Home Leadership Turn Archives Me RampUp Solutions  
 

  • Categories

  • Archives
 

Tech with a Conscience

by Miki Saxon

https://twitter.com/deepnudeapp

Sounds like an oxymoron.

The world knows about tech’s love affair with, and misuse of, personal data. The continual ignoring, minimizing and excusing of hate speech, revenge porn, fake news, bullying, etc.

Then there is its totally irrational attitude/belief that people will be kind and good to each other online no matter what they are like in the real world.

Given the prevailing attitude, would a hot tech startup have a conscience?

So would a founder, a self-described “technology enthusiast,” create an AI app that went viral and then shut it down because of the way it was being used?

DeepNude was built on Pix2Pix, an open-source algorithm used for “image-to-image translation.” the app can create a naked image from any picture of a woman with just a couple of clicks. Revenge porn activists said the app was “absolutely terrifying.”

As to the above question, the answer is “yes.”

The DeepNude team was horrified, believing “the probability that people will misuse it is too high.”

“We don’t want to make money this way. Surely some copies of DeepNude will be shared on the web, but we don’t want to be the ones who sell it,” DeepNude wrote in a tweet. “The world is not yet ready for DeepNude.”

—deepnudeapp (@deepnudeapp) June 27, 2019

Pix2Pix was developed by a team of scientists, who now believe the industry needs to do better and not just release their work to the world at large.

“We have seen some wonderful uses of our work, by doctors, artists, cartographers, musicians, and more,” the MIT professor Phillip Isola, who helped create Pix2Pix, told Business Insider in an email. “We as a scientific community should engage in serious discussion on how best to move our field forward while putting reasonable safeguards in place to better ensure that we can benefit from the positive use-cases while mitigating abuse.”

One can only hope that the scientific community does, indeed, find a way to do good while avoiding the worst of the negative fallout from discoveries.

And hats off to the DeepNude team.

It’s really inspiring to see such a concrete example of doing the right thing, with no shilly-shallying or dancing around the decision.

But I do wonder what would have happened if either the developers or the scientists were beholden  to investors.

Image credit: deepnudeapp via Twitter

Leave a Reply

RSS2 Subscribe to
MAPping Company Success

Enter your Email
Powered by FeedBlitz
About Miki View Miki Saxon's profile on LinkedIn

Clarify your exec summary, website, etc.

Have a quick question or just want to chat? Feel free to write or call me at 360.335.8054

The 12 Ingredients of a Fillable Req

CheatSheet for InterviewERS

CheatSheet for InterviewEEs

Give your mind a rest. Here are 4 quick ways to get rid of kinks, break a logjam or juice your creativity!

Creative mousing

Bubblewrap!

Animal innovation

Brain teaser

The latest disaster is here at home; donate to the East Coast recovery efforts now!

Text REDCROSS to 90999 to make a $10 donation or call 00.733.2767. $10 really really does make a difference and you'll never miss it.

And always donate what you can whenever you can

The following accept cash and in-kind donations: Doctors Without Borders, UNICEF, Red Cross, World Food Program, Save the Children

*/ ?>

About Miki

About KG

Clarify your exec summary, website, marketing collateral, etc.

Have a question or just want to chat @ no cost? Feel free to write 

Download useful assistance now.

Entrepreneurs face difficulties that are hard for most people to imagine, let alone understand. You can find anonymous help and connections that do understand at 7 cups of tea.

Crises never end.
$10 really does make a difference and you’ll never miss it,
while $10 a month has exponential power.
Always donate what you can whenever you can.

The following accept cash and in-kind donations:

Web site development: NTR Lab
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.5 License.