Top all-time · #17037
Aviv Ovadya
Personal blog · aviv.medium.compoliticsai
Aviv Ovadya's personal blog at aviv.medium.com covers politics and ai. Since 2020, 4 different Hacker News readers have linked it 14 times, most often “The Path to Deepfake Harm”. The last post was in 2021, but the archive is still widely read.
Most-linked posts?
- The Path to Deepfake Harm2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-01-18
- ‘Contextualization Engines’ can fight misinformation without censorship2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-04-26
- Changing the efficiency of knowledge operations will change the shape of society2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-04-07
What Hacker News says?
I'd love to see an equal amount of the effort put toward initiatives like this, also being put toward mitigating their extremely likely negative societal impacts (and putting in safeguards). Of course, that's not nearly as sexy. Yes, there are lots of incredible positive impacts of such technology, just like there was with fire, or nuclear physics. But that doesn't mean that safeguards aren't absolutely critical if…
Comment linking /the-path-to-deepfake-harm-da4effb541bd
on “GPT-Neo – Building a GPT-3-sized model, open source and free”Submitted ‘Contextualization Engines’ can fight misinformation without censorship as a story · 81 points
HN discussionEase of access does matter. It only buys time, but that can provide the time needed to create countermeasures and ideally make those very accessible—somewhat similar to responsible vulnerability disclosure. This piece goes into more detail: https://aviv.medium.com/the-path-to-deepfake-harm-da4effb541... (excerpt from a working paper, part of which was presented at NeurIPs).
Comment linking /the-path-to-deepfake-harm-da4effb541bd
on “Deepfake Offensive Toolkit (real-time deepfakes for virtual cameras)”Submitted Changing the efficiency of knowledge operations will change the shape of society as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThis is great. That said, I would love to see this extended beyond just keyword search, to contextualization of a given piece of content. https://aviv.medium.com/contextualization-engines-can-fight-... ( I should note that the word authoritative here just means a particular 'lens' that has been vetted by a defined process—it's a way to make the problem simpler for prototyping. It might for example be a lens showing…
Comment linking /contextualization-engines-can-fight-misinformation-without-censorship-c5c47222a3b7
on “Brave Search Goggles: Alter search rankings with rules and filters”Submitted The Path to Deepfake Harm as a story · 1 points
HN discussionIt's useful to keep in mind the "magical decentralization fallacy": the mistaken belief that decentralization on its own can address governance problems. (more detail: https://aviv.medium.com/the-magical-decentralization-fallacy... )
Comment linking /the-magical-decentralization-fallacy-69b426d16bdc
on “My personal wishlist for a decentralized social network”I've used "magical decentralization fallacy" to get at something similar[1], but I appreciate how much more concise this is! [1] https://aviv.medium.com/the-magical-decentralization-fallacy... "the mistaken belief that decentralization on its own can address governance problems. What do I mean by governance problems? Things like misinformation and
Comment linking /the-magical-decentralization-fallacy-69b426d16bdc
on “Decentralized Woo Hoo”There is also a rebuttal article by the same fund: https://www.bvp.com/atlas/the-antidote-to-cryptophobia/ That said, I think Adam (the original article) is closer to being right. He doesn't even get into the thing that originally made me incredibly excited about the potential of blockchain tech—the way it lets one create a new sort of custom and irrevocable 'physics' for information and incentives. But the same irr…
Comment linking /the-magical-decentralization-fallacy-69b426d16bdc
on “Why I’m Cryptophobic”I've written about this a bit — might be helpful perspective: "I’ve had many conversations recently with very well meaning people who believe that if we just decentralize everything, it will fix the internet—and perhaps all of society! Decentralize social networks, decentralize money, decentralize the world…if only it was so simple. This is the “magical decentralization fallacy” — the mistaken belief that decentrali…
Comment linking /the-magical-decentralization-fallacy-69b426d16bdc
on “Maybe we shouldn't want a fully decentralized web”Yup. I repeated this enough that I ended up making a term for it. 'The "magical decentralization fallacy" — the mistaken belief that decentralization on its own can address governance problems. What do I mean by governance problems? Things like misinformation and harassment.' ( https://aviv.medium.com/the-magical-decentralization-fallacy... )
Comment linking /the-magical-decentralization-fallacy-69b426d16bdc
on “Fediverse in 2020”Fascinating. "Deprank is particularly useful when converting an existing JavaScript codebase to TypeScript. Performing the conversion in strict PageRank order can dramatically increase type-precision, reduce the need for any and minimizes the amount of rework that is usually inherent in converting large codebases." I wonder if the idea of using pagerank style systems for ~refactoring translate to other domain; e.g.…
Comment linking /when-we-change-the-efficiency-of-knowledge-operations-we-change-the-shape-of-society-d48ca870ff5b
on “Deprank: Use PageRank to find the most important files in your codebase”With all due respect George, I now disagree, even if I did agree in 2012 (when we road tripped together to SXSW; celebrating the destruction of SOPA!). I still think SOPA was terrible! But my broader thinking has dramatically evolved as I learned more about how technology and power interact in society. You assume a common fallacy that I often bring up on HN — the magical decentralization fallacy — "the mistaken beli…
Comment linking /the-magical-decentralization-fallacy-69b426d16bdc
on “Technology Without Industry”It's crucial to distinguish between "client-side scanning" that reports to authorities and "on-device context"[1] that might use similar client-side/on-device technology to identify a piece of content—but does not either censor or report to authorities. Different use case, same underlying technology. Former is often very problematic, while IMHO the latter is almost universally helpful (for where it is applicable; e.…
Comment linking /client-side-context-a-defense-against-misinformation-in-the-encrypted-whatsapp-b216379723ae
on “Bugs in Our Pockets?”