In "Facial recognition tool tackles illegal chimp trade" (2019), Beth Timmins says that the Internet, which has previously helped traffickers to illegally sell chimpanzees and other apes to rich customers and shows, is now being used to track these criminal activities with "Chimpface," an app that uses the same sort of technology that social media and Google use to identify faces in photographs. The idea started when Alexandra Russo felt frustrated trying to detect the trade online, so she contacted an expert in computer vision who helped to create "Chimpface." Because it promises fast, easy identification from its growing database of chimpanzee and other ape images, conservationists are optimistic that it will more effectively help them prevent the trade and save apes already enslaved.
This summary paragraph is 124 words (1st draft = 128) in three sentences. Naturally, I spent about 12:00 minutes making notes on paperin the planning stages before I wrote and edited this paragraph.
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My response
Google now recognizes Miki
As I read Timmins' article, I was thinking, "What a good idea." Facebook it pretty good at recognizing me in friends' posts, and I'm very impressed by how well Google Photos can recognize and group people in my thousands of photos. It saves me an enormous amount of time doing the sorting myself, and of course it makes it super-easy for me to find a photo of Ea, my friend's son, when I want one, or of my brother Matthew. In fact, I noticed a while ago that Google has now started recognizing and grouping the animals in my photographs. I'm not sure that I'm likely to want a photograph of Wendy's Widget, but in case I do, Google has neatly put them altogether for me. In fact, I'm pretty sure that when it comes to my family's many dogs, Google is much better at telling them all apart than I am.
My follow up thought was to wonder how far this might go. I've read recent reports that China now uses extensive CCTV networks and AI to monitor its citizens as they go about their daily business, and more and more things are being tracked more and more as computer technology becomes ever more sophisticated, powerful, and cheap. At 30,000 Baht, the powerful computer, camera and other tools that I carry everywhere with me and increasingly rely on is much cheaper and vastly more powerful than the first laptop computer I bought last century, around 1995. How long will it be before not only humans but our pets, and everything else, is constantly tracked? This has great benefits, for example, when my friends are coming to visit, they can share their location so that I can see them moving on Google Maps as they come, which is cool, but this also has great potential for abuse. Some of the dangers that come to mind are shown in the "Nosedive" episode of the excellent BBC series Black Mirror, which I watched on NetFlix - like most of Black Mirror, this is not a happy story.
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My question
How much should we worry about abuses of AI and other rapidly developing technology?
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What I read
In "Facial recognition tool tackles illegal chimp trade" (2019), Beth Timmins says that the Internet, which has previously helped traffickers to illegally sell chimpanzees and other apes to rich customers and shows, is now being used to track these criminal activities with "Chimpface," an app that uses the same sort of technology that social media and Google use to identify faces in photographs. The idea started when Alexandra Russo felt frustrated trying to detect the trade online, so she contacted an expert in computer vision who helped to create "Chimpface." Because it promises fast, easy identification from its growing database of chimpanzee and other ape images, conservationists are optimistic that it will more effectively help them prevent the trade and save apes already enslaved.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Before you click the blue "Publish" button for your first comment on a post, check ✔ the "Notify me" box. You want to know when your classmates contribute to a discussion you have joined.
A thoughtful response should normally mean writing for five to ten minutes. After you state your main idea, some details, explanation, examples or other follow up will help your readers.
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.