[HN Gopher] AI-designed camera only records objects of interest ...
___________________________________________________________________
AI-designed camera only records objects of interest while being
blind to others
Author : m-watson
Score : 144 points
Date : 2022-08-24 14:27 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (cnsi.ucla.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (cnsi.ucla.edu)
| angrycontrarian wrote:
| I'm not sure the authors appreciate the impact of their own
| invention. This isn't a camera that censors things: it's a
| passive image segmentation model that runs in real time and
| consumes zero power. This would have huge implications for
| robotics applications.
| aaaaaaaaaaab wrote:
| Optical pattern recognition is an established field.
|
| Here's a simple version via Fresnel zone plates:
| https://youtu.be/Y9FZ4igNxNA
| [deleted]
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Since the characteristic information of undesired classes of
| objects is all-optically erased at the camera output through
| light diffraction, this AI-designed camera never records their
| direct images. Therefore, the protection of privacy is maximized
| since an adversarial attack that has access to the recorded
| images of this camera cannot bring the information back. This
| feature can also reduce cameras' data storage and transmission
| load since the images of undesired objects are not recorded.
|
| That seems overstated. In the third example image pair, I can
| easily see a _shadow_ of the input 5 in the output. I 'm pretty
| sure the 9 is also there in the fourth pair, but the shadow is
| not as clear.
| Mockapapella wrote:
| Earworm by Tom Scott comes to mind:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JlxuQ7tPgQ
| jstrieb wrote:
| Reminds me of this really cool video about using Fourier Optics
| for optical pattern recognition.[1] The video happens to have one
| of the best explanations of Fourier transforms I've yet
| encountered.
|
| 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9FZ4igNxNA
| beambot wrote:
| What guarantees do you have that information doesn't still bleed
| through -- e.g. that compressed sensing techniques could still
| recreate meaningful parts of the obscured image?
| ksr wrote:
| You're saying this as if it were a good thing.
| [deleted]
| oldstrangers wrote:
| Given the rise of UFO / UAP sightings I always wondered why there
| wasn't just an army of cameras pointed at strategic regions
| around the globe 24/7 (that aren't government owned). A camera
| like this would be great for catching only what's really
| interesting.
| NavinF wrote:
| Are UFO sightings on the rise? I thought they stayed constant
| while https://xkcd.com/1235/
| thow_away_soon wrote:
| That's interesting, could it be used on medical imaging to erase
| noise or somehow highlight tumors or fractures, without software
| post processing?
| [deleted]
| staindk wrote:
| No mention of Black Mirror in the comments yet - I'm surprised!
|
| A lot of the other theorising here runs right alongside the
| premise of one of the stories told in the White Christmas
| episode[1].
|
| IIRC the episode was very well done, as most of them are.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOHy4Ca9bkw
| fbanon wrote:
| It's an optical MNIST recognizer.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| Get the digital equivalent of fnord in optical algorithms, feel
| free to rob/~murder~ assassinate with no evidence. Bonus points
| for when implants become widespread, then people won't be able to
| see you either!
| kzrdude wrote:
| Is there an adversarial network that can take the redacted result
| and try to reconstruct what the camera actually saw?
| MauranKilom wrote:
| That was also my first thought. They claim that the data is
| "instantaneously erased", but "doesn't look like the input" is
| different from "erased".
| mojo74 wrote:
| If this AI had designed an animal's optics it would have been the
| frog's: https://indianapublicmedia.org/amomentofscience/eat.php
| m-watson wrote:
| The paper: To image, or not to image: class-specific diffractive
| cameras with all-optical erasure of undesired objects
|
| https://elight.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s43593-022-...
| sudden_dystopia wrote:
| Wouldn't the underlying data that the camera parsed to determine
| what to record still be recorded or be otherwise retrievable
| somewhere? Meaning everything is still recorded in some way?
| bradyd wrote:
| This system is fully optical, so the data is filtered before it
| reaches the camera.
| theanonymousone wrote:
| Reminds me of a book with a 4-digit title.
| apocalypstyx wrote:
| The real problem is that humans have always deluded themselves
| that some technology was a 'truth technology'. It's been done
| with everything from typewriters to cameras. However, the camera
| has always lied, always rendered a counterfactual to a
| hypothesized truth state, denied access to fundamental reality.
| That a camera may now lie in a slightly different fashion does
| not alter that.
|
| Are you going to believe your lying eyes?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I believe my own brain works this way.
| whatshisface wrote:
| This was not designed by an "AI", it was designed through
| gradient descent optimization. It is an interesting application
| but it has nothing to do with AI.
| siculars wrote:
| "...erasure of undesired objects"
|
| This is not going to turn out well. Do we really want to edit
| reality in this way? This is like the printer that automatically
| watermarks your prints - for your security and protection! Coming
| to a child protection law near you real soon.
|
| Want to take a picture of that Ferrari? That'll be an extra $5.
|
| No, you really can't take photos in airports.
|
| Thats a police officer(s). (Literally) Nothing to see here, move
| along.
|
| Vampires/Ghosts. A class of people who's faces are in a master
| redact database. You know, like some real CIA Jason Borne stuff.
|
| Military installation? What military installation? Replace with
| slave labor camp or, a more economically favorable rendition -
| "sweatshop."
| wongarsu wrote:
| > This is like the printer that automatically watermarks your
| prints - for your security and protection! Coming to a child
| protection law near you real soon.
|
| You mean like most (or maybe all) color laser printers sold in
| the last couple decades?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_Identification_Code
|
| https://www.eff.org/pages/list-printers-which-do-or-do-not-d...
| cerol wrote:
| > Vampires/Ghosts. A class of people who's faces are in a
| master redact database. You know, like some real CIA Jason
| Borne stuff.
|
| Doesn't make much sense. If a person is a risk, you would want
| to surveil them _more_ , and not erase them from every camera
| feed.
| arcticfox wrote:
| I think it's more like the CCP would load their secret police
| database in.
| omgwtfbyobbq wrote:
| A government could do both.
| bmitc wrote:
| I was just told by Amazon that I can't sell a used book there
| because the publisher, Morgan Kaufmann, is currently not
| accepting applications to sell and denied my request to sell.
|
| I was pretty stupefied. Amazon and the publisher have colluded,
| for whatever reason, to police how used books are sold.
| ddalex wrote:
| What do you mean, it's your book. Why would even ask Amazon
| if you can sell it?
| bmitc wrote:
| You have to to sell in their platform. When I tried to add
| it to my Amazon Seller inventory, it required approval.
| Selling on Abebooks (owned by Amazon) requires a
| subscription now.
| Gh0stRAT wrote:
| Perhaps Amazon is FINALLY starting to do something about
| their rampant book piracy problem?
|
| [0]https://mobile.twitter.com/martinkl/status/155114915940266
| 80...
|
| [1]https://nypost.com/2022/07/31/pirated-books-thrive-on-
| amazon...
| bmitc wrote:
| Who knows? Although, I actually bought this particular book
| off of Amazon.
|
| In this case, after some research, I actually think this is
| related to the book sometimes being used as a textbook. I
| wouldn't really call it a textbook, as in the normal 30
| editions type of textbooks, as it's just a really good book
| on its topic (and only the second edition, which is the
| latest). Apparently publishers want to funnel the used sale
| of such books through certain approved sellers? I imagine
| it's to keep the price artificially high and for the
| publisher to recover some of the money back themselves.
| Seems ridiculous, and it would be surprising if it's legal.
| It's basically a racket.
| pishpash wrote:
| I've got news for you. "Reality" is already edited. Actually is
| a model made up by the brain.
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| "artisanal mining" for cobalt.
| [deleted]
| thatjoeoverthr wrote:
| It's not that sophisticated and is a physical artifact that had
| to be forged for some purpose. Effectively it's like having a
| zero power neural network. You could make something like a
| motion sensor that only spots human faces, but very low power.
| _the_inflator wrote:
| We should really consider conserving analog versions of taking
| pictures.
| jollyllama wrote:
| It's bad, but it's just moving reality editing a few levels
| down the stack.
| autoexec wrote:
| It's moving it away from your control. Right now we have the
| option to edit the images and videos we capture. This kind of
| technology allows those same choices to be made by someone
| else without any regard for your wishes. Your options can be
| limited to editing only what they allow to be captured in the
| first place.
| JofArnold wrote:
| It's already happening with AR; there was a demo on Twitter
| showing how using Apple's new AR SDK you can just plaster over
| things you don't want to see. This for me puts AR right up
| there with AI as a huge risk to society, for precisely the
| reasons you point out. "Pay $9.99 a month not to see homeless
| people" "Pay $2.99 a month to see enhanced street signs so only
| you can find your way quickly" etc
| edgyquant wrote:
| What exactly is this problem with this?
| kbenson wrote:
| We have enough of people acting like their own experiences
| are indicative of the norm or are evidence of something
| happening or not happening, and using that to spread that
| message, that making this even easier seems like it would
| be a real problem.
|
| Are news bubbles a problem? Imagine if people actually
| block out reality on an even more direct level and what
| that means to their perception of the world. What if people
| can opt into trusty AR programs to "show" them the stuff in
| the world they're missing (the conservative conspiracy or
| liberal agenda), and those also selectively omit some other
| things?
| bee_rider wrote:
| I mean, maybe some people are homeless by choice, but some
| are due to misfortune and poverty. Using technology to turn
| a blind eye to poverty in our communities seems bad. Also
| you may trip over a homeless person.
| 6510 wrote:
| It would defeat the entire point of having them: As an
| example why to obey. It is not like you cant scale a tax
| with housing requirements. Could give them jobs too. It
| would take a bit of getting used to but if the only thing
| a person wants is drugs their potential productivity
| could be 10x that of ours combined.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| But you're not forced to use AR. No one is going around
| slapping VR headsets on people to "hide the homeless".
| jsharf wrote:
| You're not forced to use your cellphone. But society might
| hypothetically get to a point where it's extremely
| inconvenient not to.
| siculars wrote:
| Hypothetically? We're already there.
| ClassyJacket wrote:
| You are absolutely forced to use a smartphone. To have
| just about any kind of job, you require one.
| andai wrote:
| Would a dumb mobile phone suffice? Or do they need you
| answering email while you commute?
| guerrilla wrote:
| It'd be impossible to live in Sweden without a mobile.
| riversflow wrote:
| Just like you're not forced to use a smartphone, or a car?
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| You're naive if you think this way. You're not forced to
| use AR, _yet_. That 's different to _never will be forced
| to_.
|
| Smartphones are already all but mandatory for certain
| locations/demographies. Not owning one carries an immense
| penalty when it comes to access to government services,
| banking, and general daily functioning.
| InCityDreams wrote:
| ....3 hours with my bank and EUR20 for a token-generator
| (pass-number generator ) says different.
|
| Even the pass-generator is diffiicult to fiind on the
| login page....keeps telling me 'not authorised' without
| the phone ok.
|
| *don't drop your phone!!* Especially when you'll suddenly
| need it to buy a new phone.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| >Pay $9.99 a month not to see homeless people
|
| Better hope that's context-sensitive. Street meth addicts
| commit enough random assaults and smash enough car windows
| now, just imagine what they would do if they were literally
| invisible.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| undersuit wrote:
| > Do we really want to edit reality in this way?
|
| Do you have a solution to stop this hypothetical future you've
| envisioned that isn't also just as bad?
|
| "Hey you can't code that feature!"
| edgyquant wrote:
| Not to mention that there is nothing wrong with allowing
| people to see different things lmao. What even is this
| conversation ?
| cerol wrote:
| Would a government even _want_ that? Not even from the moral
| stance, just the strategic point of view. We know from the
| social media experiment how bad things can go if you hook an
| entire population to some "product".
|
| Sure, you can make (even though incentives) everyone wear AR
| glasses (because they're so cool), and they'll censor out
| undesired things. That's as much a form of control as it is a
| form of being controlled. Hooking your entire population's
| _vision_ to the internet means it could possibly be maliciously
| used by bad actors.
| stavros wrote:
| If you don't want a camera that can't take photos of undesired
| objects, don't buy one.
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| If you don't want a TV that doesn't track your viewing
| habits, force automatic software updates, show ads, and do
| other objectionable things while claiming it's "smart", don't
| buy one.
| stavros wrote:
| Yeah, I don't.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Good luck finding one easily.
| stavros wrote:
| I only need one, and there are display monitors that
| companies use for offices etc.
| NavinF wrote:
| Monitors still exist and they don't suffer from the
| terrible input lag that most smart TVs have.
| pelorat wrote:
| Every modern TV has a gaming mode that disables post-
| processing.
| NavinF wrote:
| I meant to say pixel response time.
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| What when there are laws preventing the manufacturing of such
| _desired_ cameras?
|
| I am all for great ideas and tools and implementations. I am
| just very leery of humans. ;)
| stavros wrote:
| Regimes don't generally bother to mandate the use of a
| specific technology, they just mandate the act illegal.
| autoexec wrote:
| The example of yellow tracking dots in printers has
| already been mentioned. Our governments had zero problems
| mandating the use of that specific technology. Same with
| kill switches in cars so that police can remotely disable
| your vehicle.
| siculars wrote:
| Wait till some new laws show up. Wait till it is economically
| incentivized to buy redactocams.
| undersuit wrote:
| Maybe we could have laws that protect us from these kind of
| cameras instead of enforcing them. I'm against saying "No
| you can't do this" but I'm all for "You must show us how
| you do this" or "This thing must be optional".
| stavros wrote:
| You can already make cameras do this in software, why
| aren't we buying redactocams now?
| olyjohn wrote:
| If it's already in software, then your phone is just one
| irreversible update away from getting that feature for
| free! People love free stuff!
| bell-cot wrote:
| And, with a bit of poisoning in the image training data, all of
| the security cameras at $Critical_Facility will be utterly blind
| to anyone who wears a North Korean Military Intelligence full-
| dress uniform...
| bee_rider wrote:
| I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-
| mutes.
| r-bryan wrote:
| "Doesn't look like anything to me." --Westworld
| kbns wrote:
| jpbadan wrote:
| Oh the irony
| [deleted]
| IanCal wrote:
| Something really interesting here if you read the title and
| comments first is that this is an _optical_ thing. It 's not
| software running on the camera, it's physical.
| gonzo41 wrote:
| Interesting article. Though I don't think the cryptography
| angle will pan out. I wonder if it was added because crypto's
| been a buzz word of late, and the researchers just really
| wanted to build this camera.
| culi wrote:
| biology inspires software inspires hardware
|
| I guess with more and more stuff coming out of nano- and bio-
| tech we can append "inspires biology" and bring it back around
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Also blurs the line (hrumf) between what is hardware and what
| is software? I mean software designed the hardware to behave
| with a certain ... algorithm?
| dekhn wrote:
| While that idea might seem somewhat out-there, it's fairly
| straightforward once you think about it. We know the transfer
| function for light through matter, and can calculate its
| derivative. Therefore, we can use ML to design matter shapes
| that have desired properties.
|
| All computers are effectively physical systems that control
| their noise levels to achieve logical operations. In this
| case, it's an analog system with no moving parts, but I
| imagine that given the existence of spatial light modulators
| and mems mirrors, you could probably reprogram the system in
| realtime to erase what you wanted on the fly.
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| This COULD provide privacy.
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| ICs are hardware designed by software to run any software for
| decades.
| fudged71 wrote:
| This seems to be a new PR spin on the same technology that was
| posted a while ago. 3D printed optical neural networks. I'm
| surprised I haven't seen more interest considering the energy
| efficiency and speed of computation.
| robryk wrote:
| The problem with them is that you don't get multiple layers
| of nonlinear operations: wave functions in simple media form
| a linear space after all.
| dekhn wrote:
| I don't see any technical reason you couldn't implement a
| relu in optics. There is a whole area, nonlinear optics (I
| think you may have intended that when you you said 'simple
| media?' Well, let me see. https://arxiv.org/abs/2201.03787
|
| From two years ago: https://opg.optica.org/ol/fulltext.cfm?
| uri=ol-45-17-4819&id=... but again, this isn't simple
| media.
| GaryNumanVevo wrote:
| Maybe HN should make the comment button only available after
| first clicking the link. I see more and more of this "omg
| title" behavior on HN these days
| edgyquant wrote:
| I'd prefer they enforced the rules and kick people who
| mention reading the article
| culi wrote:
| like all 3 of us rn?
| edgyquant wrote:
| Low effort trolling as also against the rules
| 6510 wrote:
| Let ML decide!
| jhallenworld wrote:
| This is how the "violet cusps" from The Eyes of the Overworld
| were made..
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eyes_of_the_Overworld
|
| "There, Cugel finds two bizarre villages, one occupied by wearers
| of the magic violet lenses, the other by peasants who work on
| behalf of the lens-wearers, in hopes of being promoted to their
| ranks. The lenses cause their wearers to see, not their squalid
| surroundings, but the Overworld, a vastly superior version of
| reality where a hut is a palace, gruel is a magnificent feast,
| and peasant women are princesses -- "seeing the world through
| rose-colored glasses" on a grand scale."
| jamesjyu wrote:
| Also similar to Wizard of Oz where everyone has to wear green
| spectacles to protect their eyes, when in fact, it was to make
| the Emerald City seem greener and more spectacular than it
| actually was.
| [deleted]
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| Similar thing with the MASS system in a Black Mirror episode (
| _Men Against Fire_ ) where visual reality could be substituted
| by your implants (or rather using your implants, and _by_ the
| people in control of them).
|
| And again in the Christmas special, which was more similar to
| this device in that it would block out certain things, or
| everything (though it was in software, and again under external
| control). Which sounds horrifying enough but was far from the
| worst thing in the episode.
| mistermann wrote:
| Also often the same with "The Facts", "is", etc in our world.
| z2 wrote:
| "Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses have
| been specially designed to help people develop a relaxed
| attitude to danger. At the first hint of trouble, they turn
| totally black and thus prevent you from seeing anything that
| might alarm you." --Douglas Adams
|
| Maybe this tech is a continuum, but we've skipped past Adams
| straight to 2.0, and Overworld is 3.0.
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| In the same vein, a short sci-fi film "The Nostalgist" [0].
| This film really opened my eyes regarding why we may not want
| devices that alter our perception of reality.
|
| [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzCQtoQ8ypk
| dekhn wrote:
| BTW, if you enjoy Tales of the Dying Earth, I recently read
| Cage of Souls, which is drawn in the same vein:
| https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07DPRW17S
| Lramseyer wrote:
| So this is really cool and useful, but it's important to keep in
| mind that since this is a diffractive structure, it probably only
| works with coherent light (what you get from a laser.) Most
| normal light sources produce incoherent light, and that tends to
| not work so well with complex diffractive structures.
| freedude wrote:
| "Privacy protection is a growing concern in the digital era, with
| machine vision techniques widely used throughout public and
| private settings. Existing methods address this growing problem
| by, e.g., encrypting camera images or obscuring/blurring the
| imaged information through digital algorithms. Here, we
| demonstrate a camera design that performs class-specific imaging
| of target objects with instantaneous all-optical erasure of other
| classes of objects. This diffractive camera consists of
| transmissive surfaces structured using deep learning to perform
| selective imaging of target classes of objects positioned at its
| input field-of-view. After their fabrication, the thin
| diffractive layers collectively perform optical mode filtering to
| accurately form images of the objects that belong to a target
| data class or group of classes, while instantaneously erasing
| objects of the other data classes at the output field-of-view."
|
| This only works for the privacy-minded, naive among us. If you
| want to exclude something from a picture or video. Do NOT record
| it, at all, EVER! If it can record anything it can record the
| wrong thing.
| freedude wrote:
| What happens when a camera can't be used in a location that
| needs added "security" (which is really surveillance and not
| security) but it cannot be used due to expected privacy reasons
| (bathrooms, locker rooms, fitting rooms). The claim is "proven"
| that it cannot "see" your private parts because it is
| programmed not too. I guarantee the AI will fail at some point
| or is vulnerable to some attack.
|
| Or what if it is connected to a radar/laser speed enforcement
| camera and takes your cars photo because it detects the car
| behind you speeding but it cannot "take" that part of the photo
| because it mis-detected you as the speeder.
|
| This technology is fraught with problems when it comes to
| evidence in a court of law. What is not there is just as
| important as what is there and if you are erasing what is there
| you are also erasing what is not there?
| Linda703 wrote:
| batuhandirek wrote:
| Isn't "erased" a bit misleading from the paper? I understand that
| the camera does not see anything but objects of interest in which
| it was trained and manufactured.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| About 6 years ago I sat on a jury. I was told by the defense that
| the plaintiff, who was suing for being critically injured in a
| workplace scenario, was overstating his injuries. They showed
| evidence that saw the plaintiff washing his car. The defense
| pointed out that there were timestamps on those car washing
| videos and each took place over 4 hours because he had to rest
| due to the pain from his sustained injuries. Aside from the facts
| of the case which were clearly in favor of the plaintiff, this
| attempt at deception pushed the jury to award more money than it
| likely would have otherwise.
|
| Now that storytime is out of the way, this particular AI reminds
| me of a photo taken at a lynching.
|
| https://lynchinginamerica.eji.org/report/assets/imgs/14_crow...
|
| If you obscure the top half of this photo from view, how does
| that change your perspective regarding what is going on at the
| time? IMO, recordings need to record what is, not what we believe
| we want to see.
| notahacker wrote:
| On the flip side, it was possible to make a lynching look like
| a harmless social gathering with the technology of the era:
| point the camera selectively or take a pair of scissors to the
| image. Loss of timestamps is easily achieved by using any
| recorded media without timestamps, or any third-rate video
| editing software. Beria was airbrushed out of reproductions of
| photos that had circulated for years before he fell out of
| favour, but the revised images look convincing enough in the
| absence of that context. Cameras have _never_ given a complete
| picture of everything going on (and people start worrying about
| panopticons with proposals that fall _well_ short of that).
|
| Anybody that wants to show only what they want to see can
| choose whether or not to record or edit the recording after the
| fact. The actual use cases for tech that can decide whether
| something is worth recording in real time are likely to be
| comparatively mundane...
| nullc wrote:
| > AI-based camera design was also used to build encryption
| cameras, providing an additional layer of security and privacy
| protection. Such an encryption camera, designed using AI-
| optimized diffractive layers, optically performs a selected
| linear transformation,
|
| Differentiable schemes do not generally make for secure
| cryptography.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Dude this is insanely cool. It's through light diffraction that
| it censors. You could make an ad blocker camera haha!
|
| Very cool. Though I wonder if we'll get a Eurion censor camera
| instead.
| rexreed wrote:
| "AI-designed optical filter blurs out areas of an image that
| don't match the pre-trained network design" - seems to be a bit
| more on point.
| ortusdux wrote:
| Previous discussion:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32469117
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(page generated 2022-08-24 23:00 UTC)