value of) state.
| ribosometronome wrote:
| Lacking an understanding of the mechanism, I'm not sure I
| understand how that necessarily follows regardless of the
| mechanism. Completely pulling something out of my ass,
| imagine that they determine inserting occassional white
| frames results in more significant pupil dilation
| increases when someone is in a heightened emotional
| state. Sounds doable and vaguely plausible? It would
| allow them to infer that heightened emotional state from
| a quickly flashed visual in a way most users likely
| wouldn't perceive from a measured reaction to it. But I'm
| missing how it would follow that you could use the same
| to cause that emotional state.
| lrvick wrote:
| I own 0 Apple products and will never give them money, but this
| post really helped reaffirm my desire to not have Apple products
| anywhere near me.
| thorum wrote:
| Public patents or not, can't imagine Apple is going to be
| thrilled with this guy for announcing to the world that their new
| product is secretly reading everyone's minds.
| kossTKR wrote:
| I can't really grasp how enormous this project is.
|
| 5000 patents filed from Apple is crazy, and looking at the thing
| with all of these new both pieces of hardware and concepts, wow.
|
| How many people have been working on this, and for how long? The
| other threads here seems to have missed just how "huge" a
| projects this is.
|
| Is this also the lead up to the Apple car, or some other
| ecosystem?
| rickdeckard wrote:
| If you're a billion dollar company, you invest alot in multiple
| trajectories of the possible future, because you don't want to
| end up not being ready when the market shifts (like Nokia for
| example) and being forced to pay royalty to your competitors
| just to stay in the market.
|
| Now imagine you're a trillion dollar company.
| passion__desire wrote:
| How is one company able to hush all its employees and
| contractors on the details of such a monumental effort? It's
| like trying to build a pyramid in secret.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| It wasn't that well hushed, there were persistent rumours
| for years. After all it was the running joke that apple
| were going to launch a VR headset each WWDC.
| 0x0000000 wrote:
| Respect, "all-in" mindset, realizing that blowing the lid
| gains you nothing but 5 minutes of fame, and then losing
| your lucrative job at the most valuable company in the
| world.
| rmm wrote:
| Exactly. I know many people are upset that this will lead to
| patent soup resulting in less innovation or competition, which
| may very well be the case, but it shows also how much they
| haven't just put high res glasses and a fast chip in a headset,
| but really tried to push the limits and leap past everyone with
| their first offering
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >The other threads here seems to have missed just how "huge" a
| projects this is.
|
| The other threads are busy jumping on the Hate Apple bandwagon,
| is what it is.
|
| I have my own criticism of Apple's VR goggle, specifically that
| its form factor (albeit necessitated by today's technologies)
| drags the whole thing down in both the luxury/fashion and usage
| factors.
|
| But if I put that aside, the technology and innovative thoughts
| crammed into that thing is potentially groundbreakingly amazing
| _if_ the marketing is truthful and accurate. Even the $3500
| price tag, which yes _is_ bloody expensive, doesn 't sound
| _unreasonable_ given most other "cheaper" VR goggles still
| require a mothership costing about the same anyway.
|
| I wish Apple success here, because the VR industry needs
| someone to come in and kickstart it back to something
| interesting and worthy of attention.
|
| ...I also admit I wouldn't mind seeing all the haters getting
| put out to dry for their noisy trouble, but maybe that's beside
| the point. :V
| theshrike79 wrote:
| My theory (and many others') is that the high price tag is a
| feature and on purpose.
|
| Enough companies have tried the cheapo approach and failed.
| Even mid-price ones are still niche devices.
|
| Apple went full-on to Varjo[0]-levels of tech inside the
| headset. Now developers have 6-9 months to bring their A
| game.
|
| Then Apple can see what kind of applications and use-cases
| stick and start figuring out what parts of the Vision Pro
| they can downgrade or leave out to make a Vision Regular,
| which will come out in 2-4 years along with Vision Pro 2.
|
| [0] https://varjo.com
| rickdeckard wrote:
| > I wish Apple success here, because the VR industry needs
| someone to come in and kickstart it back to something
| interesting and worthy of attention.
|
| XR has the potential to be the next general computing
| platform after the PC and the Smartphone.
|
| This might be controversial, but I believe what the VR
| industry would need most is for the giants to agree that
| collaboration for a wide open ecosystem yields the best
| result for everyone.
|
| Unfortunately we may have another company here which is not
| interested in such a direction at all. What we get instead is
| the biggest giant of them all forcing through it alone with
| yet-another closed ecosystem in expectation of taking full
| domination of the market and all its innovation. But this
| time it's the player with the highest chances of success.
| lrvick wrote:
| Most of us Apple Haters are not opposed to this type of
| technology existing. We are opposed to technology with this
| much potential for abuse being solely controlled by a profit
| maximizing patent troll.
|
| When the tech is open source and I can control what it does,
| then sign me up.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| Apple has always maximised profits on selling hardware and
| getting a cut from software.
|
| They've never gotten any profits from selling targeted user
| data. Mobile gaming marketing units are _still_ butt-hurt
| about Apple's randomised user/device IDs that prevent them
| from tracking where users came from and downloaded their
| game.
|
| FB and Android tracking still works perfectly, but those
| users are less valuable because they don't spend money.
| lrvick wrote:
| Apple gets profits from locking users into their
| ecosystems. Google and Facebook play the same game. I
| find them just as evil.
| dangus wrote:
| This post: "I'm a mercenary helping to make the thought police a
| reality, hire me."
| nbzso wrote:
| I really miss Steve Jobs.:)
| prashp wrote:
| Maybe he was fired in 2021 for being too modest.
| seydor wrote:
| I know we all hate each other but is this like a good direction
| for the future? Directing all our emotions to silicon chips?
| Maybe there is other things we should be building.
|
| Emotion recognition is an old field but (apart from autism
| research) the only application i can think of is emotion
| manipulation. How does one wake up in the morning and decide to
| work on consumer emotion recognition
| adinisom wrote:
| Perhaps rubber hose resistance: "I'm sorry Seydor, it appears
| you're being coerced to unlock this data."
| seydor wrote:
| Siri, i want to sin
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Which is especially fun if Seydor weren't coerced and does
| not truly help solve the rubber hose factor... Once rubber
| hose is in play this only means more suffering
| FabHK wrote:
| Beatings will continue until your emotions improve.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| > How does one wake up in the morning and decide to work on
| consumer emotion recognition
|
| I think two significant factors would be 1) they have the
| skills to make progress in the field and it's highly rewarded,
| and 2) they believe there could be real value in making
| progress. One or both of those could be enough to motivate a
| lot of people.
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| I wonder if him not having worked on Apple Vision for the last
| >1.5 years means they distanced themselves from his "vision,
| strategy and direction" or even gave up on it.
| justinator wrote:
| Judging from his other tweets, he seems really into crypto and
| making art projects out of crypto tech.
|
| I can't say I really understand the art - and I went to school
| with him, had the same professors, etc. I'm just scratching my
| head when I read his tweets.
|
| But well: he's worth many millions and I still have housemates
| so I guess capitalism has crown him in the lead.
| [deleted]
| sterlingcrispin wrote:
| bro I am not worth millions I'd delete my twitter account and
| go enjoy my life if I was
| justinator wrote:
| Also he keeps telling companies to reach out to him about this
| tech so he can make that sweet sweet consultant money, so I'm
| guessing he's still onboard.
| graypegg wrote:
| I would assume he's advertising his own consulting
| availability as "an ex apple employee" by the verbiage he's
| using.
| justinator wrote:
| I think it's not only because he's an ex-apple employee,
| but an ex-apple employee that's worked on the patented tech
| on this specific product.
| kasperni wrote:
| > So, a user is in a mixed reality or virtual reality experience,
| and AI models are trying to predict if you are feeling curious,
| mind wandering, scared, paying attention, remembering a past
| experience, or some other cognitive state. And these may be
| inferred through measurements like eye tracking, electrical
| activity in the brain, heart beats and rhythms, muscle activity,
| blood density in the brain, blood pressure, skin conductance etc.
|
| I don't really know how I feel about this...
| makeitdouble wrote:
| > I don't really know how I feel about this...
|
| But the headset of course does !
|
| Otherwise, it could be interesting if as users we got access to
| all these measurements, for our personal use. That could open
| the door to many other applications that would be probably less
| creepy.
| viraptor wrote:
| > could be interesting if as users we got access to all these
| measurements
|
| You can! It's not trivial, but not very hard either.
|
| eye tracking - OS projects getting this from a laptop camera
| exist and work well enough for assistive tech (i.e. it can
| replace your mouse today)
|
| electrical activity in the brain - there are fancy things
| like https://zeto-inc.com/device/ but there are basic options
| as well
|
| heart beats and rhythms, muscle activity, blood pressure,
| skin conductance - there's lots of cheap sensors for those
| OJFord wrote:
| I assume GP means that the measurements would be exposed
| (at some helpful level of abstraction, plus also the raw
| data say) by the Apple Vision.
| viraptor wrote:
| I know ; ) I wanted to show there are already
| alternatives for whose who are interested in
| experimenting with that data themselves (and at a
| fraction of the cost)
| seydor wrote:
| I d think those are detectable from facial expression alone.
| There is also EEG as a possibility
| stby wrote:
| This quickly becomes creepy beyond my wildest imaginations.
| Kill it with fire, please.
| ChildOfChaos wrote:
| Why? The more personal a device is and the closer it becomes
| to interfacing with who we are, the more it will need to do
| things like this to work, else it will just feel off.
| m4rtink wrote:
| Fully user controlled device running only free software ?
| Sure, agree totally!
|
| A totally closed hardware & software combination tethered
| to a corporate cloud ? NO WAY IN HELL!!
| piyh wrote:
| Give it 30 years for the open source option to catch up.
| astrange wrote:
| One thing that's notable about devices that "only run
| free software" is that they actually don't, since people
| use web browsers on them, and the websites are not free
| software.
|
| You'd also have to never talk to another person with
| them, since other people are capable of manipulating your
| emotional state and can't be audited.
| polishdude20 wrote:
| Yes if it was a standalone device which no outside party
| had control over then sure. But that's not practically what
| any tech device has been in the last 10 years. Everything
| phones home. And with the amount of valuable personal data
| this thing could accumulate, you can be sure it will be
| phoning home about it all the time.
| croes wrote:
| That's the kind of personal data that shouldn't be on a
| device with an internet connection.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| There's the good ol' bait-and-switch of tech industry you
| have to consider. New tech is promoted by emphasizing (and
| sometimes overstating) the humane aspects, the
| _hypothetical_ applications for the benefit of the user and
| the society at large. In reality, these capabilities turn
| out to be mediocre, and those humane applications never
| manifest - there is no business in them. We always end up
| with a shitty version that 's mostly useful for the most
| motivated players: the ones with money, that will use those
| tools to make even more money off the users.
|
| It's true with all new tech these days, and I'd be doubly
| worried when it comes to things like emotion detection.
| There are no good uses with strong business cases, but
| plenty of nefarious ones.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| PC makers selling TPM to everyone: "We'll make your
| computer more secure!"
|
| Reality: "We'll use it to store media encryption keys, so
| hollywood will let us stream media to your device."
| fsflover wrote:
| I'm using TPM with free software and my own keys. It
| works fine.
| lrvick wrote:
| Except that device is not owned by you, or even accountable
| to the public. It is owned by a private corporation whose
| mission is to do whatever it takes to keep you making
| purchases to make stock price go up.
|
| I do not even carry a smartphone anymore and am happier for
| it.
| seydor wrote:
| You have emotions , the device does not. No matter how we
| pretend to ignore it, the ability to empathize and embody
| the emotions of others separates us from machines. Even if
| they emulate it, i know they are fake (yes, i am being a
| machine-racist here)
| Jevon23 wrote:
| Why do I want a device to be "personal" and "interface with
| who I am"?
| renegat0x0 wrote:
| in 2013 Edward showed that data are used by governments. We
| do not see it right now, but it does not mean it does not
| happen. Actually I think we do not see the scale of it,
| because most of us are not doing anything incorrect. It is
| only important for our politicians. Everybody is under
| surveillance. It is just we do not know the effects of it.
| rmm wrote:
| I wonder how much they can plug into the new "autocorrect"
| system in iOS? Ok user heart rate is low and at baseline, they
| probably were trying to say "I could give a flying duck"...
|
| Pupils dilated, heart rate racing, therefore "duck" may not be
| the right word..
| masklinn wrote:
| Given Siri's reaction when it fucks up for the 5th time in a
| row and you tell it to fuck off...
|
| I would not bet on it.
| thih9 wrote:
| There is more:
|
| > Other tricks to infer cognitive state involved quickly
| flashing visuals or sounds to a user in ways they may not
| perceive, and then measuring their reaction to it.
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| And still, there will be people who will happily pay for it.
| thih9 wrote:
| No guarantee that any of these will ever become part of the
| product though.
|
| The post is talking about past research work and about
| patents; Apple has lots of unused patents.
| purple_ferret wrote:
| Think of the possibilities.
|
| -A VR show can modify the jokes in real time if they know how
| funny you find them.
|
| -A VR casino can offer a 'full biometrics' table for the
| players who really think they know how to bluff
|
| -A VR porno can have your VR GF climax at the same time as you
| croes wrote:
| Think of the possibilities
|
| - they can track what you fear
|
| - they can track what you like
|
| - they can track what enrages you
|
| Agencies will love that data.
| piyh wrote:
| Advertising paid for by the blink.
| macinjosh wrote:
| Regarding your first bullet, I am not sure if that's what
| people want. One of the best part of story telling like a TV
| show or movie is that everyone watched the same thing and
| then can refer to it later. How much more isolating does VR
| tech need to be?
| sangnoir wrote:
| > How much more isolating does VR tech need to be?
|
| As isolating as it needs to be to extract max revenue. Your
| fine-tuned proclivities profile will be one more thing to
| lock you onto the platform, and an opportunity for product
| placement/ ads. Marketers would love to have their brand
| associated with happy thoughts (and happy thoughts only).
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| > VR GF
|
| This seems like an oxymoron. I get that it's a "virtual" girl
| friend which semantically qualifies the term girl friend, yet
| there's something immensely sad about the combination of
| these terms.
|
| VR sex bot seems more apt to me. It doesn't really matter and
| I don't mean to impose terminology on anyone; it's just an
| observation/reaction.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Social stuff is best approached from a statistical confidence
| model that allows for "This might be the one in ten times my
| assumption is wrong."
|
| I wonder if/how they incorporate that.
|
| Because a lot of social drama comes from humans betting on the
| statistically likely thing in social situations and it being
| wrong rather than checking or hedging their bet. ("I shall assume
| the white male is in charge. Oops. Now I've offended the woman or
| person of color who is actually in charge.")
| vezuchyy wrote:
| Wait, how did I miss that it is now possible to tweet full-size
| essays?
| strictnein wrote:
| I think it's a Twitter Blue feature.
| BasedAnon wrote:
| Right... so this thing hooked up to a centralized AI, deciding
| what people see when, how often they see it, what they can
| express and how they feel... Do people really want to live in the
| matrix? I have a visceral reaction to this idea
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| This could be exciting if the user was in control (FLOSS). The
| user is not, so it's nightmarish instead.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| Who said it's hooked up to a centralized AI?
|
| Apple's buzzword of the day yesterday was "on-device
| processing" and "on-device X" in general. They have invested
| heavily for years now into shipping ML chips in their devices
| and don't seem to be stopping; if anything they're increasing
| the use of it.
|
| Is there anything definitively claiming this would be any
| different?
| BasedAnon wrote:
| > Who said it's hooked up to a centralized AI?
|
| I'm talking about the infrastructure not this device
| necessarily
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| jodrellblank wrote:
| https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2023/06/introducing-apple-vis...
| says
|
| " _Where a user looks stays private while navigating Apple
| Vision Pro, and eye tracking information is not shared with
| Apple, third-party apps, or websites. Additionally, data from
| the camera and other sensors is processed at the system level,
| so individual apps do not need to see a user's surroundings to
| enable spatial experiences._ "
| KaiserPro wrote:
| I mean, thats patent bullshit.
|
| sorry, but the eye gase vector will will easy to infer by
| where its rendering stuff, and where the gesture system is
| triggered.
|
| Sure apps wont get a look in to the shape of the room persay,
| but again you can infer it when looking for occlusions.
| m4rtink wrote:
| Unless the code is fully free software that has been audited
| by enough people & there is a proof the binaries on the
| device correspond to this source code, then this means
| nothing.
| BasedAnon wrote:
| I'm not suggesting it currently has this functionality
| jodrellblank wrote:
| Then I guess the answer to your off-topic "do people want a
| strawman horrible future I just imagined?" is "no".
| BasedAnon wrote:
| It's not a strawman when people openly declare their
| intent to create such a thing
| mhh__ wrote:
| Valve have been interested into the biological side of VR and BCI
| for a while too
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| Apparently they've been working on their own standalone headset
| (codenamed Deckard), and judging from how Valve Index and Steam
| Deck were done I'd say there's some significant chance they may
| get it right.
| serf wrote:
| this whole release feels extraordinarily 'Apple' , to me.
|
| Apple takes an idea and staples as many 'side-grade' style
| functionalities to it as possible in order to sell it , rather
| than just offering a really well-performing product within the
| niche.
|
| The iPhone was a remarkably bad _phone_ -- it was more awkward to
| hold than any other phone at the time (now they 're ALL awkward),
| and the reception was terrible. The provider it was locked to at
| the time was one of the worst in North America at launch; but the
| iPhone had features that people went nuts for which drove sales
| beyond the phone offering.
|
| I feel like this VR headset will be similar.
|
| It's a mobile device with a 2 hour battery life -- something that
| everyone in the world has been saying would make a device dead on
| arrival for the mobile market; but it has all of these little
| side-grade features that will attract purchasers that are
| interested in the Apple product itself but not necessarily VR.
|
| As a consumer i'm glad -- I may have never been a big iPhone fan,
| but the Android reactionary effort produced so much value that I
| can hope that this field will see something similar once it
| proves the market feasibility. I can't wait for my 8 hour/8k
| res/quarter-priced white-label VR headset clone in a few years.
| dahwolf wrote:
| So Apple can tell how you bio-physically respond to dynamic
| input. No worries though, we'll show a blend of an Apple logo and
| lock, which means all is fine. Go back to sleep, but we'll let
| you know if it was a proper sleep.
| riffic wrote:
| tweet should have been a blog post.
| gopuck16 wrote:
| more like a brag post
| hoherd wrote:
| At least it wasn't a tweet thread!
| FabHK wrote:
| Or a picture of a pdf.
| Brendinooo wrote:
| tweet is a blog post.
| sterlingcrispin wrote:
| Hey I appreciate the general lack of cruelty so far in the
| comments, sometimes HN can be pretty rough.
|
| The weird phrasing in the tweet is because I can't talk about any
| of the work I did due to NDA's besides my job description and
| those patents. But I had a pretty unusual role all things
| considered. I was also trying to clarify in the tweet that these
| aren't meant to be interpreted as unannounced existing features
| or capabilities of the product. But rather, research I did and
| contributed to, that was made public through patents.
|
| There's a ton of interesting preexisting research literature
| about neurotechnology research for VR. Both in terms of using it
| for biofeedback, and using it as a device just for studying the
| brain. If that sounds interesting browse through what's out there
| via google scholar.
|
| Also I said I spent 10% of my life working on it, realizing that
| was a goofy way of putting it. But it's a standout thing in my
| life and it was mostly a self reflection on what a trip being
| alive is, not trying to brag about it, mostly just sharing what I
| did. It's an unusual product and I had an unusual role
|
| Anyway it's a cool device and hopefully people enjoy it.
| paul7986 wrote:
| Love to start building apps for it like Apple Score (headset
| keeps score of your real life card game, ping pong match,
| tennis match, etc & displays it in your view).
|
| How to break into it as I have many ideas Id love to see if
| they are any good. Are there bootcamps to quickly learn
| development and around other fellow other eager developers? Im
| a web designer who uses basic code (html/css/jQuery) to design.
| 9dev wrote:
| I for one got the 10% phrase like you seem to have intended it,
| and it actually got me to think about how much time I spent in
| previous employments relative to the entire span of my life,
| which was an interesting venue to go down, so thank you! (Also
| for the insights on your work, that sounds like an immensely
| fascinating experience!)
| practice9 wrote:
| > how much time I spent in previous employments relative to
| the entire span of my life, which was an interesting venue to
| go down
|
| Same for me! Didn't even notice any weird phrasing (the tweet
| got immensely popular though, so nitpickers inevitably
| arrived). It was also nice to know people are working on
| getting non-invasive neurotech into the mainstream - very
| exciting
| ethanbond wrote:
| Congrats on the launch! Seems like a really fun project to work
| on. And thanks for sharing what you can :)
| furyofantares wrote:
| I've used the same 10% metric before. It's funny and I like it.
| fsloth wrote:
| The perfect Skinner box.
| renewiltord wrote:
| This is pretty cool. Eager to see what it feels like in reality.
| The risk with prediction is misprediction. Causes a lot of
| frustration.
| lumb63 wrote:
| This begs the question: what is Apple's real play with Apple
| Vision? It sounds like there's a real possibility that, even at a
| $3500 price point for hardware, the consumer is still the
| product. What else can their system determine about someone's
| brain? What is going to be done with that data?
| KaiserPro wrote:
| The eye tracking required to get that level of accuracy is
| really high. Normally you need a bunch of camera like sensors
| that operate different to rolling/global shutter, plus a hefty
| calibration routine to get a good map of the eyeball.
|
| Even then it only really works looking dead ahead with your eye
| wide open.
|
| so for the moment, that stuff is firmly in the lab.
|
| So whats the real play?
|
| to replace phones with glasses that know you better than you
| know your self.
|
| To bake all that you see and do into <300 megs a day, and make
| it searchable in a way thats useful to you (not as in where was
| I at 22:04 on the 4th) as in "when did I last see x, what
| colour y did they say they liked?" but without having to ask
| that question.
|
| Imagine a really really good personal assistant, that could
| answer 99.5% of the boring questions asked you with authority.
| That is the level of AI they (and google and facebook) want
| ShamelessC wrote:
| Hopefully it at least means I can type out the "eyes rolling"
| emoji by simply rolling my eyes.
| astrange wrote:
| Nobody wants to do anything with anyone's data. The idea that
| your data is valuable is largely an excuse to feel self
| important.
|
| Facebook, for instance, makes money by showing you ads, not
| with "your data".
| Bukhmanizer wrote:
| This is a pretty shockingly bad statement. Not only is it a
| complete exaggeration, it's not even a good exaggeration. Saying
| "I worked on mind-reading features" for Apple's new VR headset is
| just creepy.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| This whole tweet had the same tone as when pop science crime
| investigation TV explains a criminal can be identified through
| its gait alone.
|
| It's always magic, except when the predictive model doesn't work
| and there is no corrective action possible on the user side.
|
| We're talking about physical reactions, so that means it's
| supposed to be the same through gender, age, race, health
| conditions from the algorithm's point of view...That's a lot of
| variables, and I wonder if Apple have analyzed this beyond the US
| population, assuming the device will be sold internationally at
| some point.
|
| Apple seems really confident about this as they are foregoing
| controllers on the default interfaces, but that also reminds me
| on how they were rumored to make a car without a driving
| wheel...fingers crossed, I guess.
| simontheowl wrote:
| A lot of these large companies spend millions of dollars
| recruiting participants from various demographics to test
| prototypes and fine-tune technologies like this. It's a
| tremendous effort.
| knodi123 wrote:
| I believe you, and it makes sense. Apart from that, though,
| it's hilarious to imagine an ad like "Wanted: Black women
| with long hair to quietly walk into a room, pick up a vase,
| drink a can of coke, and then leave through the same door."
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Yes. Although it's damn hard to recruit a Spanish stay at
| home mom with a slightly twitching left eye who's too busy to
| participate to random studies and will receive this a gift
| for her 50th birthday.
|
| It kinda makes sense that some of her traits would be covered
| inside the test pannel, but looking at the face unlock and
| the level of adjustments they're still doing, it doesn't look
| like they got nearly enough data before launch. And that's
| for a product that is selling in billions of units.
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| As usual, people will try to use workarounds. For missing ports
| on my Mac Book Pro, I use a hub. For connecting my AKG headset
| to my iPhone, I use a dongle. I guess sooner or later Apple
| will make available a kind of API for device makers to make it
| possible to interact with the content in ways different that
| eyeballs tracking.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Those aren't workarounds. The whole point of 3-4
| USB-C/Thunderbolt ports is that you can do anything you can
| do things like plug a docking station into it via one port
| and do power, display, USB ports, etc off that one cable.
|
| But instead every screams about dongles.
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| I'm not sure what you mean. I used to have all the ports I
| needed without a docking station.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| The whole point is having the _option_ , yes. But it makes
| no sense in having _only_ USB-C ports and nothing else.
| Apple seems to agree, they added a couple ports back in the
| M2 Macbooks.
|
| Quality Thunderbolt 4 hubs cost about $150-500, which is
| fine if I need to extend the selection of ports at my desk,
| but there's no point in having everything on one USB-C port
| just because it's technically possible.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| You're right. The same way face unlock doesn't work for some
| people and they inout a password every time, so it's not
| intractable.
|
| I expect people for who eye tracking fails to be stuck on
| third party controllers for the default interface (hopefully
| they're supported outside of games ?).
|
| The bummer though will be that this device is US only for its
| launch, so the first round of application might also not care
| at all about these kind of issues. Accessibility is something
| Apple usually cares about, but third party devs can be more
| casual about it.
| matt-attack wrote:
| Well Apple is only expecting less than 1M units to be sold.
| Must such a niche product be designed for every variation
| of human? Seems reasonable that if you fall outside of the
| most common human forms by enough standard deviations then
| you're just out of luck.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| I think people can understand if you tell them their ear
| is a bit odd shaped, or their makeup throws the
| dectection off. But it will be weird to explain them
| their eye movement is really out of norm, especially
| after they paid 3500.
| conductr wrote:
| > but that also reminds me on how they were rumored to make a
| car without a driving wheel...
|
| This is it. They've pivoted and instead of a car, you get to
| use Vision with a karting game
| rickdeckard wrote:
| *) They are foregoing controllers on the default interfaces,
| for the presentation of this initial product which is expected
| not to ship for another 6 months.
|
| It's what i would do as well if I would want to steer the
| developer ecosystem in a certain direction.
|
| From what I heard it also supports Bluetooth Mice and Keyboards
| to productively use a Macbook (which is streaming its video
| into the glasses)
| WorldMaker wrote:
| They also demoed using a Bluetooth game controller for Apple
| Arcade games (that already support them).
| ricardobeat wrote:
| Considering the performance numbers you wouldn't need the
| Macbook, the VR hardware will be much faster.
|
| If they ever opened the system to run MacOS, that is, which
| is very unlikely :(
| newaccount74 wrote:
| Technically, there's nothing that prevents them from
| running macOS in a VM to offer a virtual Mac. They built a
| lot of virtualisation tech into their M processors.
|
| But I guess they won't, because (a) it's probably a bad
| idea to put unnecessary computational load on the headset
| that will use power and heat up your face, and (b) because
| they want to keep selling you Macs.
| noveltyaccount wrote:
| You'd hope that a $3500 head computer wouldn't require a
| computer to do computer stuff :(
| weaksauce wrote:
| you can use a keyboard and mouse if you want to. this is just
| fearmongering over nothing.
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