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Facebook is Using Instagram Photos and Hashtags To Improve Its Computer Vision (venturebeat.com)
Facebook today revealed that, using 3.5 billion publicly shared Instagram photos and their accompany hashtags, its computer system has achieved new advances, with a 85.4 percent accuracy rate when used on ImageNet, a well-known benchmark dataset. From a report: The results were shared onstage at F8, Facebook's annual developer conference taking place today at McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, California. Other news announced at F8 this year include the release of Oculus Go, new Facebook Stories sharing capabilities, and the reopening of app and bot reviews following the Cambridge Analytica scandal. See the full rundown here. The results of Facebook's research mean that its computer vision in the real world can see more specific subsets, so instead of just saying "food," it's Indian or Italian cuisine; not just "bird" but a cedar waxwing; not just "man in a white suit" but a clown.
I'm very tempted to bring a lawsuit here. I did not grant permission for this usage.
Whenever a large tech conference happens, there is a burst of posts about that particular company. No different than when Google, Apple, or Microsoft holds major tech conferences. This is the norm of Slashdot and wont change.
I love how every day we're getting closer and closer to having XKCD become reality! https://xkcd.com/1425/
Facebook's current "vision" capabilities are already pretty impressive. You can right-click any image in your feed and choose "Inspect element", dig down to the element, and look at the "alt" attribute to see what Facebook thinks is in that image. A sampling of my current feed:
Image may contain: 5 people, people smiling, people standing
Image may contain: dog
Image may contain: car and outdoor
Image may contain: pizza and food
Image may contain: text
Facebook is having their annual conference this week. https://www.f8.com/
#hotdog, #nothotdog
>> Facebook ... annual conference
Well, that ought to be interesting to attend. You have a bunch of suits presenting the usual batch of mine-our-user's-data products and you have a bunch of attendees thinking "I wonder how much of this will still be around in two months." If anything, it should work to help companies negotiate better prices for the data they buy from Facebook (and we heard about Facebook's "close elevator door / erase some data" button yesterday), but I'm still not sure how the consumer is helped by any of this.
Facebook (company) is more than just Facebook (website). For instance, they were showing off some new Oculus VR stuff there. Not everyone is into VR gaming, I get that, but it is a hot topic right now that Facebook (company) is heavily involved with. That's the type of stuff at this conference as well.
Of course you bring your press-friendly distractions, like VR headsets.
Especially when you are dealing with a PR timebomb that has you in the sights of establishment liberals who think Facebook stole the election from Hillary, fringe conservatives annoyed that Facebook has assembled a pre-weaponized Orwellian database, and ordinary citizens worried that a Facebook is clamping down on free speech all at the same time.
I apply nonsensical tags to everything on facebook. At one point it would find a face when presented with a picture of a mariposa lily so I tagged it as my face. I got a bunch of friends to do the same. I wonder if it is still confused by that.
Time to offend someone
And neither have Instagram, Messenger and the rest of them. GDPR requires that the data subject gives explicit consent, separately, to each use of their data. This really powerful stuff and, at the same time, totally alien to FB, Google et al. It isn't even as if the words in the regulations are unclear or writing in high faluting legalese:
Article 7.
1.Where processing is based on consent, the controller shall be able to demonstrate that the data subject has consented to processing of his or her personal data.
2.If the data subject's consent is given in the context of a written declaration which also concerns other matters, the request for consent shall be presented in a manner which is clearly distinguishable from the other matters, in an intelligible and easily accessible form, using clear and plain language. Any part of such a declaration which constitutes an infringement of this Regulation shall not be binding.
This is likely also to cause quite a bit of erm... inconvenience to the sellers of data. Methinks there will be much merriment amongst the legal profession in the EU over the next couple of years.
Re "large tech conference"
An ad company does not have tech. It has software to collect all its users.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Add in Western spy masters, political leaders, mil and gov with whistleblowers and subversive journalists. A collage to complicate and fool collection.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"