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# 10 year challenge:


10 year challenge: How science and the world have changed
By ISWAR

This week, social media users have been sharing photos of themselves from 10 years ago alongside pictures from today and the hashtag #10YearChallenge. That got us thinking about how the world of science has changed in that time. From retreating glaciers on our home planet to the deepest reaches of our solar system, the last decade has seen great advances in our knowledge as well as stark changes in our natural world. Meanwhile, computers have learned to create completely imaginary but photorealistic images. We chose four pairs of images that tell different stories about the last 10 years in science.

Columbia Glacier, Alaska
The Columbia Glacier is one of the most rapidly changing glaciers in the world. Since 1980, it has been in retreat, as shown in these false-colour images from NASA’s Landsat satellites. Its terminus has moved more than 20 kilometres to the north in the last three decades. Chunks of ice have broken off at the bottom, contributing to global sea level rise. At the same time, the glacier has thinned substantially, expanding the area of brown bedrock visible in the pictures.

2008
columbia glacier 2008
2017
columbia_oli_2017

Pluto
Ten years ago, Pluto was at a low point. The International Astronomical Union stripped it of planet status in 2006, reclassifying Pluto as a dwarf planet. Pluto was out of favour, and the best images we had of it were blurry photos from the Hubble Space Telescope.

Fake faces generated by neural networks
In the last 10 years, computers have learned to create life-like photos of entirely imagined people. Neural networks work by analysing a large set of data, such as photographs, and looking for patterns. In a particular type called a generative adversarial network or GAN, part of the system generates fake data while another part tries to work out if it is real or not. By pitting the network against itself, it learns to produce better images. As the images below show, the rate of progress in this field has been
astonishing.

NOBODY KNOWS WHERE THE CHALLENGE BEGAN!
Isn’t this a little odd?
It wasn’t until Kate O’Neill, a writer for Wired with some insight in the digital field, wrote how she thinks the challenge is more than just a fun thing to share on social media.

Also, read: Mark Zuckerberg’s Response To Cambridge Analytica Data Scandal Shows Facebook’s Refusal To Accept Its Basic Policies Are Flawed

She argued how it can totally be a way devised by the Facebook team to collect data for building algorithms for facial recognition. It’s a no brainer that Facebook breaches privacy and collects data of it’s users.



If they had to develop a facial recognition software, a larger data set and fixed duration of time would be needed to assess different parameters related to age and that’s exactly what the 10 year challenge is!

Also, many users on Facebook don’t upload their own pictures as their display and sometimes have graphics or other family members as their DPs. In such a case, the 10 year challenge is a perfect excuse for Facebook to collect data of users for facial recognition algorithms.

Once fully developed, they can even share this technology with other digital platforms for profits. No law yet prohibits such sharing of technology.

Facebook, on the other hand, has categorically denied any ulterior motive behind this challenge. They have maintained that “it’s a user generated meme which started on it’s own”, which sounds like a perfect cover up.

10 year challenge

Additionally, even if
Facebook didn’t start this trend, with almost 3.2 million people on the platform, it is still likely to benefit from thousands of people sharing their old and new pictures to develop it’s facial recognition technology.

It it’s true by any means, it’s a serious threat to people’s privacy as well as security. Moreover, the data breaches by Facebook in the past have only been lessons on why we should use technology with precaution and question it on every step of the way.

On the brighter side, at least this trend is making people aware about the damage they have been causing to environment since 10 years and forcing them to do their bit to help save it!

What do you think about this? Let us know in the comments below.
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Location: Bhawanipatna, Odisha, India

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