OpenStars
joined 10 months ago
Ofc it could have been benign, but there is no evidence that it was, while conversely everything that we currently know points to a breach of ethics.
One, they did not fully disclose that a camera was even there (unless I am mixing up this story with another one just like it?). That also makes it impossible to...
Two, they did not obtain proper (or any) consent. A banking ATM that needs to use your face to verify your identity could be an example of a benign use, and ignoring the enormous potential security implications of that atm, it could do so with a popup on the screen "Do you consent to having your face observed?", "Do you consent to storage of your facial data in our database?", "Do you consent to us selling the marketing data we collect from analysis of your facial data?". They did none of this.
Three, when asked about it, they lied. Technically they obfuscated the truth, which is just another way of stating that they lied.
Ofc it COULD have been benign, but so far they are zero out of three already towards that end - and that is even from just what we know so far.
Their corporate website mentions that they use the data for marketing purposes. Whatever type of face they see - e.g. male or female, large or skinny, etc. - gets correlated with what was purchased, and then they sell that data for marketing purposes. Exactly like Google selling your search history, except with likely fewer restrictions in place.
Their website doesn't mention how often they get hacked to give away that data for free - to be clear, that data meaning A PICTURE OF YOUR ACTUAL FUCKING FACE. I don't know what resolution, or even what someone would do with it later, I am focusing here on the fact that the picture taking seems nonconsensual, especially for it to be stored in a database rather than simply used in the moment.
Surely many who have them received them from elsewhere before immigration to America, and likewise the proportion of immigrants who have them I would expect to be oversized. Americans tend to be more greedy than anything else and don't put in the effort required for such small (financial) rewards.
Also, those with PhDs tend to congregate into certain areas that support those jobs, i.e. cities but not even a goodly number of those so much; plus smaller college towns too ofc. As such, many in the general populace might rarely if ever run into one for the largest majority of their lives, unless traveling specifically to those areas for some reason?
And ofc rural areas are far larger, geographically speaking, than places where a person with a PhD would (likely) go. So you could randomly pick a spot on a map 100 times and never manage to find someone with a PhD anywhere within tens of miles, I would expect - although that line of thinking reveals my own biases: do most educated farmers stop at like an MS and just follow up with their own (possibly even extensive) self studies, or go all the way to PhDs while working their actual farms? (I doubt it bc it does not sound practical, and that is a hallmark of farmers afaik, but I could be wrong...) Anyway, I expect the unequal distribution is a contributing / exasperating factor to the general rarity.
But also, there is far less training data to mix and match responses from, so naively I would expect a higher plagiarism rate, by its very nature.
Less than 2% of the world's population has a doctorate. According to the US Census Bureau, only 1.2% of the US population has a PhD.
git 'er done!
Jobs seem more about wanking off the bosses ego than anything else 🤷 .
Do you want Sharknado?! Bc this is how you get Sharknado! :-P
Oh absolutely. And this being in academia, they likely will lose their job over it - like that Harvard professor who was accused of a highly similar form of plagiarism (borrowing long stretches of text while failing to cite the original source material). I was pointing out the absurdity of not doing that for politicians and CEOs:-(.
They might literally have had some psychological issue, where they were trying to see how far they could push it without being caught.
Or this whole article could be a hit job - maybe the original thesis literally wrapped these sections with text saying "here is an example of a plausible attempt at plagiarism that would not get caught today - please do not quote me out of context here, m'kay?". The devil is in the details, and I for one am not volunteering to put in the amount of effort it would take to properly judge this person.
Although I bet their bosses are, now.
It makes sense - he spent so much time learning how the system worked, enough to get around it, so now he makes a living continuing the exploit. Many politicians and CEOs do the same.
They seem to be hoping that now, with AI, they can. :-|