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I support Facebook AI. The actual news is that we are releasing an extensive egocentric dataset with associated tasks for the research community. Collecting suc

I support Facebook AI. The actual news is that we are releasing an extensive egocentric dataset with associated tasks for the research community. Collecting such dataset in a private and responsible way is a significant challenge. Happy to answer any questions. https://ai.facebook.com/blog/teaching-ai-to-perceive-the-world-through-your-eyes/ https://ai.facebook.com/blog/teaching-ai-to-perceive-the-wor...

Hnrobert42 5y ago
What are you all doing to allow those of us that don’t want to be a part of your utopia to opt out?
- pesenti 5y ago
  I encourage you to read the details of the news, in particular how the data was collected with full consent from all (something that most research datasets don’t do well). It doesn’t answer your question directly but gives you an idea on how we think about these issues. AI-powered wearables will have stringent privacy guarantees, both for the wearer and the people around.
  - picardythird 5y ago
    One of the features outlined in the article for this post was for the glasses to remember things that other people said. How would such other people who don't want to be recorded for these purposes opt out?
    - KaiserPro 5y ago
      This is a static dataset. You'll want to ask that question about "Project Aria". for example, can FB provide a list of recording locations and times, so I can request my image/audio removed? How good is facebook's anonymisation system? what % of faces can be removed (on average) Has every single piece of footage captured with Aria been anonymised?
      - pesenti 5y ago
        From https://about.facebook.com/realitylabs/projectaria/ https://about.facebook.com/realitylabs/projectaria/ "Participants will only record in either Facebook offices (once they reopen), wearers’ private homes (with consent from all members of the household), or public spaces, and won’t record in private venues without written consent from such places. Before any information gathered in a public place is made available to our researchers, it will be automatically scrubbed to blur faces and vehicle license plates." So we anonymize all the content collected in public. I don't have the stats for the face blurring algorithm, and while you can ask for your data to be removed, we don't provide locations/times. These are good suggestions though.
        still_grokking 5y ago
        > So we anonymize all the content collected in public. I don't have the stats for the face blurring algorithm […] I see some contradiction here. You don't know "the stats for the face blurring algorithm" but you're saying you "anonymize all the content collected"? If the stats don't say it's 100% (which is impossible afaik if done by machines) you obviously don't anonymize upfront all the content collected.
    - pesenti 5y ago
      That’s a good question and I don’t think we have all the answers yet. But I expect that many functionalities will need to request and get consent from 3rd parties.
      - picardythird 5y ago
        So, will I have to sign a consent agreement every time I talk to a d*** wearing these glasses? Is this the "irl" equivalent of the cookie consent banner in the web browser? Heaven forbid. I want to be positive about technological advancements but I'm frankly flabbergasted that anyone, including you, thinks this is a good idea for the world. And in my heart of hearts I have to think that your salary and prestige are coming before your integrity and common sense.
      - still_grokking 5y ago
        If you can't answer this particular question after you've already advertised that feature there are only two possibilities to explain this knowledge gap: 1. You don't think upfront about the consequences your products have for people's privacy. 2. You don't care about the consequences your products have for people's privacy, and leave the particular details for the lawyers of how such products could still be distributed legally. Which of this explanations should we prefer?
        pesenti 5y ago
        Which feature are you talking about? This is a research project, not a product. The point of research projects is to investigate and figure out answers we don't have today.
        still_grokking 5y ago
        > One of the features outlined in the article for this post was for the glasses to remember things that other people said. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28898645 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28898645 So just to be sure: Is this feature one of the goals of this research, yes or no? From the same post: > How would such other people who don't want to be recorded for these purposes opt out? To make the obvious very explicit: The previous question (which you just praised as a "good question") is about this feature. Wasn't this clear to you until now? I'm wondering. This is a simple conversation thread not hard to follow.
  - rapnie 5y ago
    > I support Facebook AI. As VP that doesn't suprise me. The problem is trust, and it is continuously eroding further and further the more we get to know how your company operates.
  - mdoms 5y ago
    Do you think that most people believe Facebook privacy guarantees are worth the bits they're written in?
    - pesenti 5y ago
      No but they should: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2019/07/ftc-imposes-5-billion-penalty-sweeping-new-privacy-restrictions https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2019/07/ftc-i...
      - prox 5y ago
        Facebook got a penalty, but the main gripe is probably that it shouldn’t have been necessary to give one in the first place. I think what is on everyones mind is : “how can we trust a company that has a bad track record?” I think in the coming years FB should invest more in a public conversation on these issues. How can we meet the future in a way that our data is in factuality is our data, even though it’s stored by a third party such as yourself. Especially in light of in the FB model, where the user seems to be the product, and advertisers the client.
        pesenti 5y ago
        My point in linking to the settlement wasn't about the fine, it was about the guarantees, oversight, and accountability that came with it. Read the FTC news release, and you'll see that these are pretty extensive. And I agree completely on the public conversation, this is why we released this dataset and why we are doing project Aria.
        prox 5y ago
        Understood, and I reread the article just in case. My point is/was that it must come as a natural impulse to be privacy sensitive. Privacy hopefully becomes part of the culture / dna of Facebook, not just because the FCC and the privacy board are looking over your shoulders, so to say :) How do we prevent becoming “walkable surveillance machines”? How can we control the scope and and the issue of consent? These are more rhetorical questions, but hopefully it is part of the dialogue internally at FB.
  - thr0wawayf00 5y ago
    HN user asks a simple and direct question to Facebook's VP of AI: > What are you all doing to allow those of us that don’t want to be a part of your utopia to opt out? Answer from Facebook VP of AI: > I encourage you to read the details of the news that doesn't actually answer your question but gives you an idea of how we think I'm glad to see that even on a industry-specific forum like Hacker News, we can't get straight answers from people like this. Giving people "an idea of how we think" seems like a great way to stay vague enough that your thinking can change however it needs to over time to fulfill your business objectives, health or safety of the community be damned. Facebook doesn't need to give us vague "ideas", it needs to provide straightforward answers to straightforward questions. > AI-powered wearables will have stringent privacy guarantees, both for the wearer and the people around. Reading a sentence like this from a Facebook exec completely stretches credulity for me. I have zero confidence that your definition of "stringent privacy guarantees" is anything close to something that actually benefits the community as a whole.
    - pesenti 5y ago
      The question was about opting out of our "utopia", I wouldn't call that a "straightforward question". If you do have a straightforward question, especially about this or another specific project, I can try to provide a straightforward answer.
      - thr0wawayf00 5y ago
        Great! How do I make sure that nothing about me ever passes through a Facebook server/ETL job/datalake/neural net/whatever? Can that even be guaranteed? Is Facebook generating a shadow profile on me or using data I've generated either myself or through friends that have taken pictures/videos/etc of me, and if maybe, how do I opt out? Facebook just released Ray Ban smart glasses that don't look any different from standard Ray Bans and don't provide a solid design affordance to communicate to others when they're active, so I don't really get the feeling that Facebook cares at all about who is being swept up in their systems.
        pesenti 5y ago
  - jjulius 5y ago
    >I encourage you to read the details of the news, in particular how the data was collected with full consent from all (something that most research datasets don’t do well). I don't care to hear about the consent you received for this controlled study. I care to hear about how I/we can opt-out from something like this when it is eventually deployed in the wild en masse as part of an actual product. I'm pretty sure that's what OP was also asking about. Can you elaborate on that?
    - pesenti 5y ago
      It's hard to elaborate on something that's not developed yet. Here are the principles we are using when developing these products: https://about.facebook.com/realitylabs/responsible-innovation-principles/ https://about.facebook.com/realitylabs/responsible-innovatio... In practice, it will mean that some things you will know about, but don't necessarily give consent (i.e., someone taking a picture or a video of you), while other will likely require consent (i.e., recognizing you in these pictures/videos).
      - still_grokking 5y ago
        > In practice, it will mean that some things you will know about, but don't necessarily give consent (i.e., someone taking a picture or a video of you) This would be outright illegal in the EU. Even someone is taking photos / videos of me this person is not allowed to share those with third parties without my consent. If this content is going straight to FB this wouldn't be legal in the first place. Of course FB is fine with that as they just shift the responsibility for the illegal actions onto the person who is uploading things without consent. (Same "trick" as with phone contacts upload). FB is using a legal loophole here. Nobody will sue his / her friends. And even if someone tried, it's after the fact anyway: FB can't be forced to "unlearn" the gathered information.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        Hnrobert42 5y ago
  - dabbledash 5y ago
    >> It doesn’t answer your question directly Then how about you try again and answer it directly this time?
  - Hnrobert42 5y ago
    What I mean is, once this product goes live, how can I opt out of being “incidentally” included in your data collection by everyone dumb enough to buy this product?
nbzso 5y ago
I support free and open web. We are in defining point in time in which a possible tech dystopia is upon us. No paycheck or "advancements" will remove the dangers and damages done by greed and machinations of few to Big to fail companies. No dataset or "business" existence is rationalization for creating a system of data-hoaridng and data exploitation.
dannykwells 5y ago
This comment needs a serious disclaimer that you are a VP of AI at Facebook. Its implied in the above, but such serious COI requires acknowledgement.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
amelius 5y ago
Glad for you that you collected such a nice dataset. Wouldn't it be nice if selected external researchers too could collect data on the Facebook platform with the explicit consent of users?
- pesenti 5y ago
  Here is a link to all the tools we provide: https://research.fb.com/data/ https://research.fb.com/data/
knownjorbist 5y ago
Maximizing a manipulation engine is not what we as a species need to be investing any time or effort into.
dredmorbius 5y ago
What is your price? Who knows it with greater accuracy, you, or FB?
stereoradonc 5y ago
I support Facebook shutting down this program.

Hnrobert42 5y ago

What are you all doing to allow those of us that don’t want to be a part of your utopia to opt out?

pesenti 5y ago
I encourage you to read the details of the news, in particular how the data was collected with full consent from all (something that most research datasets don’t do well). It doesn’t answer your question directly but gives you an idea on how we think about these issues. AI-powered wearables will have stringent privacy guarantees, both for the wearer and the people around.
- picardythird 5y ago
  One of the features outlined in the article for this post was for the glasses to remember things that other people said. How would such other people who don't want to be recorded for these purposes opt out?
  - KaiserPro 5y ago
    This is a static dataset. You'll want to ask that question about "Project Aria". for example, can FB provide a list of recording locations and times, so I can request my image/audio removed? How good is facebook's anonymisation system? what % of faces can be removed (on average) Has every single piece of footage captured with Aria been anonymised?
    - pesenti 5y ago
      From https://about.facebook.com/realitylabs/projectaria/ https://about.facebook.com/realitylabs/projectaria/ "Participants will only record in either Facebook offices (once they reopen), wearers’ private homes (with consent from all members of the household), or public spaces, and won’t record in private venues without written consent from such places. Before any information gathered in a public place is made available to our researchers, it will be automatically scrubbed to blur faces and vehicle license plates." So we anonymize all the content collected in public. I don't have the stats for the face blurring algorithm, and while you can ask for your data to be removed, we don't provide locations/times. These are good suggestions though.
      - still_grokking 5y ago
        > So we anonymize all the content collected in public. I don't have the stats for the face blurring algorithm […] I see some contradiction here. You don't know "the stats for the face blurring algorithm" but you're saying you "anonymize all the content collected"? If the stats don't say it's 100% (which is impossible afaik if done by machines) you obviously don't anonymize upfront all the content collected.
  - pesenti 5y ago
    That’s a good question and I don’t think we have all the answers yet. But I expect that many functionalities will need to request and get consent from 3rd parties.
    - picardythird 5y ago
      So, will I have to sign a consent agreement every time I talk to a d*** wearing these glasses? Is this the "irl" equivalent of the cookie consent banner in the web browser? Heaven forbid. I want to be positive about technological advancements but I'm frankly flabbergasted that anyone, including you, thinks this is a good idea for the world. And in my heart of hearts I have to think that your salary and prestige are coming before your integrity and common sense.
    - still_grokking 5y ago
      If you can't answer this particular question after you've already advertised that feature there are only two possibilities to explain this knowledge gap: 1. You don't think upfront about the consequences your products have for people's privacy. 2. You don't care about the consequences your products have for people's privacy, and leave the particular details for the lawyers of how such products could still be distributed legally. Which of this explanations should we prefer?
      - pesenti 5y ago
        Which feature are you talking about? This is a research project, not a product. The point of research projects is to investigate and figure out answers we don't have today.
        still_grokking 5y ago
        > One of the features outlined in the article for this post was for the glasses to remember things that other people said. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28898645 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28898645 So just to be sure: Is this feature one of the goals of this research, yes or no? From the same post: > How would such other people who don't want to be recorded for these purposes opt out? To make the obvious very explicit: The previous question (which you just praised as a "good question") is about this feature. Wasn't this clear to you until now? I'm wondering. This is a simple conversation thread not hard to follow.
- rapnie 5y ago
  > I support Facebook AI. As VP that doesn't suprise me. The problem is trust, and it is continuously eroding further and further the more we get to know how your company operates.
- mdoms 5y ago
  Do you think that most people believe Facebook privacy guarantees are worth the bits they're written in?
  - pesenti 5y ago
    No but they should: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2019/07/ftc-imposes-5-billion-penalty-sweeping-new-privacy-restrictions https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2019/07/ftc-i...
    - prox 5y ago
      Facebook got a penalty, but the main gripe is probably that it shouldn’t have been necessary to give one in the first place. I think what is on everyones mind is : “how can we trust a company that has a bad track record?” I think in the coming years FB should invest more in a public conversation on these issues. How can we meet the future in a way that our data is in factuality is our data, even though it’s stored by a third party such as yourself. Especially in light of in the FB model, where the user seems to be the product, and advertisers the client.
      - pesenti 5y ago
        My point in linking to the settlement wasn't about the fine, it was about the guarantees, oversight, and accountability that came with it. Read the FTC news release, and you'll see that these are pretty extensive. And I agree completely on the public conversation, this is why we released this dataset and why we are doing project Aria.
        prox 5y ago
        Understood, and I reread the article just in case. My point is/was that it must come as a natural impulse to be privacy sensitive. Privacy hopefully becomes part of the culture / dna of Facebook, not just because the FCC and the privacy board are looking over your shoulders, so to say :) How do we prevent becoming “walkable surveillance machines”? How can we control the scope and and the issue of consent? These are more rhetorical questions, but hopefully it is part of the dialogue internally at FB.
- thr0wawayf00 5y ago
  HN user asks a simple and direct question to Facebook's VP of AI: > What are you all doing to allow those of us that don’t want to be a part of your utopia to opt out? Answer from Facebook VP of AI: > I encourage you to read the details of the news that doesn't actually answer your question but gives you an idea of how we think I'm glad to see that even on a industry-specific forum like Hacker News, we can't get straight answers from people like this. Giving people "an idea of how we think" seems like a great way to stay vague enough that your thinking can change however it needs to over time to fulfill your business objectives, health or safety of the community be damned. Facebook doesn't need to give us vague "ideas", it needs to provide straightforward answers to straightforward questions. > AI-powered wearables will have stringent privacy guarantees, both for the wearer and the people around. Reading a sentence like this from a Facebook exec completely stretches credulity for me. I have zero confidence that your definition of "stringent privacy guarantees" is anything close to something that actually benefits the community as a whole.
  - pesenti 5y ago
    The question was about opting out of our "utopia", I wouldn't call that a "straightforward question". If you do have a straightforward question, especially about this or another specific project, I can try to provide a straightforward answer.
    - thr0wawayf00 5y ago
      Great! How do I make sure that nothing about me ever passes through a Facebook server/ETL job/datalake/neural net/whatever? Can that even be guaranteed? Is Facebook generating a shadow profile on me or using data I've generated either myself or through friends that have taken pictures/videos/etc of me, and if maybe, how do I opt out? Facebook just released Ray Ban smart glasses that don't look any different from standard Ray Bans and don't provide a solid design affordance to communicate to others when they're active, so I don't really get the feeling that Facebook cares at all about who is being swept up in their systems.
      - pesenti 5y ago
- jjulius 5y ago
  >I encourage you to read the details of the news, in particular how the data was collected with full consent from all (something that most research datasets don’t do well). I don't care to hear about the consent you received for this controlled study. I care to hear about how I/we can opt-out from something like this when it is eventually deployed in the wild en masse as part of an actual product. I'm pretty sure that's what OP was also asking about. Can you elaborate on that?
  - pesenti 5y ago
    It's hard to elaborate on something that's not developed yet. Here are the principles we are using when developing these products: https://about.facebook.com/realitylabs/responsible-innovation-principles/ https://about.facebook.com/realitylabs/responsible-innovatio... In practice, it will mean that some things you will know about, but don't necessarily give consent (i.e., someone taking a picture or a video of you), while other will likely require consent (i.e., recognizing you in these pictures/videos).
    - still_grokking 5y ago
      > In practice, it will mean that some things you will know about, but don't necessarily give consent (i.e., someone taking a picture or a video of you) This would be outright illegal in the EU. Even someone is taking photos / videos of me this person is not allowed to share those with third parties without my consent. If this content is going straight to FB this wouldn't be legal in the first place. Of course FB is fine with that as they just shift the responsibility for the illegal actions onto the person who is uploading things without consent. (Same "trick" as with phone contacts upload). FB is using a legal loophole here. Nobody will sue his / her friends. And even if someone tried, it's after the fact anyway: FB can't be forced to "unlearn" the gathered information.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - Hnrobert42 5y ago
- dabbledash 5y ago
  >> It doesn’t answer your question directly Then how about you try again and answer it directly this time?
- Hnrobert42 5y ago
  What I mean is, once this product goes live, how can I opt out of being “incidentally” included in your data collection by everyone dumb enough to buy this product?

nbzso 5y ago

I support free and open web. We are in defining point in time in which a possible tech dystopia is upon us. No paycheck or "advancements" will remove the dangers and damages done by greed and machinations of few to Big to fail companies. No dataset or "business" existence is rationalization for creating a system of data-hoaridng and data exploitation.

dannykwells 5y ago

This comment needs a serious disclaimer that you are a VP of AI at Facebook. Its implied in the above, but such serious COI requires acknowledgement.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

amelius 5y ago

Glad for you that you collected such a nice dataset. Wouldn't it be nice if selected external researchers too could collect data on the Facebook platform with the explicit consent of users?

pesenti 5y ago
Here is a link to all the tools we provide: https://research.fb.com/data/ https://research.fb.com/data/

knownjorbist 5y ago

Maximizing a manipulation engine is not what we as a species need to be investing any time or effort into.

dredmorbius 5y ago

What is your price? Who knows it with greater accuracy, you, or FB?

stereoradonc 5y ago

I support Facebook shutting down this program.