3 ms·

I'm sure the tech is neat. But I get a real sinking feeling from how hard tech giants like "Meta" are trying openly to create dystopia. The "Metaverse" is not a

by dTal 3y ago

I'm sure the tech is neat. But I get a real sinking feeling from how hard tech giants like "Meta" are trying openly to create dystopia. The "Metaverse" is not aspirational! > That understanding would let AR glasses tailor content to you and your individual context, like seamlessly blending a digital overlay with your physical space Horrifying, if it ever takes off in the way that "Meta" wants it to. Take the modern smartphone disease and amplify it a few orders of magnitude. > While LLMs rely on vast amounts of training data that typically comes from a range of publicly available text sources on the web, no such repository of information yet exists for physical spaces at the scale needed for training an end-to-end model. Considering the tremendous scale in question, the "yet" is also terrifying. The only way to collect such a dataset would be if some large fraction of people were wearing always-on, network connected cameras. Meta clearly sees this future and wants it; the kind of future where everyone wears a Meta headset, all the time, and has their experience of reality mediated through it - optimized to maximize shareholder value of course, under the watchful eye of The Algorithm. A panopticon AI shoggoth. Meta is an AI paperclip maximizer, and it is getting uncomfortably close to the "RELEASE THE HYPNODRONES" stage.

globalnode 3y ago
> A panopticon AI shoggoth That made my day. I do agree, it is creepy but its what theyre pushing.
idle_zealot 3y ago
Re: that "yet". I noticed that after a recent update on my Quest the OS gave me a pop-up about a new feature, that when enabled would allow the device to remember my play boundaries and restore them automatically rather than requiring they be re-entered every time the system gets confused about where I am. I was a little confused why it didn't just turn that on by default, it seemed like a straight upgrade to the current handling and shouldn't require anything but a bit of local storage. Scrolling down in the pop-up I was informed that enabling the feature would authorize Facebook to scan my surroundings and upload a complete map of them to use for whatever purposes they desired. I guess they legally need consent for that, and tying a feature improvement to data collection is still totally allowed somehow. So I imagine that they are building that real-world dataset presently.
- dTal 3y ago
  >I guess they legally need consent for that, and tying a feature improvement to data collection is still totally allowed somehow. As egregious as this is, it still doesn't strike me as nakedly insulting as Google's refusal to let you turn on the (entirely passive!) GPS receiver on your phone without uploading your precise location to their servers, for similar data collection purposes. I'd love to see this sort of thing be made illegal, but the only regulatory domain with an Overton window even close to that is the EU, and it's such a minefield of potential gray areas that I doubt it would get off the ground even there.
ricardobeat 3y ago
> The only way to collect such a dataset would be You must have missed the part where they created a synthetic dataset of 100000 environments, trained the network on that, and released it to the public? Not saying I’m not worried about their plans too, but that is clearly addressed in the text.
bobajeff 3y ago
They still have to solve for: * How uncomfortable the headsets are to wear for long periods if time * How useless they are (what are they solution for?) * How ridiculous they look * How expensive they are * How expensive it is to produce content for After they solve these issues then I will worry about the dystopia we are in. VR headsets may look cool and futuristic in the movies but in reality they are just screens you wear on your head and that's it.
- gibmeat 3y ago
  All of these (except maybe the "useless" part) are almost always solved by time (Moore's law)
  - bobajeff 3y ago
    I'd think that all of them would be solved by time. I'm just saying they are nothing to be concerned with until they are (and we are still far way from that point in time). They are just fancy demos to make a company look attractive to investors.
- dTal 3y ago
  Much has been written about the dystopia we are already in, but I am specifically concerned about the dystopia they are earnestly building. Meta is aware of these problems and is trying very hard to solve them. And they won't be useless! That's the worst part. They will provide compelling value, like smartphones, and as such will be impossible to boycott. At first the value will be simple, obvious utility, like route overlays. Later it will be value within the system, much like how the main utility of smartphones now is to run the mandatory apps to participate in aspects of society that previously did not require a smartphone. And of course they will be addictive. Here is a short sci-fi film depicting what I fear: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs
  - bobajeff 3y ago
    They wish. Naturally wearing screens on your head is not a healthy thing for humans to do for hours at a time. Naturally that tends to cause headaches, eyestrain, nausea etc. Now as far as making them more useful I suppose *if* they can solve that first problem plus make them match the form of IMAX glasses (preferably smaller). Then yes they could be useful (providing there's good enough applications). But don't cause the user to get sick feature is not 'a nice to have' you can't expect it to spread like the smartphone if people can't use it for long periods of time. Will Meta solve that problem? Doubtful. Will they provide good enough applications to make AR worth using once they do? I wouldn't bet on it. Just because a company has an incentive for something to be successful doesn't mean they can pull off. Just look at metaverse.
FeepingCreature 3y ago
> The Metaverse is not aspirational! Wait, Snowcrash was horror for you? I thought the whole point of post-cyberpunk was to not assume all tech would be dystopian.
- jprete 3y ago
  Snowcrash is a dystopian libertarian world cleverly hidden by the viewpoint characters treating it as completely normal.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

by dTal 3y ago

globalnode 3y ago

> A panopticon AI shoggoth That made my day. I do agree, it is creepy but its what theyre pushing.

idle_zealot 3y ago

Re: that "yet". I noticed that after a recent update on my Quest the OS gave me a pop-up about a new feature, that when enabled would allow the device to remember my play boundaries and restore them automatically rather than requiring they be re-entered every time the system gets confused about where I am. I was a little confused why it didn't just turn that on by default, it seemed like a straight upgrade to the current handling and shouldn't require anything but a bit of local storage. Scrolling down in the pop-up I was informed that enabling the feature would authorize Facebook to scan my surroundings and upload a complete map of them to use for whatever purposes they desired. I guess they legally need consent for that, and tying a feature improvement to data collection is still totally allowed somehow. So I imagine that they are building that real-world dataset presently.

dTal 3y ago
>I guess they legally need consent for that, and tying a feature improvement to data collection is still totally allowed somehow. As egregious as this is, it still doesn't strike me as nakedly insulting as Google's refusal to let you turn on the (entirely passive!) GPS receiver on your phone without uploading your precise location to their servers, for similar data collection purposes. I'd love to see this sort of thing be made illegal, but the only regulatory domain with an Overton window even close to that is the EU, and it's such a minefield of potential gray areas that I doubt it would get off the ground even there.

ricardobeat 3y ago

> The only way to collect such a dataset would be You must have missed the part where they created a synthetic dataset of 100000 environments, trained the network on that, and released it to the public? Not saying I’m not worried about their plans too, but that is clearly addressed in the text.

bobajeff 3y ago

They still have to solve for: * How uncomfortable the headsets are to wear for long periods if time * How useless they are (what are they solution for?) * How ridiculous they look * How expensive they are * How expensive it is to produce content for After they solve these issues then I will worry about the dystopia we are in. VR headsets may look cool and futuristic in the movies but in reality they are just screens you wear on your head and that's it.

gibmeat 3y ago
All of these (except maybe the "useless" part) are almost always solved by time (Moore's law)
- bobajeff 3y ago
  I'd think that all of them would be solved by time. I'm just saying they are nothing to be concerned with until they are (and we are still far way from that point in time). They are just fancy demos to make a company look attractive to investors.
dTal 3y ago
Much has been written about the dystopia we are already in, but I am specifically concerned about the dystopia they are earnestly building. Meta is aware of these problems and is trying very hard to solve them. And they won't be useless! That's the worst part. They will provide compelling value, like smartphones, and as such will be impossible to boycott. At first the value will be simple, obvious utility, like route overlays. Later it will be value within the system, much like how the main utility of smartphones now is to run the mandatory apps to participate in aspects of society that previously did not require a smartphone. And of course they will be addictive. Here is a short sci-fi film depicting what I fear: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs
- bobajeff 3y ago
  They wish. Naturally wearing screens on your head is not a healthy thing for humans to do for hours at a time. Naturally that tends to cause headaches, eyestrain, nausea etc. Now as far as making them more useful I suppose *if* they can solve that first problem plus make them match the form of IMAX glasses (preferably smaller). Then yes they could be useful (providing there's good enough applications). But don't cause the user to get sick feature is not 'a nice to have' you can't expect it to spread like the smartphone if people can't use it for long periods of time. Will Meta solve that problem? Doubtful. Will they provide good enough applications to make AR worth using once they do? I wouldn't bet on it. Just because a company has an incentive for something to be successful doesn't mean they can pull off. Just look at metaverse.

FeepingCreature 3y ago

> The Metaverse is not aspirational! Wait, Snowcrash was horror for you? I thought the whole point of post-cyberpunk was to not assume all tech would be dystopian.

jprete 3y ago
Snowcrash is a dystopian libertarian world cleverly hidden by the viewpoint characters treating it as completely normal.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]