I worry such funny algorithms find their way into hardware and start causing chaos in science and engineering. People do rely on COTS measuring equipment for a lot of important work, and there's a tacit assumption that the equipment tries to reflect reality.
I've mentioned this before[0], so quoting myself:
"for example, a research team may decide to not spend money on expensive scientific cameras for monitoring experiment, and instead opt to buy an expensive - but still much cheaper - DSLR sold to photographers, or strap a couple of iPhones 15 they found in the drawer (it's the future, they're all using iPhones 17, which is two generations behind the newest one). That's using COTS equipment. COTS is typically sold to less sophisticated users, but is often useful for less sophisticated needs of more sophisticated users too. But if COTS cameras start to accrue built-in algorithms that literally fake data, it may be a while before such researchers realize they're looking at photos where most of the pixels don't correspond to observable reality, in a complicated way they didn't expect."
I've mentioned this before[0], so quoting myself:
"for example, a research team may decide to not spend money on expensive scientific cameras for monitoring experiment, and instead opt to buy an expensive - but still much cheaper - DSLR sold to photographers, or strap a couple of iPhones 15 they found in the drawer (it's the future, they're all using iPhones 17, which is two generations behind the newest one). That's using COTS equipment. COTS is typically sold to less sophisticated users, but is often useful for less sophisticated needs of more sophisticated users too. But if COTS cameras start to accrue built-in algorithms that literally fake data, it may be a while before such researchers realize they're looking at photos where most of the pixels don't correspond to observable reality, in a complicated way they didn't expect."
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[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26451691