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

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

#1
What i see happening soon is:

With all this recent AI stuff where it is able to create content that feels real I started to think about how AI could just create the world for you.

Since we already are basically living in the internet we could have some terrorist organization finding an isolated enough person and attack him with a program that would generate a bubble just for him: fake friends, fake events happening, fake influencers and news programs just for him, basically whole internet content and then only reality check would be talking to other people (which Trump us taught is also not necessarily true "fake news" argument) and then easily this person can be pushed towards some criminal or whatever activity.

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

#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.)

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

#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 will gain the ability to completely destroy political opponents via monetary control.

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

#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.

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

#10
id.me - With the push to get people on id.me to pay federal taxes in the US, I can foresee this eventually being a hard requirement to do anything related to the federal government initially and then eventually required for all state government interactions. Then I foresee this data being "leaked" on purpose to be shared with organizations that should not have it and just like Equifax they will barely receive a wag of the finger.

Network Connected Vehicles - This is already a thing. At best this will result in peoples cars being bricked by skiddies. This can be used to real time control where people can drive. People will have to start paying to "unlock" services in their car that is normally a function of a car. e.g. Get a pop-up that says one has to pay to use the window defogger. At worst this will turn into a dark-web business for targeted assassination or used to silence people that are speaking out of turn. There are some videos of peoples cars doing bad things and the driver fighting for control and ultimately losing. I can only hope more people implement their own private CCTV systems not tied to any clouds to document more of these.

Personal Social Credit Scores - All manor of companies are signing onto ESG believing they will benefit financially by signalling good intentions. Some stock monitoring sites are already factoring in ESG scores. I foresee this devolving into personal social credit scores that would manipulate public behavior and ultimately anyone not aligned with the system would be ostracized from some aspects of society or at least business. This will tie into the above Network Connected Vehicles. Park near a bar and get on a watch list for potential alcoholics. Park near a strip club and your spouse starts getting pop-ups for marriage advise. Walk past a digital billboard and be publicly shamed for being out of alignment with group-think, then be mocked by the billboard when your heart rate increases as per your body monitor. Score goes low, insurance and rent costs will increase, social benefits decrease.

Social Media Algorithms applied outside of the web - Social media organizations have already jumped the shark and many are finally catching onto this. This will start creeping into "smart" devices to manipulate people. Body monitors, smart home systems, AR headsets, etc... Facial recognition will tell the billboards and local businesses who you are, how much money you have and if you are aligned with correct-think. Monitors in police cars will identify people and show their social credit score, who purchases weed, who may be armed as they are driving by.

Network Connected Body Monitors - See Network Connected Vehicles and Personal Social Credit Scores

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