The all-seeing AI webcam

The Vergecast

Vox Media Podcast Network

News, Tech News, Technology

4.4 • 4.1K Ratings

🗓️ 21 July 2024

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

On this episode of The Vergecast, senior producer Will Poor explores the AI-tinged worlds of Dries Depoorter. Depoorter has built all manner of quirky and provocative installations and online experiments. There’s a clock that tells you how much of your life you’ve already lived; a phone charger that only works when your eyes are closed; a mobile chat app that you can only use when your phone has less than 5% battery. His most eyebrow-raising work, though, is around AI and surveillance. In his projects Depoorter takes publicly available webcam footage from around the world, and uses it to stalk celebrities, catch jaywalkers in the act, keep politicians honest, and generally make you wonder about your own privacy and anonymity. We talked with Depoorter about how he creates his work, how he thinks about the future of AI, and how he responds to the people who see his art and want to turn it into commerce. It’s a wild conversation, so check it out above. To see all of Dries’ work, head over to his portfolio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Have a question or need how to advice? Just ask Meta-AI. Whether you need to summarize your class notes or want to create a recipe with the ingredients you already have in your fridge, Meta-AI has the answers. You can also research topics,
0:14.9	explore interests, and so much more. It's the most advanced AI at your
0:20.6	fingertips. Expand your world with Meta AI.
0:24.0	Now on Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, and Messenger.
0:30.0	Welcome to the Verge castcast, the flagship podcast of streaming services that are just the
0:37.7	living rooms of strangers to their webcams.
0:40.1	I'm your friend David Pierce and this is the second episode in our three-part series about AI.
0:46.4	Like I mentioned last week, we're trying to find ways to make AI sort of real and in the world.
0:51.4	We talk about AI and these like big, huge sprawling ways. We wanted to see if we could find three stories about how AI is actually being used by actual people in the actual world.
1:01.0	And for this one, our second one,
1:03.1	Will poor has a story.
1:04.1	Hi, Will.
1:04.6	Hello.
1:05.4	So if memory serves, at the beginning of this,
1:07.4	we tasked you with not just like finding a story
1:10.3	about an AI app, but like doing something different.
1:14.3	Like let's see where AI is being used that isn't just to like write
1:18.4	slightly better business emails.
1:20.4	Yeah.
1:21.4	What'd you find?
1:22.4	I went as far afield as I could go. I wanted to get away from the hype and skepticism cycle around all the AI tools that we're talking about get away from all the product
1:33.2	announcements that were following. I wanted to make AI kind of unfamiliar to
	...

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