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Ask HN: What tech utopia/horror ideas do you see materialising soon?

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11–20 of 127 posts

Re: Ask HN: What tech utopia/horror ideas do you see materialising soon?

#11
post #6

The FBI kind of does that: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/nov/16/fbi-entrapment... As such, a terrorist organization doing so wouldn’t surprise me either. As for what I see happening in a dystopian sense, I think that the hacking of smart homes will become more common. I think the hacking of smart cars will become more common. I think that at some point, the central banks will introduce CBDCs and governments…

One of the reasons I have for avoiding the straight reading of 1984 is that the protagonist jumps, eagerly, into such an entrapment. Not a sympathetic look.

    But if you want money for people with minds that hate
    All I can tell you is brother you have to wait

Re: Ask HN: What tech utopia/horror ideas do you see materialising soon?

#12
post #7
post #3

It being necessary to use shibboleths/code words to authenticate to each other over video chat (eg, to ensure that the person you're speaking to is who they appear to be, not someone else using deepfake puppetry). Really this is an implicit biometric authentication mechanism, and biometrics are usernames, not passwords. (Though I'd love to be wrong about this one.)

Hadn’t thought of this. Fascinating thought. How would we know for sure that the deepfake didn’t bypass auth somehow… I guess one would need a secondary auth system, like a message over signal or something.

Not to sound like a crank but it wouldn't hurt to establish them with your friends and family before we may need them, while we still have faith in recognizing their voice on the telephone and can just call them up and chat about it.

Re: Ask HN: What tech utopia/horror ideas do you see materialising soon?

#13
Social media (twitter) will get worse due to ChatGPT et al.

One little consolation: Eventually the trollbot armies will waste resources by mostly talk amonst themselves.

Other predictions: Quite a few jobs will be lost: Text editors, translators.

There will be new ethical questions: Is it ok if a Chatbot aids you writing your dissertation? How much is ok? 20%? 40%?

All in all, doesn't sound so great, does it?

Looking on the bright side i am sure we will see creative people come up with great stuff (films, music, images, vr environments, interactive experiences).

Re: Ask HN: What tech utopia/horror ideas do you see materialising soon?

#14
Utopia: “free” money for everybody. In the form of a Basic Income.

Dystopia: controls on how we spend our money. No matter if we earned it ourselves or were gifted the money. No buying or selling without it being whitelisted. Maybe in the form of CBDC’s?

Utopia: no more spamming because no one can me anonymous.

Dystopia: every service, platform and protocol will need KYC options.

Re: Ask HN: What tech utopia/horror ideas do you see materialising soon?

#15
What I see happening soon: The mainstreaming of a new religion. Its tenets are broadly: the worship of technology and "progress", the cyborgization of the population, the proliferation of AI on all spheres of life, and the ultimate creation of the successor of humanity.

This is not new, it's been going on for at least 200 years, but finally the technology exists to do it in a decentralized, scalable fashion. Think of Nudge Theory, but applied at a mass scale and in every domain.

Re: Ask HN: What tech utopia/horror ideas do you see materialising soon?

#16
post #5

Remote work 100% in VR. During working hours your employer gets to track everything down to a single eye movement.

Seems like some people can't spend any time in VR without getting motion sick. So hopefully not (as they'd be out of a job).

Re: Ask HN: What tech utopia/horror ideas do you see materialising soon?

#19
post #15

What I see happening soon: The mainstreaming of a new religion. Its tenets are broadly: the worship of technology and "progress", the cyborgization of the population, the proliferation of AI on all spheres of life, and the ultimate creation of the successor of humanity. This is not new, it's been going on for at least 200 years, but finally the technology exists to do it in a decentralized, scalable fashion. Think of…

I genuinely see politics as a new religion. Blind faith, ignoring logic, heresy if you disagree, excommunication, various forms of worship. Both sides

Re: Ask HN: What tech utopia/horror ideas do you see materialising soon?

#20
Cat cloning is now a thing. https://www.geminigenetics.com/cat-cloning/

So are kidney transplants for cats. https://www.vetmed.wisc.edu/dss/mcanulty/felinekidneytranspl...

Someone's going to put these together, and we'll have The Island for cats. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Island_(2005_film)

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