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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Appearing first in Google Assistant and Google Photos, Google Lens uses artificial intelligence (A.I.) to specifically identify things in the frame of a smartphone camera.
In Google's demo, not only did Google Lens identify a flower, but the species of flower. The demo also showed the automatic login to a wireless router when Google Lens was pointed at the router barcodes. And finally, Google Lens was shown identifying businesses by sight, popping up Google Maps cards for each establishment.
Google Lens is shiny and fun. But from the resulting media commentary, it was clear that the real implications were generally lost.
The common reaction was: "Oooh, look! Another toy for our smartphones! Isn't A.I. amazing!" In reality, Google showed us a glimpse of the future of general-purpose sensing. Thanks to machine learning, it's now possible to create a million different sensors in software using only one actual sensor -- the camera.
In Google's demo, it's clear that the camera functions as a "super-sensor." Instead of a flower-identification sensor, a bar-code reader and a retail-business identifier, Google Lens is just one all-purpose super-sensor with software-based, A.I.-fueled "virtual sensors" built in software either locally or in the cloud.
Talking about the Internet of Things (IoT) four years ago, the phrase "trillion sensor world" came into vogue in IT circles. Futurists vaguely imagined a trillion tiny devices with a trillion antennas and a trillion batteries (that had to be changed a trillion times a year).
In this future, we would be covered in wearable sensors. All merchandise and machinery would be tagged with RFID chips that would alert mounted readers to their locations. Special purpose sensors would pervade our homes, offices and workplaces.
We were so innocent then -- mostly about the promise and coming ubiquity of A.I. and machine learning.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @01:25AM (14 children)
You opined : "And would not surprise me if one day the AI can detect me as "human", then probably run facial recognition tech to find out exactly who I am."
Actually, the cameras which are already installed on the sides of the Interstate highway system in the US are ALREADY capable of
face-reco with respect to the occupants of vehicles which travel those roads. I was told this is the case by a guy who worked for one of the contractors
of the system, and I am pretty damned sure it is true. So ... while you drive down the road your face is being imaged and
your presence on that road at a particular time is logged. The implications of this are not clear, but you don't have to be "Richard
Stallman-paranoid" to have misgivings what could result in terms of unpleasant business.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @01:32AM (13 children)
Well yes, but they have to be explicitly programmed to spot humans and run the face detection. Much as I detest highway cameras, you can at least avoid them or minimise your exposure to them, if by nothing else than not using the highways and go on the smaller roads that criss cross the country (as people did before highways existed)
This is a much bigger deal. Imagine trying to avoid every single phone camera you pass by each day. From the people who walk with it in front of their face, texting (but pointing the camera forward), to those talking on it, with the camera pointing outward to the side, to those who put the phone on a desk/table/surface, with the front camera facing up. That doesn't even include how more and more things are coming with cameras. From drones, to streetlamps, to hairbrushes. Fucking mental.
It is a whole another level of getting screwed. I can avoid fixed cameras on highways if I want. Avoiding every single person with a device which can record an image is a nightmare. Unless I really want to move to a shack in the middle of nowhere and live the rest of my life out that way. However that isn't really what I would want out of my life, and if I did that it would be considered a gift to those who seek to control others. One less person to be a thorn in their side.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @03:46AM (12 children)
The most reasonable response seems to be that the genie is out of the bottle, so how do we adapt? To start off, privacy legislation! Next, serious security development for our devices. Make it reasonable to assume you're safe instead of the opposite.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by anubi on Monday May 22 2017, @04:58AM (1 child)
I believe the genie is out of the bottle.
Trying to enforce privacy at this level is just as un-doable as trying to enforce copyright or farting in elevators.
I greet the Google advancement of this as a mixed bag.
It would be nice to take a picture of a leaf, and Google tell me what plant it belongs to. Show it a diseased leaf and Google will tell me what to do to fix it. Show it a picture of anything: plant, mineral, or animal, and Google will tell me what it is.
As far as hiding from the law, they already have economic means of hounding damned near anyone. The powers-that-be get on someone's ass, and that person's life is hell. Google or not.
666 is here right now. Its our social security number.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @04:46PM
No, because it's governments and large corporations that are the biggest threats. Enforcing privacy laws for the latter is somewhat doable. For the government, maybe we'll have to take away all their tech toys and force them to use stone age technology, since they can't be trusted with newer toys. Don't be a useful idiot by saying 'Well let's just give up and let them do whatever they want.'
(Score: 2) by archfeld on Monday May 22 2017, @05:33AM (3 children)
As per the stainless steel rat, when you can no longer avoid the DB, overload it. What we need is to start wearing Vendetta like masks or paper masks like the Chinese do in general public. Get a mask of yourself and exchange with someone else so you are not where you are...
For the NSA : Explosives, guns, assassination, conspiracy, primers, detonators, initiators, main charge, nuclear charge
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Monday May 22 2017, @09:34AM (2 children)
Until they make wearing masks, or otherwise hiding your identity in public illegal. Then what?
(Longer post on the same idea here: https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=19634&page=1&cid=513403 [soylentnews.org] )
Not to mention, it has been shown you can detect quite accurately who a person is by:
a) their height
b) their girth
c) their gait (how you walk).
So, a future of wearing masks, going on high heels to alter our height, wear padding to alter our girth, and making sure to walk in funny ways awaits us!
It would be surreal and funny I guess, if it wasn't a sad reality to exist in.
(Score: 2) by archfeld on Monday May 22 2017, @06:45PM (1 child)
We could do like South Korean women seem to have done and all have plastic surgery so that we look the same. I also think that the success rate of such software has been blown out of proportion by the folks who have a vested interest in it 'financial' success.
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601786/are-face-recognition-systems-accurate-depends-on-your-race/ [technologyreview.com]
For the NSA : Explosives, guns, assassination, conspiracy, primers, detonators, initiators, main charge, nuclear charge
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Monday May 22 2017, @11:06PM
> I also think that the success rate of such software has been blown out of proportion by the folks who have a vested interest in it 'financial' success.
Oh I am sure it isn't as good as they say. However getting a false positive is an even bigger bitch then it being accurate. One thing to identify someone for $whatever because of $threat, another to identify an innocent incorrectly, then $do_nasty to them, including possibly shooting them, like the police did to Charles De Menzes in London (for reference for those who do not know: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Jean_Charles_de_Menezes). [wikipedia.org]
Getting shot because an AI incorrectly identified me is not much consolation to the flawed system of AI, quite frankly. There are a lot of really thick people out there, where if computer says "yes", they will $do_nasty to person, and think later (if at all).
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday May 22 2017, @05:40AM (3 children)
This is a technical problem, that is, a matter of established physical reality. Legislation never did win a fight with cold hard physics. So the solution is to throw a wrench in the works. If everyone in your car is wearing Donald Trump masks, for example, that could lead to a case of what is politely called "Bayesian poisoning." Think, by analogy here, diarrhetic shellfish poisoning for databases :)
tl;dr: you can't hide, but you can bullshit.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Monday May 22 2017, @09:21AM (2 children)
" If everyone in your car is wearing Donald Trump masks, for example, that could lead to a case of what is politely called "Bayesian poisoning." Think, by analogy here, diarrhetic shellfish poisoning for databases :)
tl;dr: you can't hide, but you can bullshit."
Until they make covering your face, or otherwise preventing identification illegal. Here in the UK they are trying to make a blanket ban on being in public with your face covered. The only exceptions at the moment are motorcycle helmets (safety) and burka's (religious discrimination). In theory I think you can wear a mask in a car, but if you do you would be pulled over for "driving without due care an attention", the argument being the mask interferes with your ability to drive properly (and having worn masks, they do really make it hard to see well).
Somehow I don't think trying to game the system by feeding it erroneous data will work, because quite frankly, if governments/corporations get a hold of this level of control via this tech, they a) won't let go of it without a fight, and b) they will make sure to corral as many people into it as they possibly can, making sure to criminalise anyone who tried to undermine the system.
Yes, I realise the UK is one of the world's most developed police states, however that is only because they are ahead of the curve. Where the UK is now, others will be in a few years. So thinking "but that isn't the case where I live" is not really a solution for the future.
(Score: 2) by archfeld on Monday May 22 2017, @06:54PM (1 child)
I am not wearing a mask to prevent identification but for health reasons officer. The idea being not to wear a mask of someone but a surgical mask...
http://www.healthguidance.org/entry/16965/1/Why-Do-Asians-Wear-Surgical-Masks.html [healthguidance.org]
A billion Chinese can't be wrong twice can they ? :)
For the NSA : Explosives, guns, assassination, conspiracy, primers, detonators, initiators, main charge, nuclear charge
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Monday May 22 2017, @10:50PM
Touche :)
However, they can identify you by your facial structure. Specifically the jawline, and distance between bridge, eyes, node and top of your head. A mask like the Asians wear will not save you from being identified, as it does not mask any of those features.
Seriously, the average human has so many unique tells, that trying to mask your identity this way is a losing battle. Do not rely on your ability to impart false data in the machine, you will not win. Better fight now for the machine to never be created in the first place.
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Monday May 22 2017, @09:28AM
" To start off, privacy legislation!"
Ha, you are joking right? Look at every other piece of privacy legislation put forward. It pretty much isn't worth the paper it is printed on. Governments will violate it whenever they want, however they want. I guess you can sue the government, but in the end:
a) you would have spent a lot of money
b) you might get some compensation, or you might lose against someone with far more money than you, and possibly have your life ruined.
c) your privacy would still be violated
and
d) because the government is funded by taxes, you are essentially being paid compensation with money they took (or will take) from you in the first place, so no real gain, and an overall loss, because their court and legal expenses , are charged to you as well (whether you win or lose).
So, really relying on government to save you, when they would be the first to use this tech against you, is naive to the max.
It might help with corporations, however any corporation with this kind of level of tech would be heavily embedded with the government, so the above would be exactly the same, except if you did get some compensation, it would come from the company, who would take out debt, which would be provided by a central bank printing money, which is basically taking from the public anyway.
(Score: 2) by quietus on Monday May 22 2017, @05:38PM
The legislation already exists [europa.eu], at least in the EU. One of the core tenets of EU regulation 2016/679 (on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Directive 95/46/EC (General Data Protection Regulation)>) states that Natural persons should have control of their own personal data.
Further, the protection of natural persons should apply to the processing of personal data by automated means, as well as to manual processing, if the personal data are contained or are intended to be contained in a filing system, and the principles of data protection should apply to any information concerning an identified or identifiable natural person. Personal data which have undergone pseudonymisation, which could be attributed to a natural person by the use of additional information should be considered to be information on an identifiable natural person.
If the provided service tries to keep track of you online, this means you're identifiable and hence processing of your information requires consent (para 30): Natural persons may be associated with online identifiers provided by their devices, applications, tools and protocols, such as internet protocol addresses, cookie identifiers or other identifiers such as radio frequency identification tags. This may leave traces which, in particular when combined with unique identifiers and other information received by the servers, may be used to create profiles of the natural persons and identify them.
This consent is presumed not to be freely given if it does not allow separate consent to be given to different personal data processing operations despite it being appropriate in the individual case, or if the performance of a contract, including the provision of a service, is dependent on the consent despite such consent not being necessary for such performance. (para 43)
It doesn't matter whether the processor of those data is located within the EU (para 23, 24).
(The regulation does provide an exclusion in case of national security, or activities in relation to the common foreign and security policy of the Union. Also, the processing of personal data by competent authorities for the purposes of the prevention, investigation, detection or prosecution of criminal offences or the execution of criminal penalties, including the safeguarding against and the prevention of threats to public security and the free movement of such data, is the subject of a specific Union legal act.).