'Too dangerous:' Why even Google was afraid to release this technology
'Too dangerous:' Why even Google was afraid to release this technology
A startup called PimEyes allows anyone to identify a stranger within seconds with just a photo of the person's face. The technology has alarmed privacy advocates worldwide.
I have been adamant since 2006 that myself nor anyone else post pictures of my face or my children’s faces on social media for I knew this day would come eventually
I know I'm old, but it was so violating when this first happened to me on facebook.
Going to parties became less fun and more boring, when you had to start worrying what you'd look like when someone posted a picture of you without your consent.
The kids one is more disturbing
‘To dangerous:’ Why even Google was afraid to release this technology publicly.
There. I fixed it ;-)
The US military has, in all likelihood, been already capable of this for the past 15-30 years. Google has no market other than the public, and there's no way to stop it from tagging rich people as "that asshole who owns what used to be twitter" but also the general public (us) would just end up flagging people we hate or envy or who we want revenge on to ruin people's reputations.
There is no upside for a tech like that in the hands of big money, not even for big money; done the way Google would do it, it would fracture society like nothing before it and that includes utterly destroying the economy before leading to some sort of nuclear exchange.
So the PimEyes subscription fee… is the only thing preventing global thermal nuclear war?
Seems as plausible as anything these days ;-)
This technology has been in place in public spaces like airports for at least a decade. They claimed it was to fight terrorism by scanning and collecting models of everyone's face looking for known terrorists. They said that they could identify the terrorists because even with a disguise, you can't alter the shape of your facial bone structure.
The version of this technology that I would love to see is for each individual to have a database of people they've met before, so if you meet them again, your smart glasses can prompt you with their name and notes about them.
Basically Google allows you to do this in a limited form with Google Photos, minus the ability to do live recognition
I would sign up for this if it's opt-in and either decentralized or local storage-based. Otherwise I hope the fuckers who would ruin this idea for greed crash and burn.
is there any positive use case for this? either you recognize them organically or you don't need to be knowing them
Maybe people with a brain injury/Alzheimer’s/face blindness/memory problems, if the tech could be integrated with glasses and make real time identifications of people you’ve met previously? But that’s a stretch. Bad people will use it to do bad things long before any good comes of it.
This, basically.
I have lots of trouble remembering people's names. I'm usually good at recognising faces, but my brain doesn't link the face to the rest of the person's information. Glasses that could tell me someone's name and maybe a few key facts would make a huge difference in my life.
You can use it to figure out who around you has been in porn?
Why is this negative compared to "organic" recognition?
I get not wanting to be in big centralized databases, but digital recognition of a feature you show publicly doesn't seem so nefarious to me.
Being able to compare someone's face to your own database is one thing. Being able to look up a random person using the entire Internet as a database is a stalker's utopia.
You can use it on yourself to see what pictures are out there of you, and get notified if something new is posted that you may not know about without your consent. Don't see many legitimate reasons to use it on other people, but if it had some sort of identity verification so that only you could look up yourself I think it could be very useful.
Being able to purge unwanted use of your image and info is nice, and to a lesser extent so would being able to call up a nametag for people you've met before, because introvert name recollection is the great killer of our society
Poor working memory is a huge ADHD trait. What the world needs is to drop the expectation of remembering names. ADHD, either as just a natural thing that the human brain does sometimes or as a result of other factors, is becoming an increasingly prevalent thing among a growing portion of the population. Yet the world is not built to accommodate people with it. Medication and therapy help, but the issues never really go away, and the solution in most cases shouldn't be to "fix" those with ADHD to make them more "normal," but to make the world into a place where they too can function. And this goes for anything neuro-divergent, obviously. We should get rid if the idea of making different people into "normal" people and instead make society a place where everyone can be accepted and function along side everyone else.
Sorry, I ranted a bit there...
It's ok, your "rant" was on point and easily readable! Thanks 👍