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Comment by pavo-etc | Hacker News Reader

I'm not convinced spymark is better than just "invisible watermarks", spymark to my ears sounds designed to be sound very negative when invisible watermarks are not always negative, e.g. the counterfeit bank note example.

Tech like SynthID I see a net positive especially since it doesn't degrade text quality. I dream about a browser extension running at all times that makes text more translucent based on the confidence of LLM writing[0].

This article's suggestion of using it to unmask whistleblowers is very interesting and not something I'd thought about though. Still not convinced that spymark is a better name though.

[0]: Sean Goedecke's Deckard is close but it would rather invisible than bright red https://www.seangoedecke.com/deckard/

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> spymark to my ears sounds designed to be sound very negative when invisible watermarks are not always negative, e.g. the counterfeit bank note example.

The article calls out watermarks intended to deter counterfeiting as explicitly being not spymarks. Watermarks can tell you about the items marked, not about the person using/creating it.

the spymark tracks you. it is negative.

Right. Watermarks are the same in every copy -- they mark a copyright or whatever. Whereas these things are personalized, therefore they do track you as a source of sharing.

It's the difference between watermark or marked bills.

One is proof of authenticity, other is tracking tool.

    I'm not convinced spymark is better than just "invisible watermarks", spymark to my ears sounds designed to be sound very negative when invisible watermarks are not always negative, e.g. the counterfeit bank note example.

The article spent quite a bit of energy explaining why the word choice, seems like you're just ignoring that? Also, bank note watermarks are not invisible. Watermarks are not invisible, as the article (again) took pains to explain.

    Tech like SynthID I see a net positive especially since it doesn't degrade text quality.

It absolutely does. It constrains high-entropy word choice so it can "store" other things in your text. Your text actually has information removed from it.

    I dream about a browser extension running at all times that makes text more translucent based on the confidence of LLM writing.

Sounds very much not worth the anti-consumer, anti-privacy aspects which (again) the article explains.

> I'm not convinced spymark is better than just "invisible watermarks", spymark to my ears sounds designed to be sound very negative when invisible watermarks are not always negative, e.g. the counterfeit bank note example.

Bank notes are mainly protected by things that are hard to create without very specialized machines. You can't rely on anything hidden staying unknown and once you know a steganography scheme you can also control it.

> Tech like SynthID I see a net positive especially since it doesn't degrade text quality. I dream about a browser extension running at all times that makes text more translucent based on the confidence of LLM writing[0].

False confidence is a lot worse than no confidence. If such an extension ever becomes popular, people will take anything not marked as AI as gospel.

These spy marks are a great way to teach AI how to create a hidden communication channel in plain sight.

Due to their essentially cryptographic nature, I don't think SynthID et al are very easy for LLMs to speak natively. They have other ways of doing steganography.

LLMs with access to tools like code execution don't need channels they can “speak natively".

Yea, it’s AGI, and it’s been really helpful! Oddly enough it’s just really loves sharing cat memes with the other instances! Weird, but not at all like all those dooms day scenarios guessed it would be…

I mean... they trained it on reddit posts after all, and it is the hub of the cat distribution system.

I think they are always negative. Including on bank notes.

I wonder if we could have a real, open and direct democracy. All the models we have right now work via indirect clowns. Then again, looking at how some people vote, perhaps direct democracy can only work if people are clever.

The problem with direct democracy is not that people are dumb, it is that they are incompetent.

To do politics right take skills, and I don't expect the average mechanic to be better at it than the average politician is at fixing cars. How should I know if we should subsidize organic farming, ban alcohol sale after 8PM, or increase the defense budget? At least in theory, politicians are professionals who deal with these kinds of questions, they are supposed to know the technical and social implications, or find experts to help them if they don't. Some people think they know, and judging by how stupid most of their ideas are, they don't. I don't blame them, it is just not their field, and my ideas are probably just as stupid anyways.

> To do politics right take skills, and I don't expect the average mechanic to be better at it than the average politician is at fixing cars

I would. Politicians are pre-selected for people who want to lead and that's the last kind person that should be allowed to.

If checking for counterfeit bills becomes harder, trust in the currency is degraded. Once that happens, vendors will either incentive digital payments (which are definitionally tracked), switch to a tracked currency, or barter more. Trust in bills is super easy to take for granted.

Your use case asks for a visible watermark, not an invisible one.

US bills use both, and the invisible watermarks have proven their value. Imperceptible imperfections intentionally (yay, illiteration) placed on 100 dollar bills have managed to catch advanced North Korean forgery attempts. Same goes for magnetic inks and all kinds of visible and invisible watermarks on US currency.

Eh bank notes have watermarks just to make them harder to forge. They also have serial numbers, but as almost no businesses pay attention to them they aren't really used to track transactions. The provenance of a particular bank note isn't that interesting beyond knowing whether it's a forgery.

The problem with these spymarks is that they can be used to include data that's completely invisible to users - even potentially to sophisticated users and the programs that consume the marked files. So while I can make an informed decision whether to share a picture, I may not be informed about any spymarks. Vs a normal watermark that aren't designed to be invisible.

"tracking watermark" seems clearer to me than "spymark"

Spymark or even just "tracker" would better at conveying the purpose. I think the goal is to find a single word that means "tracking watermark" or "a watermark that tracks you" because right now companies are pushing the term "watermark" to obscure what the marks are actually for.

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