Why is this research being done? Is this some kind of arms race? The only purpose of this technology I can think of is getting spies to abuse others.
Am I going to have to do AuthN and AuthZ on every phone call and zoom now?
Am I going to have to do AuthN and AuthZ on every phone call and zoom now?
It's fascinating how research can take on a life of its own and will be pushed, by someone, to its own conclusion. Even for immensely destructive technologies (e.g., atomic weapons, viruses), the impact of a technology is its own attractor (could you say that's risk-seeking behavior?)
> Am I going to have to do AuthN and AuthZ on every phone call and zoom now?
"Alexa, I need an alibi for yesterday at noon."
I think it's mostly "because it can be done". These types of impressive demos have become relatively low hanging fruit in terms of how modern machine learning can be applied.
One could imagine commercial applications (VR, virtual "try before you buy", etc), but things like this can also be a flex by the AI labs, or a PhD student wanting to write a paper.
Teams started rolling out Avatars https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-blog/..., this would be a step up. I'm not really a fan but that doesn't mean I can excuse the use case.
Subdermal X.509 maybe with some sort of neurolink adapter so you can confirm the request for identity. Though, first versions might be just a small button you need to press during the handshake.
Over the past century and a half, we've moved into vast, anonymous spaces, where I'm as likely to know and get along with my neighbour as I am to win the lottery.
And this is important. No, it's not just a matter of putting on an effort to learn who my neighbour is -- my neighbour is literally someone whose life experiences are wildly different, whose social outcomes will be wildly different, whose beliefs and values are wildly different, and, for all I know, goes to conferences about how to eliminate me and my kind.
(This last part is not speculation; I'm trans; see: CPAC)
And these are my reasons. My neighbour is probably equivalently terrified of me, or what I represent, or the media I consume, or the conferences that I go to.
Generalizing, you can't take a bunch of random people whose only bond is that they share meatspace-proximity, draw a circle around them, and declare them a community; those communities are _gone_, and you can no more bring them back than you can revive a corpse. (This would also probably not be a good idea, even if it were possible: they were also incredibly uncomfortable places for anyone who didn't fit in, and we have generations of fiction about people risking everything to leave for those big anonymous cities we created in step 1.)
So, here we are, dependent on technology to stay in touch with far-flung friends and lovers and family, all of us, scattered like spiderwebs across the globe, and now into the strands drips a poison.
Daniel Dennett was right. Counterfeit people are an enormous danger to civilization. Research like this should stop immediately.
Believing that everything you eat is poisoned is no way to live. Believing that everything you see is a lie is also no way to live.
Why would you expect this to happen? Lots of people are gullible, if it were otherwise a lot of well-known politicians would be out of a job or would never have been elected to begin with.
Because even this precise tech has legitimate use cases?
> The only purpose of this technology I can think of is getting spies to abuse others.
Can you really not think of any other use cases?