Comment by SCdF | Hacker News Reader

Comment by SCdF | Hacker News Reader

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> drive a car in traffic in almost all circumstances safer than majority of human drivers basing only on video input

Has that happened? Don't self driving cars use a huge range of sensors, and are they actually legal / widely deployed anywhere at all? Are any for sale? I don't mean improved cruise control, I mean "OK computer, take me to work".

> take a video and replace faces from another video well enough that more than 90% of people are fooled

Are you talking about deepfakes? I haven't seen an example that was anything other than creepy, and really really obvious. Do you think I'm just really sensitive to this kind of thing, or have I not seen the really good examples?

> predict people's preferences regarding music/movies/books better than any human could

Why do you think that's happened? Spotify regularly recommends me things I don't like, but I've also never had a dedicated human butler that recommends me music so it's hard to compare, but but I don't think spotify is doing any better than last.fm was doing a decade ago (if I had to have an opinion I'd say it was worse).

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I don't want to sound rude or that I'm jumping down your throat, but I don't really feel like we live in the future you're describing, at least not today.

> haven't seen an example that was anything other than creepy, and really really obvious. Do you think I'm just really sensitive to this kind of thing, or have I not seen the really good examples?

Here's a really good example (the video, not the audio, which the creators say was intentionally degraded):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l82PxsKHxYc

So my positive take is that this is the best (or worst depending on your perspective) I've seen for sure.

The negative take is that this still looks really fake to me. His eyes are dead, his head whips around weirdly, his neck undulates and flickers, his face doesn't appear attached to his head, etc. Also, due to how Obama looks he may be easier than other people (ie no hair).

Also, this isn't exactly what OP was talking about, though it's similar. They were talking about replacing faces, whereas this is (I presume) actually 100% Obama video from his various speeches reconstituted. So tbc my reaction was to the various videos I've seen of _that_, none of which have been remotely convincing.

Not to mention that there's way more video of Obama speaking than most people

> Are you talking about deepfakes? I haven't seen an example that was anything other than creepy, and really really obvious. Do you think I'm just really sensitive to this kind of thing, or have I not seen the really good examples?

Hollywood has gotten pretty good at creating convincing fake faces (dead actors/actresses reappearing in Star Wars for instance) but I think that tech probably involves a lot of human artist input.

Do you think they are convincing, yet? General whatshisface in the recent SW movie looked really really bad. I don't recall how Leia looked in RoTS because that was such a deeply boring movie for me I forgot almost all of it minutes after watching it (though maybe that means the CG there was flawless?)

If I didn't already know they were fake, I probably wouldn't notice. But knowing they were fake going into it, they did seem vaguely "off". If Hollywood isn't quite there yet, I think they're very close.

(I share your general dissatisfaction with these particular movies though.)

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