Hacker News Reader

Comment by orbital-decay | Hacker News Reader

Really weird comments here. It's a VFX technique for cinematography, one of many of that kind (e.g. supporting wire removal). Cinematography in general is about showing something that doesn't exist, unless it's a documentary. Your only reaction is apparently calling censorship. Says a lot about the current Overton window and I think it's something you should reflect on.

View on HN

No, I get it, and the benefits of putting what would have required a professional VFX team at (eventually) the fingertips of every amateur filmmaker are amazing.

It’s also alarming what’s possible when reassembling photons en masse becomes commoditized.

> It’s also alarming what’s possible when reassembling photons en masse becomes commoditized.

Photons Be Free?

The act of editing existing footage to mask reality with non-reality is just that—the action of making something real less real. It can be used for filmmaking (and obviously often is), but it can be used for anything else too.

The issue is how easily these tools can (and will) enable the worst faith actors and actions. It's not controversial (or shocking) to think the current situation for deep-fakes or deceptive edits is historically awful. It's equally reasonable to think these tools are going to do less good for VFX houses in Hollywood, and more evil in authoritarian regimes or chaotic social media networks. You're right that the Overton window has moved—but we ought to blame a White House that disseminates deepfakes, not commenters on HackerNews.

Tools aren't just tools, nothing exists in a vacuum. A plane is a useful means of transportation, but that doesn't mean everyone should be rushing into the cockpit. It's pretty plain to me how a tool that streamlines doctoring footage to such a useful (and deceptive) degree is just a recipe for disaster. Considering the benefit to society is...slightly eased CGI work (?), I'll easily label this a net-negative for us all.

Given the current situation in the world why do you not think about technology can be misused, especially if it’s VFX.

I guess I have seen more AI generated spam ads than content created for the intended purpose.

> Given the current situation in the world why do you not think about technology can be misused, especially if it’s VFX.

I think the point of the parent was that while you need to think about how this technology can be misused, that's not the only thing you need to and can think about.

If that's the point then it was a dumb point to begin with because there were a whole two top level comments mentioning censorship at the time. Technically it was a majority, but only because so few people had commented.

To be honest, if that's what we see in open access, then there must already be something in existence that is closed. I don't want to create another conspiracy theory - I just want to point out the theoretical possibility - but if it was created, it has probably already been tested and possibly even used widely. So, in conclusion, if a government or agency wanted to use that technique for censorship, they would most likely already have tried it.

It's kind of late to ring the bells once the city walls have been taken. In other (shorter) words, if someone wanted to use this for censorship, they would already have tried it, so... it's either too late or too early; although being interesting (but not good or fun) probability, it's probability only.

...I hope one day everyone, just everyone will finally learn that most of the technologies are not evil or good, they're neutral, they're just tools. And most (no, not all) of them were also created with good intentions.

You don't really need AI to do this, it can be done just fine with traditional techniques, just labor intensive. Hell you can probably find a dude on fiverr to do it right now for a couple hundred, YMMV.

But wouldn't using this for eg. removing a support wire result in it making Superman fall down?

Yes but imagine how bad Stalin’s reign of terror would have been with modern cinematographic techniques.

Yes but why are we required to imagine only this? With this logic, why won't we try to imagine how bad Stalin's (or Hitler's, or anyone's) reign of terror would be with state-controlled social media? With state-censored Internet (that's about current Russia, by the way)? With modern communication technologies et al. and so on?

Hell yeah, let's go back to the caves just because science, technology and progress can actually empower everyone, including dictators, maniacs, psychopaths, predators and "bad people et al.", not just "good" (the definition of "good" varies, but let's assume we're using common principles of goodness) people.

That's an absurd point. That nearly absolute cult of personality never relied on movies, printing press was more than enough to make the reality disappear. And previous ones weren't even relying on printed media at all.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com