35 ms·

"must" is probably the wrong word, but if they don't develop it, someone else will. At most, it would be delayed, and I'm not sure there's much difference in th

by jolmg 4y ago

"must" is probably the wrong word, but if they don't develop it, someone else will. At most, it would be delayed, and I'm not sure there's much difference in that.

jakelazaroff 4y ago
Can we agree that “someone would have done this anyway” is a poor justification for one’s actions? That’s what you say when you 1) recognize that you did a bad thing, but 2) don’t want to be blamed for it.
- jolmg 4y ago
  Can we agree that it's fundamentally not a bad thing to develop a technology? If you were a legislator, how would you like to criminalize the development of technology? You know, the most difficult part of this tech is probably the facial tracking, which is probably also used for the animation of 3d avatars. The jump is probably not huge.
  - MattRix 4y ago
    Many things can be unethical/immoral without being illegal, and of course there are some technologies that are fundamentally bad.
    - jolmg 4y ago
      Tech is such a malleable thing. Let's say that this repo doesn't exist, but repos exist for doing facial tracking on webcam feeds and pictures (for facial recognition), and others for modifying a 3d model according to a facial model output by facial trackers (for 3d avatars). Let's say that the tech around this DeepFaceLive repo develops to the point that the repo can become just a 10-line file of glue that makes a 3d model that's just a grid plane with a picture on it that moves according to a webcam feed. Such a repo is redundant and anyone that wants this tech can just apply the repos mentioned in the previous paragraph to do the equivalent. Are those repos now bad? If not, it seems the ethical question can be resolved by some restructuring of code so bad uses are not made so obvious, while being almost as easy.
    - sneak 4y ago
      What technologies are fundamentally bad? I don't know of any outside of perhaps torture devices.
      - lovemenot 4y ago
        There's surely at least some that you don't know of because their developer made the decision to not release.
      - blooalien 4y ago
        Every single "weapon of mass destruction" is fundamentally bad technology, just for one ultra-easy answer…
        jolmg 4y ago
        The possibility that nuclear deterrence has helped the world to be more peaceful in comparison to the past means that it's not such an easy answer. Hasn't even been a century since nuclear weapons were invented though, so no clear statistics.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        sneak 4y ago
        That's simply not accurate? Nuclear weapons and the advent of mutually assured destruction has ushered in a world where many, many, many fewer people die of violent conflict. Technologies that cause destruction are not congruent with destruction. They change the game such that destruction may actually be prevented by their existence. They are tools, nothing more. It's possible they have permanently eradicated world war. If that's true, they are not fundamentally bad but in fact really quite great. Only time will tell.
  - tgv 4y ago
    No, we can't. Developing "tech" is an action bound by morals like any other action. Cigarette production has tech in it. They don't just grow on trees. It was developed, and keeps being developed, by people well aware of the effects of smoking.
    - jolmg 4y ago
      You're opening another can of worms with that example. An adult, informed smoker that takes care to not cause second-hand smoking and that doesn't have any dependents, causes harm only to themselves. If they think that the reduction of stress or whatever else they gain at the tradeoff of their health is worth it, that's their choice. That's part of their bodily autonomy. As such, the tech is still not inherently bad.
      - tgv 4y ago
        You're conveniently dismissing a few concerns and from that drawing the conclusion it isn't inherently bad?
  - JohnFen 4y ago
    > Can we agree that it's fundamentally not a bad thing to develop a technology? I do not agree with this assertion.
- prox 4y ago
  It’s simply that it’s a kids/teen level argument. “But they did it too!” Not a lot of thought went into it, is what it usually tells me.
  - jolmg 4y ago
    The argument wasn't "Doing something bad is fine because others are", it's "You're trying to stop a bad thing happening by stopping some people upstream from doing something that's perfectly fine. That's going to be ineffective." But you're right about me not putting a lot of thought. I didn't think this would need more arguing than that. I still believe that tech is fundamentally neutral, and as such so is its development. Even if a developer intends to give it bad use, the use and development are separate questions.
    - lovemenot 4y ago
      There are others - not you - who will justify their own actions thusly: the technology existed, its better that the good guys (me - of course) should use it before the bad guys do. In the space between both equivocations (yours and the other guy's), lies the potential for moral abuse.
      - JohnFen 4y ago
        That's an even more faulty argument, though, because almost everyone considers themselves one of "the good guys".
        prox 4y ago
        Indeed, I think terming yourself in good vs bad as an we vs them terminology makes several biases go undiscovered that if you truly go for objectivity despite your sense of moral leaning is telling you.
      - jacooper 4y ago
        What even is a good guy use for Deep fakes besides some memes that get old fast?
- entropi 4y ago
  I actually don't agree with this. Assume that the following premises are true: * action x is legal, but results in a worse world for everyone. * doing action x benefits the first 1000 people who do it. * much more than 1000 are capable of doing x, including me. * if I do it now, I will be one of the first 1000. If these are true, I think one should do action x. I believe one would be completely justified in doing it.
  - trashtester 4y ago
    Basically prisoner's dilemma. I think the answer is inherent to the question of whether it's "justified", and the fact that you're being downvoted. If Prisoner's Dilemma is played once, the optimal strategy is to defect. If it's repeated an unknown number of times, the optimal strategy is tit-for-tat. Now, if you're an identifiable actor in a pool of tit-for-tat-players, and you have a history of defecting first, you're going to face opponents who normally play tit-for-tat start to defect against you first, too. In the end, you will end up as one of the worst peformers in the player pool. So when you're asking if it is "justifiable" to defect in a game like this, it is the same as asking "will I be treated worse if I defect in this game". The downvote confirms this, I think. It means that in this population pool, bad behavior is punished (or people pretend it is) Now, if defecting can either be done secretly or if you're in a popluation pool where everyone defects anyway, then always-defect is probably the nash equillibrium. In that case, defecting will be seen as justifiable.
    - entropi 4y ago
      > Basically prisoner's dilemma > (...)In that case, defecting will be seen as justifiable. Exactly! My argument basically boiled down to this. In certain situations, defecting may be the way to go. I would not blame the defector for doing what is in their best interest. And “someone would have done this anyway” could very well be what's turning a situation into a prisoner's dilemma, so it could actually be a valid justification in some cases. But yeah, it could depend on what is meant by "justification" exactly.
      - harimau777 4y ago
- courseofaction 4y ago
  It's a self-contradictory and bad-faith argument - it doesn't give another person the opportunity to say no, let alone to not do it.
- KyeRussell 4y ago
  You’re speaking to the wrong audience. “Someone else would do it anyway” is how everyone here justifies doing unethical shit at FAANG and refusing to earn less than $300k/yr base because “that’s just the industry”. I have no respect for anyone that says this shit with a straight face.
  - KyeRussell 4y ago
    It should also be said that anyone that makes this argument immediately loses their right to complain when governments need to step in and regulate.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - jolmg 4y ago
      You're commenting even after someone has already provided a legitimate good use of this tech, and are the third person to write as if it were established that it's unethical to develop this tech. I never said that it's fine to do unethical things because others will do it anyway, and I wish you wouldn't imply that I did. From the get-go, it was an open discussion whether the development was good/bad/neutral, and my original comment was to clarify that jakelazaroff's comment probably misinterpreted what they quoted from the use of "must". My position is that development is not unethical. I'm not trying to justify this position because I don't think it needs to be. When I said "others will do it anyway", it's not a justification and my original comment wasn't even about my position on this. My comment was referring to the usefulness of stopping the implicit always-ethically-neutral development of a tech in order to stop the potential misuse of it. I'm saying that even if they stopped the development of this one repo, or a few, or all others implementing this tech, it'd be ineffective. This repo is just one bit of the tech. Most of the tech is in its dependencies. If someone wants it and has nefarious uses in mind, they don't really really need this repo for that.
      - JohnFen 4y ago
        > My position is that development is not unethical. I think this is where we disagree at heart. I don't think that development is an ethically neutral act, any more than any other human activity is ethically neutral.
- wincy 4y ago
  If I can become rich instead of someone else, and the damage will be done either way, it seems perfectly rational if I can avoid any actual legal punishment (I don’t care about people on Twitter being angry with me, Twitter isn’t real life) to push the big red button and reap the rewards. Once I’m rich and powerful I can afford to be ethical, isn’t that the way of billionaires anyway?
  - JohnFen 4y ago
    If a person isn't ethical in the first place (as proven by becoming wealthy through unethical means), they certainly aren't going to become ethical after they're rich.
pfortuny 4y ago
Right. Tell that to Einstein, who just before Hiroshima realized it was not such a good argument. That is a nice piece of history. Ethics is important. And one consequence is: I may die but at least it was not because I made it possible.
- jevgeni 4y ago
  Yeah, theory of relativity and tech with use cases mostly in porn and fraud aren't really the same thing.
  - pfortuny 4y ago
    It’s not relativity. Einstein pushed first for the american atom bomb because “the germans will make it anyway”. Then he realised that it was way too harmful and recanted. Nothing to do with relativity, just with “if I don’t do it others will”.
  - dmingod666 4y ago
    Your response doesn't make any sense. Care to elaborate?
    - GeorgeMD 4y ago
      Just search "Atrioc" in google and read any article. So far, this tech's main use is porn with people who do not want to do porn, who do not post adult content, who did not ever consent to their faces being used for adult content. The second use of this technology is fraud. Go read the issue and the comments linked in the post. And you should not even need this much info. The simple fact that they mention "mrdeepfake" as one of the 4 communication groups, the second after their Discord server tells you how much good this tech does to the world.
    - jevgeni 4y ago
      As GeorgeMD pointed out, there's some required reading.
      - 4y ago

by jolmg 4y ago

"must" is probably the wrong word, but if they don't develop it, someone else will. At most, it would be delayed, and I'm not sure there's much difference in that.

jakelazaroff 4y ago

Can we agree that “someone would have done this anyway” is a poor justification for one’s actions? That’s what you say when you 1) recognize that you did a bad thing, but 2) don’t want to be blamed for it.

jolmg 4y ago
Can we agree that it's fundamentally not a bad thing to develop a technology? If you were a legislator, how would you like to criminalize the development of technology? You know, the most difficult part of this tech is probably the facial tracking, which is probably also used for the animation of 3d avatars. The jump is probably not huge.
- MattRix 4y ago
  Many things can be unethical/immoral without being illegal, and of course there are some technologies that are fundamentally bad.
  - jolmg 4y ago
    Tech is such a malleable thing. Let's say that this repo doesn't exist, but repos exist for doing facial tracking on webcam feeds and pictures (for facial recognition), and others for modifying a 3d model according to a facial model output by facial trackers (for 3d avatars). Let's say that the tech around this DeepFaceLive repo develops to the point that the repo can become just a 10-line file of glue that makes a 3d model that's just a grid plane with a picture on it that moves according to a webcam feed. Such a repo is redundant and anyone that wants this tech can just apply the repos mentioned in the previous paragraph to do the equivalent. Are those repos now bad? If not, it seems the ethical question can be resolved by some restructuring of code so bad uses are not made so obvious, while being almost as easy.
  - sneak 4y ago
    What technologies are fundamentally bad? I don't know of any outside of perhaps torture devices.
    - lovemenot 4y ago
      There's surely at least some that you don't know of because their developer made the decision to not release.
    - blooalien 4y ago
      Every single "weapon of mass destruction" is fundamentally bad technology, just for one ultra-easy answer…
      - jolmg 4y ago
        The possibility that nuclear deterrence has helped the world to be more peaceful in comparison to the past means that it's not such an easy answer. Hasn't even been a century since nuclear weapons were invented though, so no clear statistics.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - sneak 4y ago
        That's simply not accurate? Nuclear weapons and the advent of mutually assured destruction has ushered in a world where many, many, many fewer people die of violent conflict. Technologies that cause destruction are not congruent with destruction. They change the game such that destruction may actually be prevented by their existence. They are tools, nothing more. It's possible they have permanently eradicated world war. If that's true, they are not fundamentally bad but in fact really quite great. Only time will tell.
- tgv 4y ago
  No, we can't. Developing "tech" is an action bound by morals like any other action. Cigarette production has tech in it. They don't just grow on trees. It was developed, and keeps being developed, by people well aware of the effects of smoking.
  - jolmg 4y ago
    You're opening another can of worms with that example. An adult, informed smoker that takes care to not cause second-hand smoking and that doesn't have any dependents, causes harm only to themselves. If they think that the reduction of stress or whatever else they gain at the tradeoff of their health is worth it, that's their choice. That's part of their bodily autonomy. As such, the tech is still not inherently bad.
    - tgv 4y ago
      You're conveniently dismissing a few concerns and from that drawing the conclusion it isn't inherently bad?
- JohnFen 4y ago
  > Can we agree that it's fundamentally not a bad thing to develop a technology? I do not agree with this assertion.
prox 4y ago
It’s simply that it’s a kids/teen level argument. “But they did it too!” Not a lot of thought went into it, is what it usually tells me.
- jolmg 4y ago
  The argument wasn't "Doing something bad is fine because others are", it's "You're trying to stop a bad thing happening by stopping some people upstream from doing something that's perfectly fine. That's going to be ineffective." But you're right about me not putting a lot of thought. I didn't think this would need more arguing than that. I still believe that tech is fundamentally neutral, and as such so is its development. Even if a developer intends to give it bad use, the use and development are separate questions.
  - lovemenot 4y ago
    There are others - not you - who will justify their own actions thusly: the technology existed, its better that the good guys (me - of course) should use it before the bad guys do. In the space between both equivocations (yours and the other guy's), lies the potential for moral abuse.
    - JohnFen 4y ago
      That's an even more faulty argument, though, because almost everyone considers themselves one of "the good guys".
      - prox 4y ago
        Indeed, I think terming yourself in good vs bad as an we vs them terminology makes several biases go undiscovered that if you truly go for objectivity despite your sense of moral leaning is telling you.
    - jacooper 4y ago
      What even is a good guy use for Deep fakes besides some memes that get old fast?
entropi 4y ago
I actually don't agree with this. Assume that the following premises are true: * action x is legal, but results in a worse world for everyone. * doing action x benefits the first 1000 people who do it. * much more than 1000 are capable of doing x, including me. * if I do it now, I will be one of the first 1000. If these are true, I think one should do action x. I believe one would be completely justified in doing it.
- trashtester 4y ago
  Basically prisoner's dilemma. I think the answer is inherent to the question of whether it's "justified", and the fact that you're being downvoted. If Prisoner's Dilemma is played once, the optimal strategy is to defect. If it's repeated an unknown number of times, the optimal strategy is tit-for-tat. Now, if you're an identifiable actor in a pool of tit-for-tat-players, and you have a history of defecting first, you're going to face opponents who normally play tit-for-tat start to defect against you first, too. In the end, you will end up as one of the worst peformers in the player pool. So when you're asking if it is "justifiable" to defect in a game like this, it is the same as asking "will I be treated worse if I defect in this game". The downvote confirms this, I think. It means that in this population pool, bad behavior is punished (or people pretend it is) Now, if defecting can either be done secretly or if you're in a popluation pool where everyone defects anyway, then always-defect is probably the nash equillibrium. In that case, defecting will be seen as justifiable.
  - entropi 4y ago
    > Basically prisoner's dilemma > (...)In that case, defecting will be seen as justifiable. Exactly! My argument basically boiled down to this. In certain situations, defecting may be the way to go. I would not blame the defector for doing what is in their best interest. And “someone would have done this anyway” could very well be what's turning a situation into a prisoner's dilemma, so it could actually be a valid justification in some cases. But yeah, it could depend on what is meant by "justification" exactly.
    - harimau777 4y ago
courseofaction 4y ago
It's a self-contradictory and bad-faith argument - it doesn't give another person the opportunity to say no, let alone to not do it.
KyeRussell 4y ago
You’re speaking to the wrong audience. “Someone else would do it anyway” is how everyone here justifies doing unethical shit at FAANG and refusing to earn less than $300k/yr base because “that’s just the industry”. I have no respect for anyone that says this shit with a straight face.
- KyeRussell 4y ago
  It should also be said that anyone that makes this argument immediately loses their right to complain when governments need to step in and regulate.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - jolmg 4y ago
    You're commenting even after someone has already provided a legitimate good use of this tech, and are the third person to write as if it were established that it's unethical to develop this tech. I never said that it's fine to do unethical things because others will do it anyway, and I wish you wouldn't imply that I did. From the get-go, it was an open discussion whether the development was good/bad/neutral, and my original comment was to clarify that jakelazaroff's comment probably misinterpreted what they quoted from the use of "must". My position is that development is not unethical. I'm not trying to justify this position because I don't think it needs to be. When I said "others will do it anyway", it's not a justification and my original comment wasn't even about my position on this. My comment was referring to the usefulness of stopping the implicit always-ethically-neutral development of a tech in order to stop the potential misuse of it. I'm saying that even if they stopped the development of this one repo, or a few, or all others implementing this tech, it'd be ineffective. This repo is just one bit of the tech. Most of the tech is in its dependencies. If someone wants it and has nefarious uses in mind, they don't really really need this repo for that.
    - JohnFen 4y ago
      > My position is that development is not unethical. I think this is where we disagree at heart. I don't think that development is an ethically neutral act, any more than any other human activity is ethically neutral.
wincy 4y ago
If I can become rich instead of someone else, and the damage will be done either way, it seems perfectly rational if I can avoid any actual legal punishment (I don’t care about people on Twitter being angry with me, Twitter isn’t real life) to push the big red button and reap the rewards. Once I’m rich and powerful I can afford to be ethical, isn’t that the way of billionaires anyway?
- JohnFen 4y ago
  If a person isn't ethical in the first place (as proven by becoming wealthy through unethical means), they certainly aren't going to become ethical after they're rich.

pfortuny 4y ago

Right. Tell that to Einstein, who just before Hiroshima realized it was not such a good argument. That is a nice piece of history. Ethics is important. And one consequence is: I may die but at least it was not because I made it possible.

jevgeni 4y ago
Yeah, theory of relativity and tech with use cases mostly in porn and fraud aren't really the same thing.
- pfortuny 4y ago
  It’s not relativity. Einstein pushed first for the american atom bomb because “the germans will make it anyway”. Then he realised that it was way too harmful and recanted. Nothing to do with relativity, just with “if I don’t do it others will”.
- dmingod666 4y ago
  Your response doesn't make any sense. Care to elaborate?
  - GeorgeMD 4y ago
    Just search "Atrioc" in google and read any article. So far, this tech's main use is porn with people who do not want to do porn, who do not post adult content, who did not ever consent to their faces being used for adult content. The second use of this technology is fraud. Go read the issue and the comments linked in the post. And you should not even need this much info. The simple fact that they mention "mrdeepfake" as one of the 4 communication groups, the second after their Discord server tells you how much good this tech does to the world.
  - jevgeni 4y ago
    As GeorgeMD pointed out, there's some required reading.
    - 4y ago