https://dnyuz.com/2023/12/13/how-metas-new-face-camera-heralds-a-new-age-of-surveillance/
For the past two weeks, I’ve been using a new camera to secretly snap photos and record videos of strangers
Meta said in a statement that privacy was top of mind when designing the glasses. “We know if we’re going to normalize smart glasses in everyday life, privacy has to come first and be integrated into everything we do,” the company said.
Ha.
I don't think Meta has the same idea of privacy than the people do. I mean, Meta having all the data hidden in their servers, being fed to AI and given to advertisement algorithms is privacy when the data is "anonymized" and held onto securely. Right?
That's an easy fix. You see someone wearing them, you smash them. If it happens enough, people won't want them.
But the main problem is that the glasses don’t do much we can’t already do with phones.
This is enough to tell me they're not going to catch on. But even if they did somehow, i think it would be a short fad. I mean that meta et al would not be able to stop themselves from turning the glasses away from useful things and towards just being another ad serving platform.
Glasses like these, plus MR headsets are going to merge into a very powerful set of glasses with AI that will end up replacing smartphones in the next decade as they really will offer more value.
I'm not convinced, I need glasses and hate wearing them plus contacts are horrible but hugely popular because people think glasses are worse.
I think there are plenty of uses for HUD but they're being greedy by trying to corner a consumer market that doesn't exist when they should be trying to solve their way into niche markets which can popularise the tech and develop uses for it.
There's almost nothing that I use a smart phone for which glasses would be better, I don't need object labelling because I rarely come across an object I don't recognise, I don't need instant notification of messages or alerts. Maybe gen alpha will like having subway surfer playing at all times but I don't really think so.
I think AI voice control and natural language though text input will remove even more of the need for it and taskable automation will help reduce that even more by removing jobs that need labelling assistance.
Wearing body cameras will likely become standard though whether we like it or not, which I assume most people won't but will go along with for reasons of personal protection against slander and duplicitous editing.
A lot of stupid techno wannabes will think that this is cool and ruin it for everyone else. We need that laughing man tech from Ghost in a Shell.
I don't think that this catches on. However, the second this is included with lenses that act as transparent screens for AR stuff, it'll be flying off the shelves. No, not the very first model, not the second probably, but the one made by a large corporation that actually does it well.
Though tbh just the lenses / screens would do it, camera is just extra. So I actually think first they will get the lenses done and camera stuff ia added later when the rest is already commonly used.
How are you supposed to do AR without the camera? The computer has to know the environment it is supposed to augment. Even though if you mean recording doesn't have to be part of the camera I would agree.
I was more thinking of it being like a heads up display you know? It wouldn't be AR at that point sure, just a screen.
I don't really see a screen with a transparent background that is constantly in front of your face catching on unless it is used for AR.
I disagree, I'd get one if I could use it as a second monitor! Though if you can't navigate in the "screen", then it could be difficult. But yeah AR definitely would make things muuuch more interesting.
I’m going to start out with the obvious- that most of these arguments are copypasta from a decade and a half ago when smartphones got cameras. Distracting. What about the gym? Easy for bad actors to abuse (OMGWTFBBQ!)
The glare from headlights comment was weird. Do the lenses not include an AR coating, or perhaps the author doesn’t normally wear glasses? I decided to check on that last one and was surprised that there was no by line, just a generic nyt link - not even to the article. Of course Brian X Chen appears to be a real NYT journalist, but in no other online pictures does he wear glasses, so I presume he doesn’t wear corrective lenses or he wears contacts. Not too surprising then that the glasses - and a big, black, fat-rimmed resin model at that - would be distracting, even outside of the decisions to record or not.
Which brings up the last bit - to record you have to initiate it. I presume this is for battery life, as powering the sensor, processing, and transmission to a storage device all take non-trivial amounts of power for a device that small. For the panicky fear of constant surveillance the article has I expected it was an always-on live-stream to the Meta servers that was occurring. Color me unimpressed.
More alarmist bill crap. Just going to make sure the public never wants to hear another privacy article again.
Metas glasses aren't even particularly novel. They certainly ain't the end of privacy.
When the idiotic masses and paid influencers hop on board like they always do it will spur a bunch of companies to make similar and maybe one of them will be worth buying.