Two students have created a demo of a smart-glasses app that performs automatic facial recognition and then information lookups. Kind of obvious—something similar was done in 2011—but the sort of creepy demo that gets attention.
News article.
Jeff Hall • October 9, 2024 9:01 AM
Not sure what the big deal is because Google Glass did this over a decade ago. It was creepy as Hell but at least you could shut it off.
Chris • October 9, 2024 9:56 AM
I remember reading years ago that social media was making undercover police investigations more difficult. This might make them nigh impossible. But a more benign use might be to allow the wearer to know what acquaintances you have in common with a random stranger which would make small-talk at parties a lot easier for introverts.
Demo’s link is broken
Link Broken • October 9, 2024 10:39 AM
The “created a demo” link in the post is broken…
mark • October 9, 2024 12:08 PM
Saw this the other day on slashdot, and my instant reaction is if they did it, then the FBI, the NSA, the FSB, Mossad, et al have had it for a year or three.
Sdedalus • October 9, 2024 6:22 PM
Is this even surprising to anyone? Once we had police cruisers with automatic license plate readers, complete with pop-up alerts for thefts and driver warrants, I think the writing was on the wall. The distinction without a difference is that private actors are as capable (and in many cases more so) than state actors. There is simply no regulation outside of fairly narrow datasets like medical / school records, financial transactions, and the like. Never mind that data adjacent to these sacred spaces can be just as damaging. Never mind that the brokers are mostly incompetent when it comes to OpSec. Never mind that there is no clear legal accountability for bad actors or meaningful means of redress for those wronged. Just good old commerce, where you are the unwitting product rented out on easy terms to whoever comes calling. Private right of action fixes so much of this, but as long as a surveillance economy feeds congressional campaigns, that’s a pipe dream.
Clive Robinson • October 9, 2024 6:25 PM
@ Bruce,
Look on this as being the first step in giving AI LLM / ML systems agency.
All that has to be done is “close the loop” so the AI gets some form of control.
Thus the “Head Up Display”(HUD) inside the glasses could have an arrow tell the user which way to turn their head under the prompt of the ML system.
Hard ScFi stories like Neil Stephen son’s 1992 Snow Crash have people walking around permanently connected to the Metaverse, and called “gargoyles” due to the gross distortion the headsets make.
Other stories have people permanently recording everything they see and do and then uploading for money. Thus they earn a living in a not to dissimilar way to modern “paparazzi” and “Confidential Informants”.
Various names have been invented for such people, my favourite is from the TV series Babylon 5 and they are called “Vics” short for “Vicars” derived from VCR (“Vidio Cassette Recorder” for those not born last century 😉
But as far as I’m aware nobody has written a story where the person in effect becomes a sensor for AI potentially on it’s way to some form of sentience.
But if you think about it “Drone-mans” is probably a better first step bet than drones, robots or androids, and easily possible right here and now at relatively low cost.
Untitled • October 10, 2024 3:57 AM
Agree with comments above, and yet … how attractive would be smart-glasses that can remind you about someone you meet at a party and ought to recognise, in time for you to greet them by name?
“Other stories have people permanently recording everything they see and do and then uploading for money. Thus they earn a living in a not to dissimilar way to modern “paparazzi” and “Confidential Informants”.”
Gordon Bell did that in 2003
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/jan/14/how-i-remember-lifelogger-bell
Winter • October 11, 2024 1:09 AM
@Untitled
how attractive would be smart-glasses that can remind you about someone you meet at a party and ought to recognise, in time for you to greet them by name?
As someone who often struggles to remember names that go with faces[1] in time, I can relate to this.
But to wear glasses all the time just for this minor inconvenience?
@Clive, MK
people permanently recording everything they see and do and then uploading
There is a dark mirror episode where such a perfect audiovisual memory function was build into the eye, “The Entire History of You” [2]. Needless to say, the story did not end well.[3]
[1] A problem that does not improve with age.
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Entire_History_of_You
[3] Forgetting is underrated. People with perfect, photographic, memory are not more “successful” in life than others
Blue • October 11, 2024 7:28 PM
Re: helping you remember someone’s name
Apple just released some new ads last month for a similar feature
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPe8revsg3k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eJy6QyHaFM
I think these are sort of creepy too.
Re: algorithms directing humans for sensor data
Pokémon GO has been doing this for 8 years and still boasts 10s of millions of active users
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Anonymous • October 9, 2024 8:21 AM
Note for editor: The text “created a demo” wrongly links to , as opposed to some news article.