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Facebook is researching AI systems that see, hear, remember everything you do

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Re: Facebook is researching AI systems that see, hear, remember everything you do

#111

Post by dredmorbius »

01100011 wrote: post #29
sneak wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 som…

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

Re: Facebook is researching AI systems that see, hear, remember everything you do

#112

Post by dredmorbius »

sneak wrote: post #30
01100011 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 som…

I meant content, not metadata. Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp chat backups, iMessage chat backups (incl all geotagged photo attachments), et c.

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.

Re: Facebook is researching AI systems that see, hear, remember everything you do

#113

Post by pesenti »

jjulius wrote: post #95
pesenti wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>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 tha…

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).

Re: Facebook is researching AI systems that see, hear, remember everything you do

#114

Post by pesenti »

still_grokking wrote: post #107
pesenti wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 distribu…

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.

Re: Facebook is researching AI systems that see, hear, remember everything you do

#115

Post by dredmorbius »

pesenti wrote: post #39

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...

What is your price?

Who knows it with greater accuracy, you, or FB?

Re: Facebook is researching AI systems that see, hear, remember everything you do

#116

Post by still_grokking »

jmfldn wrote: post #11

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…

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?]

Re: Facebook is researching AI systems that see, hear, remember everything you do

#117

Post by still_grokking »

ianlevesque wrote: post #60
sneak wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

WhatsApp just fixed that by encrypting its backups too. https://faq.whatsapp.com/general/chats/how-to-turn-on-and-tu...

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.

Re: Facebook is researching AI systems that see, hear, remember everything you do

#118

Post by still_grokking »

pesenti wrote: post #113
jjulius wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 tha…

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 pi…

> 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.

Re: Facebook is researching AI systems that see, hear, remember everything you do

#119

Post by still_grokking »

pesenti wrote: post #114
still_grokking wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 distribu…

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.

> 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.

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