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Discord cuts ties with identity verification software, Persona

fortune.com

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Re: Discord cuts ties with identity verification software, Persona

#221

Post by simianwords »

axus wrote: post #216
simianwords wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment naively believes in zero sum creation of wealth. Wealth is not taken from our consumers and given to Sam Altman. Sam and his company are creating wealth - increasing the pie. Of course it benefits everyone while also benefiting them. Wealth need not be redistributed to improve lives. Just the mere invention of ChatGPT and letting people purchase it and use it is enough to improve people’s lives. Redistri…

So far prices have generally gone up, which indicates the pie available is scarcer. I am looking forward to the day where more electricity, electronics, food, and housing are produced thanks to AI; but in the mid-term it feels like an AI bubble pop would do more to bring the price back down.

Qualitatively, I now have access to ChatGPT.

How much do you think you would have paid for such a tool in 2010? and we are getting it almost for free.

Re: Discord cuts ties with identity verification software, Persona

#222

Post by nailer »

unethical_ban wrote: post #214
nailer wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It was always difficult to get normal people to understand why the tech billionaires are so bad until Thiel gave us that clip of him getting stumped by the "should humanity survive" question. He was thinking about convergence. You're probably smart enough to be aware of that, so you're deliberately twisting his words. > folks like Bill Gates or Larry Ellison are skinwalkers On HN a decade ago this would have been m…

Ah, clearly he was thinking about transhumanism! That thing all normal people understand and agree with.

Nobody was suggesting normal people understand or agree with transhumanism.

Re: Discord cuts ties with identity verification software, Persona

#223

Post by barbazoo »

jordanb wrote: post #49
throw4847285 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess we could all forgive trying to destroy western civilization under the guise of saving it, but drew the line at poor media literacy when it comes to One Piece and Watchmen. (This is a joke in case that wasn't clear)

It was always difficult to get normal people to understand why the tech billionaires are so bad until Thiel gave us that clip of him getting stumped by the "should humanity survive" question. I'm forever grateful to Thiel for that clip, and to Musk for his crippling Twitter addiction. It was pretty impossible to get regular people to understand that folks like Bill Gates or Larry Ellison are skinwalkers when all they…

> Peter Thiel on Transhumanism and the Future of Humanity

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSp07P8jvYs

Re: Discord cuts ties with identity verification software, Persona

#224

Post by rurp »

jacquesm wrote: post #131
rurp wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A frustrating aspect of the AI debates has been the number of people who believe people like Sam Altman who say that the immense wealth created by AGI would be distributed to the masses to improve their lives. The notion that the mega wealthy Elon/Sams/Bezos elites are going to willingly give up unprecedented wealth because millions of people have become unemployed and impoverished is so wildly out of step with how t…

It's beyond naive. But there are also still people believing Elon Musk is going to put humanity on Mars for keeps and out of altruism.

For sure, I've been rolling my eyes at the Mars colony stuff for probably a decade or more now. I get that it's a fun futuristic thought experiment for nerds but the idea that Elon's going to send up some modern day Mayflower in the near future that builds a thriving settlement is obvious nonsense.

Re: Discord cuts ties with identity verification software, Persona

#225

Post by m4rtink »

Macha wrote: post #17
jyscao wrote: post #4

So does this mean Discord is scrapping its new face verification requirement for users, or imply they’re no longer using this 3rd party service (Persona) to do it? The article wasn’t too clear on that.

K-id is the vendor they were proposing which did on device processing. They were trying to downplay the initiative by saying all the k-id data stayed on device. This was undermined by the fact they were also trialling a switch to Persona (the vendor in the story), which did not uphold that guarantee. It was horrific optics to be reassuring people that it was ok because you didn’t save data but also be trialling a swi…

I don't think you can ever trust closed source software that also requires network for other features that it really does on-device processing for something specific.

It might not even send the sensitive data immediately but bundle it with other traffic once it goes online.

Re: Discord cuts ties with identity verification software, Persona

#226

Post by simianwords »

rurp wrote: post #219
simianwords wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment naively believes in zero sum creation of wealth. Wealth is not taken from our consumers and given to Sam Altman. Sam and his company are creating wealth - increasing the pie. Of course it benefits everyone while also benefiting them. Wealth need not be redistributed to improve lives. Just the mere invention of ChatGPT and letting people purchase it and use it is enough to improve people’s lives. Redistri…

You're talking about normal technological developments that yes generally follow Econ 101 patterns. But AGI isn't like that. If AGI or something like it comes about it won't be a normal technology. The upside case for investors is that frontier models eliminate millions of jobs and remain controlled by a small group of owners. That's why they are investing sums unprecedented in human history. If all white collar work…

I might agree with you on this edge case. I don’t believe we will reach that soon.

But interestingly, people who are against AI tend to also believe that they genuinely can’t replace anyone.

Re: Discord cuts ties with identity verification software, Persona

#227

Post by monocasa »

stale2002 wrote: post #179
pfraze wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, the real danger to the world isn’t a powerful man feeling ambivalent about our survival. The real danger is society using that moment as propaganda. This regarding Thiel, a man who most recently tried to make a “Greta Thunberg is the Antichrist” meme stick.

Question 1: If a human modifies with themselves with enough sci-fi tier technology are they still "Human"? (And therefore if humans "ascend" past their biology, humanity technically wouldn't survive) Question 2: If a person cannot conceive that the 1st question is an interesting question, with multiple nuances, are they basically an idiot?

The question wasn't "should all humans not modify themselves", but "should humanity survive".

We currently legally protect mostly pre-contact civilizations like Sentinelese, so it stands to reason that regardless of what some people choose, other people will forgo transhumanist modifications, and "humanity" will survive regardless of what technology occurs or where your definition ends.

Unless of course the end goal is only a few billionaires get to live with their AI ppowered city states at most using servitors and decraniated as robots.

Re: Discord cuts ties with identity verification software, Persona

#228

Post by dijit »

e2le wrote: post #181
jordanb wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was always difficult to get normal people to understand why the tech billionaires are so bad until Thiel gave us that clip of him getting stumped by the "should humanity survive" question. I'm forever grateful to Thiel for that clip, and to Musk for his crippling Twitter addiction. It was pretty impossible to get regular people to understand that folks like Bill Gates or Larry Ellison are skinwalkers when all they…

People aught to be questioning more the future vision of those in positions to shape it. Someone who struggles with such simple questions around humanity while simultaneously building the tools of a surveillance state probably should not be one of the individuals driving our future. It's quite clear that my vision of the future is nothing like theirs.

It's a lot more comforting to believe that the people who have influence over us are there by some right of some kind.

Wether it be because they're "smarter than us and have completed capitalism" (that's how Gates, Ellison and ironically Trump/Musk are thought of)

or by "divine right" as it used to be with Kings.

It's horribly sobering to realise that, actually, they're just people. Like, pretty ordinary unremarkable people who have access to different information than we do and have been exposed to different things. Rarely are they more than a single standard deviation from the norm in intelligence.

They're people, flawed, egotistical, easily manipulated, easily dragged into thinking weird things, persuadable and unless they're really self-aware: will be surrounded by sycophants that just repeat what they want to hear (because, that feels pretty good) until they have a warped "echo of an echo" understanding of the world.

I wouldn't wish this on anyone, it's terrifying to believe that you would be insulated from all direct criticism while being told that everything you do is the right thing no matter what it is. You can't trust your own fucking reflection in that situation.

But we do that to people, people who have enormous influence over us, and they get confused when we don't like them, and we get confused about how they can be so out of touch and unlikable.

But they're just people.

Re: Discord cuts ties with identity verification software, Persona

#230

Post by Bender »

Does cutting ties with Persona actually take them out of the picture? Whomever they move to can then relay or sell data to Persona. Third party turtles all the way down. inb4 but they pinky promised...

The appropriate solution would be to send an RTA header [1] from the servers and the client must check to see if parental controls are enabled on the device or in the application. Not perfect, but likely sufficient to protect small children assuming the account is a child account and the parent enabled parental controls. Teens will always be able to bypass controls whether local or third party. Teens can share porn, warez, movies and more in rated-G video games with one another and small children. Or over SFTP/FTP/P2P/S3/HTTPS. Or a million other ways. Have fun playing whack-a-mole.

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46152074

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