Deep Learning 'Godfather' Yoshua Bengio Worries About China's Use of AI (bloomberg.com) 53
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Yoshua Bengio, a Canadian computer scientist who helped pioneer the techniques underpinning much of the current excitement around artificial intelligence, is worried about China's use of AI for surveillance and political control. Bengio, who is also a co-founder of Montreal-based AI software company Element AI, said he was concerned about the technology he helped create being used for controlling people's behavior and influencing their minds. Bengio, a professor at the University of Montreal, is considered one of the three "godfathers" of deep learning, along with Yann LeCun and Geoff Hinton. It's a technology that uses neural networks -- a kind of software loosely based on aspects of the human brain -- to make predictions based on data. It's responsible for recent advances in facial recognition, natural language processing, translation, and recommendation algorithms.
"This is the 1984 Big Brother scenario," he said in an interview. "I think it's becoming more and more scary." "The use of your face to track you should be highly regulated," Bengio said. The amount of data large tech companies control is also a concern. He said the creation of data trusts -- non-profit entities or legal frameworks under which people own their data and allow it be used only for certain purposes -- might be one solution. If a trust held enough data, it could negotiate better terms with big tech companies that needed it, he said Thursday during a talk at Amnesty International U.K.'s office in London. Bengio said there were many ways deep learning software could be used for good. In Thursday's talk, he unveiled a project he's working on that uses AI to create augmented reality images depicting what people's individual homes or neighborhoods might look like as the result of natural disasters spawned by climate change. But he said there was also a risk that the implementation of AI would cause job losses on a scale, and at a speed, that's different from what's happened with other technological innovations. He said governments needed to be proactive in thinking about these risks, including considering new ways to redistribute wealth within society.
"This is the 1984 Big Brother scenario," he said in an interview. "I think it's becoming more and more scary." "The use of your face to track you should be highly regulated," Bengio said. The amount of data large tech companies control is also a concern. He said the creation of data trusts -- non-profit entities or legal frameworks under which people own their data and allow it be used only for certain purposes -- might be one solution. If a trust held enough data, it could negotiate better terms with big tech companies that needed it, he said Thursday during a talk at Amnesty International U.K.'s office in London. Bengio said there were many ways deep learning software could be used for good. In Thursday's talk, he unveiled a project he's working on that uses AI to create augmented reality images depicting what people's individual homes or neighborhoods might look like as the result of natural disasters spawned by climate change. But he said there was also a risk that the implementation of AI would cause job losses on a scale, and at a speed, that's different from what's happened with other technological innovations. He said governments needed to be proactive in thinking about these risks, including considering new ways to redistribute wealth within society.
Did anyone else... (Score:2)
... read that name as "B - I - N - Gi -O"?
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BINGO! :P
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Sounds like one of those dot com companies that went tits-up in the 1990s. So does his other name, in fact.
They are truning into Nazi Germany tie to cut them (Score:1)
They are truning into Nazi Germany tie to cut them down with a new trade deal.
How to stay comfy while defeating the State (Score:2)
One thing I don't get about China's plan, it seems worrying but also kind of easily gamed - like you could go around in a hood or those face matching block patterns on normally, but just sometimes go out plain-faced doing good deeds to raise your score.
The face blocking pattern stuff could well get you arrested, but China is not arresting everyone with a hood pulled up are they? That seems unrealistic.
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China is not arresting everyone with a hood pulled up are they? That seems unrealistic.
Perhaps not today, but it wouldn't be a surprising development. France already has a ban on headwear that covers the face, in public places, & I doubt it's the only place with such legislation.
And China doesn't even need to track its citizens via CCTV. It's already starting to mandate that citizens keep mandated tracking software installed on their phones. Mandating the constant possession of a phone, as the States' does with IDs, would be a logical next step.
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.... as the States' does with IDs ....
Citation needed.
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Try to get anything done without some form of identification, that's what the other comment means. Sometimes you can get away with it, but most places require something. At least in person. Then there are stop and identify laws in several states. Then States with Voter ID laws give away free IDs in many cases. Some cost $25.
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Then there are stop and identify laws in several states.
What might be required before another private party wishes to engage in or facilitate a voluntary exchange is not the point. Stop and identify laws are not (1) applicable in the general case and (2) don't require a person to carry ID in any case.
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China is already starting to mandate that citizens keep mandated tracking software installed on their phones.
Do you have a citation for this? RFIDs are required in all cars, but I have never heard of such a requirement in phones.
Mandating the constant possession of a phone
They don't need to mandate this. Nobody in China would even think about leaving home without their phone.
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So far it's only for people they are actively persecuting: https://www.rfa.org/english/ne... [rfa.org]
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Even the law against headwear that doesn't block your face, doesn't seem like it would apply to hoodies - you can have them pulled up so people at face level can still see your face, but a CCTV (generally mounted up at street light level) could not.
The phone tracking software would practically eliminate such resistance though as few would be willing to go around without phones, and in many modern societies it would be hard to not have the phone on hand for payments...
Re: How to stay comfy while defeating the State (Score:2)
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One thing I don't get about China's plan, it seems worrying but also kind of easily gamed - like you could go around in a hood or those face matching block patterns on normally, but just sometimes go out plain-faced doing good deeds to raise your score.
The face blocking pattern stuff could well get you arrested, but China is not arresting everyone with a hood pulled up are they? That seems unrealistic.
What's interesting is Chinese people are way ahead of the government in this instance. All of southeast Asia and China too has already normalized wearing a face mask in public, to "prevent the spread of disease" and "filter out pollution". I suspect it does little or nothing to change the rate of spread of most diseases, or filter pollution, but it does wonders for concealing a huge chunk of your face.
A small piece of the impetus behind China's newfound zeal for reducing air pollution might be to eliminat
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That is a really excellent point, that they have normalized common wearing of face masks across Asia... I had totally forgotten about that! I just figured masks were right out but respiratory masks are very common as you say. That combined with a little non-obvious eye makeup and a bit of gait adjustment and you should be well-hidden.
oh oh (Score:1)
Come on Caffeinated Bacon/Crimson Tsunami. Make your masters PROUD.
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We are going to see China send all of its trolls here to speak against it and tell us how China is done wonders for the world. Come on Caffeinated Bacon/Crimson Tsunami. Make your masters PROUD.
Don't forget the But 'MURRICA! Squad. China can be harvesting prisoners organs, but 'Murrica something, something!
Face tracking is not the biggest threat (Score:5, Insightful)
Face tracking is not the biggest threat. The biggest erosion of personal freedom in China is this one: WeChat Pay [qq.com].
Why? Before the advent of WeChat and Alipay, China was mostly a cash based society, so the government had little knowledge of your payment transactions. Which is why China has to rely on state-owned enterprises for revenues, since there were no effective way to collect taxes from ordinary people and 95% of Chinese do not file a tax report.
Now, that's all changed: everything is paid via WeChat and Alipay, even pant handlers. So every transaction can be tracked, and taxed.
Of course, in the U.S., people have been on checks and credit cards for who knows how many decades. China is catching up fast on that front.
WeChat Pay and no cash (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed, you control a lot when you control all cash transactions. In the west, there is a least some privacy, even from governments. But in China they actually boast about how much they can help the government monitor people.
This then gets combined with complete control over all communications. That is where AI comes in. To monitor people's emails and worse phone calls is not practical to do except for specific suspects. But AI can do a lot of this automatically, particularly voice recognition. And mobile phones now give the government knowledge of where people are at all times. And then this vast amount of data can be correlated -- e.g. that two people in these groups lived near each other 20 years ago...
It would be very difficult to quietly organize any grass roots movement about anything in China today without approval from the government. There are some, e.g. people were complaining about some groups eating dogs. But anything to do with the government, like complaining about a school that collapased during an earthquake, is not possible.
Where it gets scary is that Xi Jinping is also talking about nationalism. He has the South China Sea. He wants Taiwan. And nobody on the ground nor in the citadel could stop him if he started doing crazy things.
History does not exactly repeat itself, but we do know what this type of thinking resulted in Germany in the 1930s. And Xi is far more entrenched in China than Hitler was before he invaded France. (Hitler faced substantial internal opposition before France.)
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China is catching up fast on that front.
No, China is not catching up, they are way ahead. I was in Shanghai for 8 weeks in Sept and Oct, and I don't think I saw anyone use cash for anything even once.
Even the bums on the street have QR codes on their signs. Just scan it with your phone to donate.
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While people in the West value more, or brainwashed to value more, about freedom of speech. Chinese people value the freedom of everyday activities more. That's why China does not have millions of lines of legalese fine-prints like in the US.
"Charity Begins in the Home" (Score:1)
. . . or in the case of Canada, the neighbour's home next door; the USA.
is worried about China's use of AI for surveillance and political control
"is worried about the USA's use of AI for surveillance and political control"
Who knows what experiments the DHS, NSA, CIA, FBI and their pals are performing with this technology . . . ?
Back to Canada . . . I can't imagine that this would be used by the Royal Canadian Mounted Geese.
I was worried more about the beat-downs (Score:2)
like, government goons physically beating the shit out of you. And also imprisoning you for having the wrong opinions. Oh and harvesting your organs while you're imprisoned. Yeah that's a thing in communist China, they take your organs out.
But if you're a sheltered computer guy then yeah the government snooping on you via the internets and AI face recognition might be pretty scary too.
hypocrit (Score:2)
Well, he could have know this would happen when he created the technology/theories. Also China is using it publicly, but it isn't the only country using that technology, you can bet your sweet ass that the US is also using it in the NSA/CIA offices.
He should have known that his creation would be used for these kind of purposes, and he also got funding by a lot of these agencies. But he didn't mind it at that time.. Yes it will be used to control people, but it will also be used for the benefit of people, ju