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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: 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.'