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Comment by pfisch | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand why you are doing this and I don't understand why other people in this thread are praising you.

I understand that this problem is interesting to work on but seriously, this is obviously going to fall into the hands of people who are going to use it to make the world worse. If you don't think computer vision is going to be used to kill people and to take away freedom you are lying to yourself.

For every positive use this could have there are far worse negative uses and it is so clear that they will happen.

There are so many other fields you could work in that make use of machine learning algorithms. Why would you work to advance a field that has so many obviously evil applications that will definitely happen.

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The main application of computer vision is robotics and automation.

If you don't like war or mass surveillance, stop voting for it. It's like blaming the Wright brothers for the city bombings of world war II.

Do you really believe if these researches didn't work on it, the technology just wouldn't be invented at all?

And I think the military applications are sort of overstated. We already have drones and effective mass surveillance. Machine vision can help, but it doesn't make or break it.

Mass surveillance is almost worthless without computers to monitor all of the video/audio feeds. You would need to have like a million people listening to the feeds and even then you wouldn't be able to monitor like 99% of the data.

It seems like you are unfairly singling out one particular advance in technology among many which could be equally responsible for killing or surveillance.

Furthermore, since this also opens some very positive perspectives, why not try and work together towards them? Whatever well-intentioned people do, the ill-intentioned would still have researched this and devoted it maybe more exclusively towards evil purposes.

That is ridiculous. This is clearly a key advance needed for automated surveillance and autonomous robotics.

That is like saying that the people who were working on nuclear fission are as responsible as the people who invented the process for creating the metal casing of the nuclear weapons used in Japan.

"Whatever well-intentioned people do, the ill-intentioned would still have researched this and devoted it maybe more exclusively towards evil purposes."

That is like saying you can do whatever you want because if you didn't do it someone else would. Maybe bad people would do this eventually, but maybe they wouldn't. I can tell you that most if not all of the people who want to use these technologies to do awful things are completely incapable of developing these technologies themselves. They have to get people like us to make them.

There is no question that computer vision is being used for military purposes and any advance will definitely be used by the CIA. It is completely ridiculous to think otherwise.

Sure this does have some positive uses, but the very clear danger that is posed by advanced AI and AI imaging techniques really makes this a field that should not be pursued. There is a high chance that this tech will have a net negative effect on the world.

There are many other techs that are much less dangerous to pursue that will provide positive benefits.

Your assumption that automated surveillance and autonomous robotics is wholly negative needs to be tested.

If surveillance was entirely automated one could argue that it would be less likely to be corrupted by political or social influences. One could argue the other way too, but I'm certainly not persuaded that it is more negative than manual surveillance. David Brin has written on this and related topics extensively[1], and I think there are more subtleties on the topic than it is popular to acknowledge.

As for autonomous robots: I think there are plenty of dangerous tasks that could be given to more intelligent robots, and I'm fairly sure this would be a net good.

Additionally there are many fields where this technology will be used that are almost completely positive. Medical imagery, search and rescue, and many fields of science are obvious applications.

Like most scientific fields, this undoubtedly has both positive and negative outcomes. How those are judged probably says as much about a person's political and social views as it does about the absolute moral view of the technology.

[1] http://www.davidbrin.com/transparentsociety.html

I have another response to this post too, but I feel strongly enough about it to add this:

I believe technology can be a force of good in the world. The fact that evil people do evil things with it does not negate the potential beauty of a world of abundance. Fear of the negative impacts of technology will not promote progress towards a better world.

TL;DR: I believe in techno-utopia.

You are, of course, correct. Though here (HN's character clear enough to those of us who have been about awhile) we can now observe that you will be downvoted remorselessly. Some people 'get it': actions in technology have consequences. In sympathy allow me to contribute a quote for further reflection. I found it hard to choose between one analyzing the moral engagement of earlier science and technology figures, or the hopeless social situation encountered when moral concerns are discarded amongst otherwise learned people. Without further ado, then, a dated but parallel quote in the British tradition.

I felt I was moving among two groups [literary intellectuals and scientists] comparable in intelligence, identical in race, not grossly different in social origin, earning about the same incomes, who had almost ceased to communicate at all, who in intellectual, moral and psychological climate had so little in common that instead of going from Burlington Hom or South Kensington to Chelsea, one might have crossed an ocean. — Baron C.P. Snow The Two Cultures: The Rede Lecture (1959)

Would we be better had we never harnessed electricity, built a computer, or designed a camera? If the social conscience of technology depends on whether or not something can be used for bad intentions, why pursue anything? Farming advances raise armies, should we blight the land? Your response is erudite, elitist, and short-sighted. The poster is not "of course, correct" -- fire fell into the wrong hands as well and yet the world has continued to be an awe-inspiringly amazing place.

I assure you, your optimism is entirely misplaced.

There is only one major application large enough to take advantage of large scale research in to video interpretation of this genre, and it is surveillance. If you look at the changes in recent society, we have little alternative but to believe further global militarization of air, space, and sea under the benevolent governance of large corporations and pretend-democratic nation-states. As population rises, quality of life deteriorates and pressure on resources expands still further, in all probability, this work will power their tools of oppression, first and foremost.

Can you give me an example of a research project that couldn't be used to make the world worse?

There are lines of research that are clearly much more dangerous than others. This isn't a black and white situation.

Nuclear fission, genetic engineering of viruses, identifying a gay gene/gay fetuses, advanced AI approximating human intelligence. These are very dangerous or ethically questionable avenues of research.

You don't have infinite time on this earth. TRhere are paths of research that have a high change of making the world worse. Why would you want to look back on your contribution when you are older and be like "well I totally fucked the world up for everyone"

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