I studied computational linguistics/natural language processing in grad school, out of an interest in accessibility issues (I had RSI) and related applications, and had naively neglected to look very hard about how I'd be likely use it in a career.
Other people in my cohort went to work for the CIA. I couldn't move to the bay area for... reasons, (this was pre-Google) and it seemed everyplace I could find anything wanted me to have a security clearance, with all the implications that has.
One could say I'm not mercenary enough, or that I took too many philosophy classes, or any number of other rationalizations, but one way or another, none of the jobs I've taken have had much need for what I studied.
I feel morally obligated to use what I know to improve the state of the world. This has, unfortunately, led to a lot of unemployment and serious depression.
Pseudonym for obvious reasons.
At the very least it will keep you plenty busy and is fun.
And as you would suspect, I'm a PhD grad working in the Bay area on mas surveillance AI. Half a million dollars a year.
I honestly don't know how to invest the money anymore. Index funds are boring at this point.
When you wrote this, what did you anticipate my reaction would be?
Why?
I must admit, I really don't know what it would be like to be working in the bay area on mass surveillance AI for half a million a year.
I wish researchers would start to ask themselves if what they're building can be abused by authoritarian governments, and if so, switch focus to a field of research that will make the world a better, rather than a worse, place to live in.
History will not look kindly on researchers who built the tools that enabled Xi the Pooh to achieve a dystopian surveillance state.
Google will glorify it’s history in it’s middle schools just like America glorifies it’s history in it’s middle schools.
Considering the researchers are hired according to their sheltered backgrounds, holding them as indivuals accountable is futile.
If you care, vote accordingly, for politicians willing to refuse corporate donations.
If you care a lot, study revolutionary history, learn from it and organize. I’m just paraphrasing the only thing that seems to ever actually work.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_learning [2] https://beamandrew.github.io/deeplearning/2017/02/23/deep_le... [3] https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.01164
We should encourage developers to fight for privacy, and discourage them from engaging in research/writing code that can be used to commit evil acts.
And yes, I wholeheartedly agree that everyone should vote.
Some very smart people in China did exactly that, and arrived at a conclusion on what the local market for surveillance tech was lacking. Based on what the government will fund, they came up with an answer we seem to dislike.
probably not as much money in that though.
I am not personally against girls seeing depictions of other girls in movies (have you consulted with the anti-bodyshaming sect?) however this claim to “social good” is telling of a desperate effort to ignore actual social problems, none of which are so conveniently morally distinct from the economic disparities Google instigates and defends on a daily basis. Studies show little girls who are homeless have bigger problems.
Looks like a way to sell more ads.
And the same people who try to work for good can find hey've just armed others for evil by giving them tools.
That sounds entirely worthless.
A social good involves helping somebody who needs aid.
This proposal merely fills a perceived need by political dogmatics. This is exactly a sociopolitical memory leak.
"USC/Google team used computer vision tools to identify gender bias in modern cinema" is waving a flag for a specific political belief that is not shared by most Westerners. Outside of the valley this is fringe stuff.
The appropriate equivalent to this would be a right winger expressing concern at the 'appropriateness' of race mixing on camera (the hidden belief) - perhaps pointing out bias in the form of the black woman/white man duo being rare (potential legitimate issue).
Suppose I applauded the use of computer vision to spot the frequency of black man/white woman pairs - I know you wouldn't consider that a neutral political perspective. tldr; Political neutrality is impossible when your attention is being dragged along by the current prevailing wisdom of the forum.
Disgusting
I wish researchers would start to think more creatively about what we can do with large video datasets and tools like face recognition. The least we can do is try to use this technology for social good. For example, a USC/Google team used computer vision tools to identify gender bias in modern cinema [1] (for my own research, we’re doing a similar kind of analysis on TV news at 100x the scale).
[0] https://www.usenix.org/conference/nsdi17/technical-sessions/...
[1] https://www.google.com/about/main/gender-equality-films/