Why are people with nothing to hide so scared of Clearview AI’s facial recognition?
If you or anyone else has ever uploaded a picture with your face in it to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or just about any website, there’s a very good chance you’re in Clearview AI‘s database.
What does that mean? Clearview AI employees, millions of law enforcement agents, and anyone with access to the company’s data (which was recently exposed in a massive breach) can identify you as easily as snapping a photo with a smartphone or uploading a pic to an app.
The Australian government determined that Clearview AI posed a threat to its citizens. ...
What Clearview AI is doing may not be illegal in the US, yet, but it’s clearly unethical. ...
As it turns out, everyone either has something to hide or something to lose when their privacy is taken away.
See the full story here: https://thenextweb.com/news/why-are-people-with-nothing-to-hide-so-scared-of-clearview-ais-facial-recognition
This NFT Design Space Allows You To Work and Play in Virtual Reality
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Conceived by artists Benny Or and Cyril Lancelin, “The Meeting Place” is meant to function as a work and play space anchored in virtual reality. Part installation, part architectural design, the NFT is integrated with Spatial, a 3D design and augmented reality/virtual reality platform, and can be utilized on other metaverse platforms too.
“This project is the first generation of immersive metaverse spaces that are readymade and interoperable,” Kim said on why she chose to support this project. “More readymade spaces like this will increase in demand because we need out-of-this-world spaces that defy the laws of physics and stretch our imagination. Art and architecture are one in the metaverse.” ...
Or explained that “The Meeting Place” was developed to bridge the gap between virtual experiences and physical spaces. The building — an inverted triangle floating in the air — is surrounded by concrete textures and blue sky, meant to make the piece feel “familiar” while also maintaining a sense of whimsy. This intentional design invites collaboration and interaction. ...
“The Meeting Place” will be sold on November 18, 2021, in a two-day auction. It is currently hosted on Spatial, but can also be moved to other XR platforms. ...
See the full story here: https://hypebeast.com/2021/11/nft-art-installation-the-meeting-place-virtual-reality-metaverse
Taking Hollywood To Infinity And Beyond With The Infinity Festival
The conference is spotlighting a remarkable transition in the ways entertainment companies are making features and episodic series, aka, the entertainment products we now call video programming in an era when “TV” is far more than just what used to screen at a movie theater or run on a broadcast station’s linear feed.
But it’s also mixing in the tools and techniques of the video game world, virtual/augmented/mixed reality, blockchain tools, and more. The digital hurricane engulfing Hollywood was already underway two years ago but, forced by the pandemic’s limitations on traditional productions, only accelerated since. The Infinity Festival aims to reflect all that.
See the full story here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/dbloom/2021/11/03/taking-hollywood-to-infinity-and-beyond-with-the-infinity-festival/?sh=61a7293262a8&fbclid=IwAR1O1sNlclrOR_H8M1D4Q1dNes6xb8xh8cZhe0q-ZnLDTN4hp6fO4_Uawfk
The Incredible Machines Bringing XR Stages to Life
Here are three common issues.
Seams. Remember how the LED wall is made up of multiple segments, and how all the computers have to work together to project a single scene onto them?
“Each of those segments has a different geometry, because the wall is typically curved,” Tankersley said. “So the computers also have to understand the specific curve of the wall and where the segments meet.” If the software picks up any errors in the geometry, “you’ll see some weird artifacts on the wall.” Artifacts include a range of undesirable visual elements.
Syncing. “All of the screens have to be synced to the [camera] frame so that the camera and the wall are in sync for every frame, so you don’t get any flicker,” Tankersley said. “If the sensor on the camera is running on a slightly different clock to the wall, you’ll see artifacts.” How precisely do all the sensors and clocks have to be synced? “To the microsecond.”
Camera angles and proximity. “LEDs have a color shift on different angles…you see this with any TV,” Tankersley said. “If you look at it straight on, the colors are right, and if you look at an angle, they’re off. So you have to pay attention to the angle of the camera to the wall.”
See the full story here: https://hitsonline.org/2021/10/28/the-incredible-machines-bringing-xr-stages-to-life
Virtual reality is fighting loneliness, both on Earth and in space
Given the risks associated with isolation, space agencies conduct large-scale simulation studies to investigate and mitigate these effects. SIRIUS (Scientific International Research in Unique Terrestrial Station)is a series of on-land isolation experiments simulating long-term spaceflight.
SIRIUS-21 is an eight-month isolation study in Moscow that begins on Nov. 4, 2021. A multinational crew of six people will go into a special facility, called NEK, modelling a spacecraft that was built in the 1960s and stay in there for 240 days, partaking in 70 experiments prepared by international research teams.
Through the journey they experience: cloud gazing, watching a sunset over a canyon in the company of wild animals, observing aurora in the night sky, witnessing Mars rising over the horizon and flying through space coming across a solar eclipse. Finally, participants orbit around the Earth, reflecting on the interconnectedness of all life on our planet. This virtual journey is inspired by the Overview Effect, a profound experience that astronauts have when witnessing the beauty and fragility of Earth from outer space.
See the full story here: https://thenextweb.com/news/virtual-reality-loneliness-earth-space-syndication
The Next Privacy Crisis
But most of them promise a uniquely powerful combination of three features.
- Their hardware is wearable, hands-free, and potentially always on — you don’t have to grab a device and put it away when you’re done using it
- Their images and audio can blend with or compensate for normal sensory perception of the world, rather than being confined to a discrete, self-contained screen
- Their sensors and software can collect and analyze huge amounts of information about their surroundings — through geolocation and depth sensing, computer vision programs, or intimate biometric technology like eye-tracking cameras
...Writer and researcher Erica Neely says that laws and social norms aren’t prepared for how AR could affect physical space....
Augmentation also doesn’t just mean adding things to a wearer’s surroundings. It also means letting a computing platform capture and analyze them without other people’s consent.
Take facial recognition — a looming crisis at the heart of AR. ...
It’s not clear how AR systems will make money either — and what kinds of behaviors the resulting business models will encourage. ...
Even basic AR applications, like mapping an apartment to place a virtual screen, could potentially gather a huge amount of information. (What’s the size of your living space? Which books are on your shelves? How healthy are the snacks on your kitchen counter?) Without robust privacy protections, it will be incredibly tempting to use that data for ads....
Facebook Reality Labs announced a set of Responsible Innovation Principles designed to allay fears about trust, privacy, and consent that have dogged the company. It also awarded a series of academic grants to study specific issues in AR, selecting proposals like “Social Tensions with Always-available AR for Accessibility” and “Anticipating Virtual Gossip — What are (Un)Intentional Dark Patterns in a Ubiquitously Augmented Reality?” ...
“It’s very typical that developers of a technology have one kind of idea about what its uptake in society might be, and then the actual uptake turns out to be something quite different,” says University of Washington professor and human-computer interaction expert Batya Friedman. A good system is flexible enough to adapt to these unexpected uses. ...
See the full story here: https://www.theverge.com/22746078/ar-privacy-crisis-rethink-computing
The Culture DAO launches the $CULTUR social token at the Virtual Beings Summit
And this year, blockchain culture has invaded the event. The Culture DAO(decentralized autonomous organization) is launching its social token, dubbed $CULTUR, at the event. And that may stir as much talk as the Virtual Beings Summit itself (the event takes place today and tomorrow). ...
DAOs are like companies without leaders. They’re a bunch of people who come together on a project and take ownership of it through control of tokens. The creators get so many tokens. But so do fans and investors and other who acquire tokens. And everybody gets to influence the fate of the project. Edward Saatchi, organizer of the Virtual Beings Summit, believes that these kinds of blockchain-inspired concepts will be intertwined with the success of virtual beings. A DAO, for instance, might create a character as complex as Hamlet and run that virtual being’s life, or it might collectively figure out how to create the next Pixar.
...This guild believes that the resonant characters of the future aren’t being built by centralized studios but by innovative technologists and artists — and fans who are involved in co-creating story of the character NFTs they buy.
...The Culture guild is about the living, digital portraits that the rapidly emerging metaverse class will use to announce themselves and find community in digital societies. The Culture Guild’s role is to create and innovate around virtual beings and this metaverse transition.
...Membership of the Culture DAO and Discord is normally 25 $CULTUR (1 $CULTUR can be swapped for ETH at a rate of around $25 at time of writing) alongside an application process; membership provides access to a token gated Discord with other founders, engineers, academics, artists across the Virtual Beings space as well as the ability to earn through hunting bounties (theculturedao.com/bounties).
See the full story here: https://venturebeat.com/2021/10/29/the-culture-dao-launches-the-cultur-social-token-at-the-virtual-beings-summit/
