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When I was in grad school an Adobe representative presented at a colloquium, showing us their new-at-the-time content aware photo editing (think removing a pers

When I was in grad school an Adobe representative presented at a colloquium, showing us their new-at-the-time content aware photo editing (think removing a person from a photo and filling in the trees/buildings behind them). He mentioned a project based on predicting marketing/political campaign reactions in things like social media. My hand immediately went up and I asked him what they thought about the ethical implications, and how it could be protected from abuse. "We aren't really thinking about those kinds of things." I'm not surprised to see this line up with the quote in tekacs reply. I don't trust Adobe, and while this is certainly really neat-o tech, I just don't see its benefits outweighing the huge impact its abuse could precipitate.

nohuck13 10y ago
First hand anecdotes like that are some of my favorite HN things - thanks! But do you think we as technologists should be thinking about things like that? That feels icky to me. Maybe I'm wrong.
- grzm 10y ago
  Technologists are people, too! I think we should definitely be thinking about those things. We have some pretty sharp technologists to point to who thought about the ethics of what they were doing as well. Those working on the Manhattan Project and the German equivalent[1] and come easily to mind. [1]: http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/pdf/eng/English101.pdf http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/pdf/eng/English101.pdf