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Researchers fear a scenario in which smart speakers feed sleepers subliminal ads

sciencemag.org

281–290 of 329 posts

Re: Researchers fear a scenario in which smart speakers feed sleepers subliminal ads

#282
post #74

Calm down, Adam Curtis. I see zero evidence here that researchers can in fact implant anything in someone's dreams. Well, except by playing 3 hours of Tetris. The video "documenting" Coors' effort is a joke ad by Coors bemoaning the fact they can't get into the Superbowl. This is just a bunch of shady researchers trying to gin up some publicity for the !!!!terrifying power!!!! of their work (p = 0.048, one-tailed).

There were people like you 20 years ago that dismissed how absurd it would be that people would willingly buy company microphones connected to the Internet and put them in their houses.

Sure it sounds ridiculous if you frame it like that. A prediction from 2000 that, by 2020, you will be able to control your house with your voice and can ask your computer assistant about the weather doesn't seem so absurd. People have been talking about this type of home automation since the 50s. The hot mics connected to the internet are just an implementation detail, people actually care about capability.

Re: Researchers fear a scenario in which smart speakers feed sleepers subliminal ads

#283

They are kind of doing it already e.g. I hate when ads exploit classical music for trivial purposes. Whenever I hear Libiamo ne' lieti calici now my mind instantly fills with pizza ads. And once an association is made, it doesn't go away. Ads attach themselves to positive memories like parasites. Whenever you think back to your first kiss, a nice family moment, a cherished memory of going out with friends – here they…

This is something that I had been venting about for years to anybody I met. There's that (Coca-Cola I think) ad that ends up with teenagers watching the sunrise after a party night, they sit on a roof in what I remember could be suburban California. The ad was in the style of All I need from Air. These are very delicate and precious moments when you are a teenager. But now it's Coca-cola telling people how to feel. F…

I wanted to take that annoying Coke ad that played in movie theaters (remember movie theaters?) showing a glass filling up, and ending with "Aah", and make a parody version that ended with someone barfing.

Re: Researchers fear a scenario in which smart speakers feed sleepers subliminal ads

#285
post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But people wouldn't be cutting down the rainforest if they weren't rewarded for it. If we patch each problem as it comes along, we're spending a lot of political will on the problem.

The human race, consisting of 6+ billion people, can do more then one thing at a time. The idea of "we need to end economic growth" implies an extremely broad ranging, aggressive, authoritarian imposition on people's freedoms - requiring so much logistics, infrastructure and coordination as to be practically impossible. Or you know, we could just fund the EPA and BLM, and employ auditors for sustainable sourcing requ…

If economic growth is something so natural that it needs to be actively suppressed for it not to happen, why do we need aggressive, harmful growth drivers like planned obsolescence or the ever-growing pervasiveness of ads that this thread was originally about?

Re: Researchers fear a scenario in which smart speakers feed sleepers subliminal ads

#286
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Economic growth is not the solution: it is the problem." -- one single political party in the Netherlands that does not get enough votes

Part of what problem exactly? Do you think modern society would even exist without economic growth being the main driving factor? The idea that people would just sit around creating things for altruistic reasons is a utopian pipe dream. Constantly seeking material growth isn't perfect but it provides more positive aspects than negative ones.

> it provides more positive aspects than negative ones.

I mean, the negative aspects are pretty significant with the whole climate change and mass extinction going on. To make up for that we get cat videos and iPhones?

Re: Researchers fear a scenario in which smart speakers feed sleepers subliminal ads

#287
post #242
post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>...AIM, Flash games 15 years ago Microsoft wasn't dictating moderation rules and content for these.

I don't see how that's related to 'general computing'. Microsoft does not have a monopoly on the distribution of software.

That's exactly my point. They didn't in the past, but modern OS vendors do.

Re: Researchers fear a scenario in which smart speakers feed sleepers subliminal ads

#288
post #18

Leela : Didn't you have ads in the 21st century? Fry : Well sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio, and in magazines, and movies, and at ball games... and on buses and milk cartons and t-shirts, and bananas and written on the sky. But not in dreams, no siree.

Thank god that at least google, fb, amazon etc. are trying so hard to improve our advertising experience as much as possible. Where would we be if the ads directed at us were not so personalized....

Turns out Google’s AI is directed towards advertisers to guess how to make them pew the money the most inefficiently possible ;) Seriously those ads are inefficient for the immense majority of small shop owners.

Re: Researchers fear a scenario in which smart speakers feed sleepers subliminal ads

#289
post #119
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That makes no sense. Every time an economic activity happens that helps people growth happens. The simple fact that when someone gets a bicycle, car, washing machine, electricity, plumbing, a phone, or whatever they value and if it helps them take better care of their family (or even themselves), that counts as growth. The problem is unsustainable growth, ecological destruction, etc. Of course effective measures (car…

"When a measure becomes a goal, it seizes to be a good measure." But as you say, the problem isn't economic growth in itself, but the fact that our entire (debt-based) economy is predicated on eternal growth. Eventually, every population reaches a steady-state equilibrium with its environment (even an artificial environment such as "the economy"). The hyper-focus on economic growth and our dependence on it causes all…

Nothing to add to the discussion but fyi I think you want ceases instead of seizes.

Re: Researchers fear a scenario in which smart speakers feed sleepers subliminal ads

#290
If any electronic device tried to do this to me, I would sue. I would be furious, and I would not settle for a small amount. I'm definitely not the only one who would react this way; I expect this reaction would be fairly common.

This means that no company with a sensible legal department would try this. However, a fly-by-night startup might try to do it in a way that's hard to trace back to them. In that case, I'd be suing the advertisers, rather than the hard-to-find software company. And I'd be adding CFAA claims.

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