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The original author of YOLO stopped working on it[1]. Alexey Bochkovskiy, aka AlexeyAB, created a fork on GitHub and wrote an extensive guide to customizing YOL

The original author of YOLO stopped working on it[1]. Alexey Bochkovskiy, aka AlexeyAB, created a fork on GitHub and wrote an extensive guide to customizing YOLO's network architecture, added new features, and has answered zillions of questions. 1: https://twitter.com/pjreddie/status/1230524770350817280 https://twitter.com/pjreddie/status/1230524770350817280

hprotagonist 7y ago
Chris: So, I talked to him. Mitch: You did? Chris: Yeah, and he used to be the number one stud around here in the 70’s. (whispers) Smarter than you and me put together. Mitch: So what happened? Did he crack? Chris: Yes, Mitch. He cracked, severely. Mitch: Why? Chris: He loved his work. Mitch: Well what’s wrong with that. Chris: There’s nothing wrong with that, but that’s all he did. He loved solving problems, he loved coming up with the answers. But, he thought that the answers were the answer for everything. Wrong. All Science no Philosophy. So then one day someone tells him that the stuff he’s making was killing people. Mitch: So what’s your point? Are you saying I’m going to end up in a steam tunnel? Chris: Yeah. Mitch: What?
- tehsauce 7y ago
  What is this from?
  - antiuniverse 7y ago
    Real Genius: https://imdb.com/title/tt0089886/ https://imdb.com/title/tt0089886/
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
longtom 7y ago
The linked tweet: > I stopped doing CV research because I saw the impact my work was having. I loved the work but the military applications and privacy concerns eventually became impossible to ignore.
- Iv 7y ago
  The YOLOv3 paper is a blast to read https://pjreddie.com/media/files/papers/YOLOv3.pdf https://pjreddie.com/media/files/papers/YOLOv3.pdf And its conclusion is gold: But maybe a better question is: “What are we going to do with these detectors now that we have them?” A lot of the people doing this research are at Google and Facebook.I guess at least we know the technology is in good hands and definitely won’t be used to harvest your personal infor-mation and sell it to.... wait, you’re saying that’s exactly what it will be used for?? Oh. Well the other people heavily funding vision research are the military and they’ve never done anything horrible like killing lots of people with new technology oh wait..... [1] I have a lot of hope that most of the people using com-puter vision are just doing happy, good stuff with it, like counting the number of zebras in a national park, or tracking their cat as it wanders around their house. But computer vision is already being put to questionable use and as researchers we have a responsibility to at least consider the harm our work might be doing and think of ways to mitigate it. We owe the world that much.In closing, do not @ me. (Because I finally quit Twitter). [1] The author is funded by the Office of Naval Research and Google.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - shrimp_emoji 7y ago
    Also, best cv: https://pjreddie.com/resume/ https://pjreddie.com/resume/
    - whymauri 7y ago
      Some context: https://www.reddit.com/r/justneckbeardthings/comments/47nb4e/so_i_hear_you_guys_like_my_resume/d0e85t5/?context=10000 https://www.reddit.com/r/justneckbeardthings/comments/47nb4e...
      - spyder 7y ago
        One of his other comment on reddit related to stopping CV research: "pjreddie 30 points·2 months ago· edited 2 months ago I've never been in a car that was using my tech to avoid killing people but I have had a 3 star general rave about how my work was being deployed in war zones and how army research groups love my software. Edit: to say that i'm not arguing against CV research as a whole, i'm just saying i don't want to do it anymore because of the impact i saw my work having"
DagAgren 7y ago
So the author goes, "wait, this actually causes more evil than good, I will not work on it any longer", and the other guy goes "don't worry, I will keep doing the evil for you!" Sigh.
- deadmutex 7y ago
  It's tricky thing... where do you draw the line? If someone works on the linux kernel, and someone uses the OS to do bad things.. should one stop? Also consider that object detection has a lot of impact in positive ways as well. It doesn't seem so black and white.
  - MiroF 7y ago
    I agree - but I imagine even personally it might be a hard thing to hear that something you created is being used to kill people, even with the knowledge that it is doing a lot of good. I'm curious if this is something that some sort of modified license could help resolve. Do I have the option to license my software so that it can't be used in war?
    - rcw4256 7y ago
      Yes, but you need to be prepared to take it to court when someone uses your software in war.
      - hprotagonist 7y ago
        and when the answer is “hey, it’s GPL’d, here’s our source download link, fuck off we’re exactly following the rules”? Licenses are not a viable solution to this sort of ethical quandry.
        rcw4256 7y ago
        That answer should be unsatisfactory to the court, since it wasn't licensed under the GPL. The rules, in this case, say no use in war.
chrischen 7y ago
But don’t we need people doing the research to solve the problems that need to be solved but in the right way. Take covid contact tracing as an example. If Apple and Google didn’t step in and preempt with their own tech, we may have had a problem with privacy eroding tech being forced through.
01100011 7y ago
The only thing stopping the robot apocalypse is the power problem. We have every technology necessary to enable mass casualties from commodity robots except long battery life. We don't need AI. We need decent enough pattern recognition that can pinpoint a weakness in the human body. I often use my 'Stabby the Robot' diatribe to convey this to people. Imagine a robot that moves too fast to evade, that doesn't rely on expendable, limited ammunition(i.e. a blade or sharp surface), and can locate the jugular vein of a human. You could make one now out of a commodity drone, but it wouldn't last very long because of the power problem. AI would obviously make it more dangerous, but it isn't necessary. We've already placed very dangerous tools into the hands of humans. Maybe it helps AlexeyAB sleep at night to stop working on YOLO, but his idle hands are not holding back the future.
- IdiocyInAction 7y ago
  While your robots do sound like they could kill a lot of people, I feel like this is a bit overblown. For a start, for "apocalypse", they would have to be produced in massive numbers, i.e. by a nation state-level actor. State-level actors can already make nukes or bioweapons.
  - 01100011 7y ago
    What's so hard about manufacturing a few million drones? With a relatively modest amount of money(relative to, say, developing a nuclear program or chemical weapons program), you could hire a contract manufacturer to spin out a few million drones. They probably wouldn't even ask what the blade/needle was for, although it would be easy to craft a cover story(i.e. "They're for mass inoculation/slaughter of livestock"). Update the SW and congrats, you now have a weapon of mass destruction. You can target people by face, race, location, etc. There's a reason the US military has been playing with drone clouds for years.
    - philipkglass 7y ago
      It's not hard for a nation to manufacture or order millions of drones. It's also not hard to obtain enough rounds of ammunition to shoot millions of people. It was decades if not a century ago when the primary obstacle to a nation killing millions of people ceased to be "inherent technical difficulty."

hprotagonist 7y ago

Chris: So, I talked to him. Mitch: You did? Chris: Yeah, and he used to be the number one stud around here in the 70’s. (whispers) Smarter than you and me put together. Mitch: So what happened? Did he crack? Chris: Yes, Mitch. He cracked, severely. Mitch: Why? Chris: He loved his work. Mitch: Well what’s wrong with that. Chris: There’s nothing wrong with that, but that’s all he did. He loved solving problems, he loved coming up with the answers. But, he thought that the answers were the answer for everything. Wrong. All Science no Philosophy. So then one day someone tells him that the stuff he’s making was killing people. Mitch: So what’s your point? Are you saying I’m going to end up in a steam tunnel? Chris: Yeah. Mitch: What?

tehsauce 7y ago
What is this from?
- antiuniverse 7y ago
  Real Genius: https://imdb.com/title/tt0089886/ https://imdb.com/title/tt0089886/
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

longtom 7y ago

The linked tweet: > I stopped doing CV research because I saw the impact my work was having. I loved the work but the military applications and privacy concerns eventually became impossible to ignore.

Iv 7y ago
The YOLOv3 paper is a blast to read https://pjreddie.com/media/files/papers/YOLOv3.pdf https://pjreddie.com/media/files/papers/YOLOv3.pdf And its conclusion is gold: But maybe a better question is: “What are we going to do with these detectors now that we have them?” A lot of the people doing this research are at Google and Facebook.I guess at least we know the technology is in good hands and definitely won’t be used to harvest your personal infor-mation and sell it to.... wait, you’re saying that’s exactly what it will be used for?? Oh. Well the other people heavily funding vision research are the military and they’ve never done anything horrible like killing lots of people with new technology oh wait..... [1] I have a lot of hope that most of the people using com-puter vision are just doing happy, good stuff with it, like counting the number of zebras in a national park, or tracking their cat as it wanders around their house. But computer vision is already being put to questionable use and as researchers we have a responsibility to at least consider the harm our work might be doing and think of ways to mitigate it. We owe the world that much.In closing, do not @ me. (Because I finally quit Twitter). [1] The author is funded by the Office of Naval Research and Google.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- shrimp_emoji 7y ago
  Also, best cv: https://pjreddie.com/resume/ https://pjreddie.com/resume/
  - whymauri 7y ago
    Some context: https://www.reddit.com/r/justneckbeardthings/comments/47nb4e/so_i_hear_you_guys_like_my_resume/d0e85t5/?context=10000 https://www.reddit.com/r/justneckbeardthings/comments/47nb4e...
    - spyder 7y ago
      One of his other comment on reddit related to stopping CV research: "pjreddie 30 points·2 months ago· edited 2 months ago I've never been in a car that was using my tech to avoid killing people but I have had a 3 star general rave about how my work was being deployed in war zones and how army research groups love my software. Edit: to say that i'm not arguing against CV research as a whole, i'm just saying i don't want to do it anymore because of the impact i saw my work having"

DagAgren 7y ago

So the author goes, "wait, this actually causes more evil than good, I will not work on it any longer", and the other guy goes "don't worry, I will keep doing the evil for you!" Sigh.

deadmutex 7y ago
It's tricky thing... where do you draw the line? If someone works on the linux kernel, and someone uses the OS to do bad things.. should one stop? Also consider that object detection has a lot of impact in positive ways as well. It doesn't seem so black and white.
- MiroF 7y ago
  I agree - but I imagine even personally it might be a hard thing to hear that something you created is being used to kill people, even with the knowledge that it is doing a lot of good. I'm curious if this is something that some sort of modified license could help resolve. Do I have the option to license my software so that it can't be used in war?
  - rcw4256 7y ago
    Yes, but you need to be prepared to take it to court when someone uses your software in war.
    - hprotagonist 7y ago
      and when the answer is “hey, it’s GPL’d, here’s our source download link, fuck off we’re exactly following the rules”? Licenses are not a viable solution to this sort of ethical quandry.
      - rcw4256 7y ago
        That answer should be unsatisfactory to the court, since it wasn't licensed under the GPL. The rules, in this case, say no use in war.

chrischen 7y ago

But don’t we need people doing the research to solve the problems that need to be solved but in the right way. Take covid contact tracing as an example. If Apple and Google didn’t step in and preempt with their own tech, we may have had a problem with privacy eroding tech being forced through.

01100011 7y ago

The only thing stopping the robot apocalypse is the power problem. We have every technology necessary to enable mass casualties from commodity robots except long battery life. We don't need AI. We need decent enough pattern recognition that can pinpoint a weakness in the human body. I often use my 'Stabby the Robot' diatribe to convey this to people. Imagine a robot that moves too fast to evade, that doesn't rely on expendable, limited ammunition(i.e. a blade or sharp surface), and can locate the jugular vein of a human. You could make one now out of a commodity drone, but it wouldn't last very long because of the power problem. AI would obviously make it more dangerous, but it isn't necessary. We've already placed very dangerous tools into the hands of humans. Maybe it helps AlexeyAB sleep at night to stop working on YOLO, but his idle hands are not holding back the future.

IdiocyInAction 7y ago
While your robots do sound like they could kill a lot of people, I feel like this is a bit overblown. For a start, for "apocalypse", they would have to be produced in massive numbers, i.e. by a nation state-level actor. State-level actors can already make nukes or bioweapons.
- 01100011 7y ago
  What's so hard about manufacturing a few million drones? With a relatively modest amount of money(relative to, say, developing a nuclear program or chemical weapons program), you could hire a contract manufacturer to spin out a few million drones. They probably wouldn't even ask what the blade/needle was for, although it would be easy to craft a cover story(i.e. "They're for mass inoculation/slaughter of livestock"). Update the SW and congrats, you now have a weapon of mass destruction. You can target people by face, race, location, etc. There's a reason the US military has been playing with drone clouds for years.
  - philipkglass 7y ago
    It's not hard for a nation to manufacture or order millions of drones. It's also not hard to obtain enough rounds of ammunition to shoot millions of people. It was decades if not a century ago when the primary obstacle to a nation killing millions of people ceased to be "inherent technical difficulty."