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Stop developing this technology

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Re: Stop developing this technology

#331

Post by rexpop »

lucumo wrote: post #92

There's a book in Dutch literature, The Assault by Harry Mulisch. It's a great read if you're interested in multi-faceted morality. It deals with guilt and responsibility when there's a chain of things that need to happen for a bad outcome. During WWII the protagonist's parents are shot by Germans after a body of a collaborator was found in front of their house. The parents were arguing with the soldiers about someth…

And so every executioner, and not the malfeasant lawyer, is responsible for the death of the wrongly executed?

A better heuristic, and almost as simple, is to rate responsibility in proportion to power, ie those with the most leverage to steer events take the most blame. Blame is information. It has no mass, and can be divided effortlessly.

Re: Stop developing this technology

#332

Post by JohnFen »

mihaic wrote: post #34

HN seems to actively work on a cognitive dissonance: on the one hand producing inspirational stories of entrepreneurs changing the world and on the other abandoning all hope that technology/market forces can be controlled in any way. I'm thinking now this is to justify away the collective guilt of bringing into the mainstream harmful products. It seems to come from the same origins as "crypto can't be regulated", "go…

HN is full of a wide variety of people who have a wide variety of different beliefs and worldviews, and that's what you're seeing.

In my view, it's one of the things that makes HN great.

Re: Stop developing this technology

#333

Post by JohnFen »

mihaic wrote: post #99
atemerev wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well for me, crypto is highly moral and should be developed to prevent artificial trading restrictions and eliminate borders. There are many people who consider individual freedom to be of highest importance, and who are willing to develop any technology promoting it.

You seem to be thinking ideologically-driven, while I'm more goal-driven. Is absolute freedom the end-all purpose? Shouldn't I be allowed to murder my enemies, if I'm willing to risk the vengeance of their group? I know it's an absurd question, but my point is that the social negotiation for where regulation and limits should come into effect has been abandoned by many.

Absolute freedom is impossible in a world where people interact with and affect each other. Me having absolute freedom means that the freedom of others must be limited.

The goal should be to maximize freedom for everyone. To accomplish this goal means that nobody can have absolute freedom.

Re: Stop developing this technology

#334

Post by arein3 »

This doesn't produce any physical harm, so I see no problem in developing it. It will not spiral out of control.

There will be a break in period, but the conclusion will be check the source of the information.

Making this easily available will make the break in period easier.

Re: Stop developing this technology

#335

Post by JohnFen »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #183
rbanffy wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is not neutral in the face of human psychology. It's worth noting that nuclear weapons seem to have prevented more deaths than they caused. The MAD doctrine has prevented direct confrontation between the superpowers and limited their military conflicts to proxy wars. And this is a technology that has almost no application beyond vaporizing cities almost instantaneously.

We are a single human lifetime into a world that has that technology. If we are to live we will live with it for thousands more. Let's give it a bit more time before we decide how well it's turned out?

On the other hand, history is full of technological developments that caused far more harm than necessary before society figured out a way to deal with it simply because nobody thought these things through at the start.

Re: Stop developing this technology

#336

Post by penjelly »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #3

Regardless of what I think about this technology in particular, I want to respond to this line from the second comment: [1] > on the contrary, it must be developed. No, it mustn’t. There’s not a gun to your head, forcing you to do this. You want to develop this technology. That’s why it’s happening. Technology isn’t inevitable. It’s a choice we make. And we can go in circles about whether it’s good or bad, but at lea…

> technology isnt inevitable

i disagree, society could stop inventing and humanity would likely continue to exist. However, that would would require the population to stop being interested in the development of technology which i think wont happen.

The point is, if this engineer doesnt write this code, someone else will. If a person can imagine a tool, someone will eventually want to make it a reality.

i think deepfakes and ai generation are going to change the world in a way that im a bit leery of, it feels safer to just stop here, but that isnt a possibility, even if deepfakes are made illegal, people will still create their own tools and have their own harddrives for storage.

maybe these things should be illegal or something, hard to say. But the tech will move forward either way imo.

Re: Stop developing this technology

#337

Post by Klonoar »

pc86 wrote: post #267
fps_doug wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're exactly proving the point GP makes, good job.

No they're not and this flippant dismissal is so intellectually lazy. The ability to scam people exists and isn't going away. People went town to town in covered wagons selling bullshit. People scammed others out of money centuries before that. The answer isn't pearl-clutching nonsense about how this technology is so different and so morally reprehensible compared to everything else. The answer is education. If someo…

>The answer is education.

This is the stock answer used for deflection in way too many scenarios. We've seen how it doesn't work.

The complete lack of an enforced ethics code in our field is the biggest blight on our combined contribution to society.

Re: Stop developing this technology

#338

Post by TheRealDunkirk »

LeanderK wrote: post #238

Again and again I am astonished that people without ethics exist, that they are confident in what they are doing and that they appear to be completely unable to reflect upon their actions. They just don't care and appear to be proud of it. If this is used to scam old people out of their belongings then you really have to question your actions and imho bear some responsibility. Was it worth it? Do the positive uses ou…

I don't understand why you're astonished? Psychopaths are all around us, from corporate "leadership" to government lobbyists to fake reviewers on Amazon and the App Store. Confidence men (and women!) have existed since the dawn of time. From selling "snake oil," to 419 scams, to "Microsoft" computer support, technology has only ever aided the process of helping psychopaths find victims. Talent and technical ability are orthogonal to empathy. Always has been; always will be.

This deepfake stuff is a difference in degree, not kind, and once these people figure out how to use AI to help them, everyone is going to have to level up their defenses all over again. You ain't seen nothing yet.

Re: Stop developing this technology

#339

Post by Noumenon72 »

_djo_ wrote: post #276
alickz wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if I photoshop my crush's face onto a naked body? Wouldn't that be similar to having a personal deepfake? I agree with the person you're replying to, you can't stop people doing these things in the privacy of their own home and these deepfakes are functionally similar to other photo / video editing techniques. _Distributing_ those photoshops / deepfakes is another thing entirely though, and one I am fully agains…

The question wasn't whether people can be stopped from doing it, because for the most part they can't be, but whether it's moral. Or at least different in a moral sense from merely imagining someone else doing those actions. And yes, photoshopping your crush's face onto a naked body is just as unethical and immoral, even if done in the privacy of your own home, for the same reasons I mentioned above. Compared to deep…

> photoshopping your crush's face onto a naked body is just as unethical and immoral, even if done in the privacy of your own home, for the same reasons I mentioned above.

The reasons you mentioned above were "it feels more real than imagination" and "a person could go back to it over and over, enhancing their obsession with the non-consenting person". These are not moral bads that require a "no lusting after people, even in your heart" style rule. Being obsessed with people starts in high school and can persist for decades. They never find out, and it never hurts them.

I'm sure many people would like to take away others' ability to picture them naked, but fortunately they didn't have the ability to enforce that by starting a moral crusade against a Github repo. It's one of life's innocent little pleasures.

Re: Stop developing this technology

#340

Post by _djo_ »

elondaits wrote: post #281
_djo_ wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're steadily breaking down all mechanisms that ordinary people can use to trust information they're getting, such as getting a video call from a member of their family and recognising the face and voice. All previous scams relied on con artists using various means to pretend to either be trustworthy in their own right despite being strangers or as representing some trustworthy institution. But having people being a…

In Argentina they’ve been scamming people by pretending to be a relative for years now! No AI required. Somebody calls you in the middle of night, distraught, and crying says “mom?” or “dad?”. Then someone interrupts, claims your son or daughter has been abducted (by now you probably have given them their name when responding to the initial plea) and requests money to be dropped at some location where a motorcycle pi…

That sort of scam has been possible, sure, but it depends on both the person being phoned being startled and half asleep, and unable to reach the person or someone else near them in subsequent calls. You're right that I shouldn't have been so absolutist in saying 'all' previous scams, but this is an edge case that doesn't equate to what's becoming possible with real time deep fakes.

What this sort of tech is enabling is scamming where even someone who is fully awake and is probably quite aware and not normally prone to scamming can nonetheless be tricked by a video call.

It's taking us to a point where the only safe way to trust that the person you're speaking to is definitely who they say they are, in all circumstances, is to do it in person. Something not possible for people living far from their other family members.

Do you not see how fundamentally this breaks the trust models we have built over the past few decades?

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