This one's a little too tin foil hat for me. Must be stressful go to about life thinking everyone and everything is out to get you.
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Apple Researching Ways to Use iPhone Camera to Detect Childhood Autism
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Again with the Nazi analogies!
Haven't you heard of Godwin's Law?
You forfeit the argument!
Godwin's law - Wikipedia
I was actually wondering about the people bitching about Apple taking part in this research - collaborating in a research program, not introducing a new feature to iPhones on sale today.
I wonder how many of those people commenting negatively here wear Apple Watches and are more than happy to have it monitor their heart rate, their blood sugar levels, their blood oxygen saturation levels, and their iPhones monitoring their step length and steadiness...
At this rate, we’re going to need the SOS function to call the nearest psychiatrist.
“We’ve detected interested in Android. You may be suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. Do you wish iPhone to call your nearest mental health facility?”
“We’ve detected interested in Android. You may be suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. Do you wish iPhone to call your nearest mental health facility?”
This is all great. But if this monitoring ability gets outside of the lab, though, dealing with children, we have to keep in mind they’re not just “children”. They’re human beings and have a right to dignity, privacy, and respect. The same goes for adults with cognitive decline.
Insofar as it has been possible, I’ve always sought to have their informed consent for anything that I would find invasive and wish to have my consent sought. Obviously I can’t get a toddler’s consent for an exam and a vaccination, but as they grow and become more aware, I explain to them they have autonomy over their bodies and how to safeguard it. Now I find myself tasked with maintaining the dignity and privacy of my mom and father-in-law who have age related cognitive decline so I think about such things a lot.
I know I would feel furious and betrayed as a kid if my parents gave me a great thing with games and videos and I found out later the damned thing was monitoring my engagement so it could give data to the adults to evaluate me. Even if it was for “my own good.” My trust would be pretty worn thin.
Even decades later, I’m actually still weirded out and p’d off about some strange tests I was subjected to in school that were never fully explained to me. I think I was told it was to evaluate me for a gifted students program, but it was some weird stuff like Rorschach tests that I can’t see relating to any academic gifts. I stopped and questioned the adults but they weren’t forthcoming enough so I refused to cooperate and presumably missed out on whatever “opportunity” I was being evaluated for. I assume my parents signed off on the tests but when I asked them they couldn’t provide any details and were fine that I got stubborn about it.
Even now, I read the Terms of Service agreements on devices before I sign off on them. I’m not paranoid, but if someone wants something from me, I want to know how and why and what both parties get out of it.
As a parent of a child with numerous still to be determined health issues, I understand the desperation of parents to have a greater arsenal of diagnostic tools available to help their children get the best support and care possible.
But there’s just something about this that bothers me. I feel perhaps there could be a lack of transparency and the potential to conduct something I consider an invasion of privacy and dignity. I do keep my eyes toward the “slippery slope” even though I do look forward to Apple working on technology that can help me monitor FOR MYSELF my OWN health.
I'll never understand why readers of these forums panic every time a research study is posted on this site—no matter how potentially beneficial to a vulnerable segment of the population, somehow afraid of anything they can seemingly tag an SJW crusade. Do they not understand it's probably some underfunded grad student, somewhere, doing this research and Apple is just enabling API access? Research does not always mean future marketed features, slow down.
More like your Apple Pay is shutting down until you comply.
Good grief, people. OBVIOUSLY, this wouldn't be something that happens without the parent's enabling it (if this even comes out). Here we go again with the knee-jerk reactions and conspiracy theories 
I think you both hit the nail on the head in a way. Apple suddenly has this new local processing power available on phones and they are exploring what they can do with it. However, they're not thinking the social implications of this through, and it sounds like engineers are being allowed to run amok.
It would be fine any resulting feature was opt-in only. As for research, we already know that eye movements can reveal a great many medical conditions (I used to work in an neuro-ophthalmology lab which was tasked with doing precisely that). What's the point of adding the capability of a mobile device to do this unless it somehow is going to be used? And note that tracking eye movements is huge in marketing.
It's not so much the innocent uses that are being proposed now, so I agree there is no need for panic just now, but the issue is how these could be misused. And for the record I understand the science because I am a scientist who has worked in the field. Ask yourself this, what is the true advantage of exploring the diagnostic potential of a mobile phone unless that capability is going to be used, since it would have to be followed up in the clinic anyway? And once those capabilities, like eye-tracking and facial emotion recognition is establish, what puts on the brakes and prevents it from being misused? We have to think more than one step ahead.
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No it's not. How about actually read the OP - not just the thread title. No data would be sent to Apple (all is processed on-device) and obviously parents have the choice to participate in this or not.
Not everyone is panicking, just expressing concern and having a discussion. We have concerns because of what has been revealed time and time again by whistleblowers and confirmed to be factual about how we are monitored and manipulated via our consumer products and often with the excuse it’s for research or some greater good. Cambridge Analytica Scandal— question everything.
Did I miss the part of the article where it said Apple is going to force this on parents with children?
Hear. We'll have a team at Duke who has seen the FaceID tech to be an interesting and available tool for furthering eye-tracking studies—using technology more readily available and more economically feasible to put in the hands of participants in a controlled study. An ex- of mine was doing paediatric cancer research and the heart rate trackers they used—far less sophisticated than a basic Fitbit—were $1000/ea. How much greater impact could these studies make if you can enable fully-vetted, opted-in participants to use the devices they already own?
Trust in science is at an all-time low and it reflects so poorly on our culture. Thank you for doing all that you do.
Mmm. I wonder which function, that you’ve been using for years, Apple will decide to switch off if you decide to opt out? 🤔
Sounds like Apple eliminated the “a thousand noes for every yes” position.
Ouch! Not sure how I feel about this one. My son was diagnosed with Autism without the use of a phone. This seems too much like an invasion of privacy to me. No, thank you. Not interested!
Somewhere else introduced facial recognition game session ban. Apple now follow the suite in the disguise of diagnosing autism. I start to wonder: what’s parents for? Just simply giving a baby, and the baby’s fate will be carefully curated by the society to achieve maximum benefit, whether he/she likes or not?