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Deep Learning 'Godfather' Yoshua Bengio Worries About China's Use of AI (bloomberg.com)
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.
... read that name as "B - I - N - Gi -O"?
Which has more power: the hammer, or the anvil?
They are truning into Nazi Germany tie to cut them down with a new trade deal.
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.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Job losses are the big problem. Regulation is necessary so employees can have confidence that their jobs wonâ(TM)t go away. It is really that simple. If a robot is particularly good at flipping burgers, well then find job training for people who work in fast food. I suppose people will grumble and say well there are all kinds of fast food. Just because a robot can make one kind of food why do you think it can make another? OK sure, but if you surveyed people with some experience in AI and burger flipping, I bet they would be able to tell you very quickly what jobs might be disrupted. But I digest
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.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Face tracking is not the biggest threat. The biggest erosion of personal freedom in China is this one: WeChat Pay.
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.
. . . 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.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
it is like the parent post reached through a dozen Xerox carbon copies before transliterating to Slashdot troll material. Who on planet earth would put a flesh and blood creature through an endless carbon copy press? who? ah ha! you must be Chinese! i can smell the Government accreddited mental illness book all over you like i can smell the burning hair from North Korea government approved haircuts poster.
Chinese all look and sound the same, nondiversity there!
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.
nothing. Aah, pan-handlers. Got it. I was sort of thinking that pant handlers be a direct translation of a Chinese euphemism for the worlds oldest profession.
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.)
"All governments are EVIL!!! They are SPYING ON EVERYONE!!! 1984 Big Brother!!! & They are "controlling people's behavior and influencing their minds"!!! Your own government should/must not authority to do anything!!! LET'S TURN THE WHOLE INTERNET TO DARK WEB (so EVIL GOVERNMENTS CANNOT CATCH ANY CRIMINALS ANYMORE)!!! Who is with us ANTI-GOVERNMENT ANARCHISTS??? (PS: Don't forget to wear your thin foil hats @ ALL TIMES!!!)"
IMHO, if any scientist(s) discovered/invented any tech (using public/government money?), is that gives them to right to decide who & how can use that tech, for all future times & @ whole world???
Out come all the usual trolls.
Watch dyslexia, twice.
I'm an Chinese person.
IIRC, in 2018, at least 2 European cities (London was one) claimed to deploy MAC- or face-tracking technology but he didn't complain when they did it.
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, just like any other technology.
He's just a hypocrit for only commenting on it now.