We were recently approached by a contractor who works behalf the Chinese gov. Basically, they wanted to purchase an insane number of commercial licenses of our embedded computer vision library[1] to implement face tracking (detection and recognition) for a custom OpenBSD fork running on a homegrown CPU architecture with 512MB of RAM. They didn't tell more about this hardware but impression is that is the new generation of street Cameras.
Inside China’s Dystopian Dreams: A.I., Shame and Lots of Cameras
71–80 of 223 posts
Re: Inside China’s Dystopian Dreams: A.I., Shame and Lots of Cameras
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
There has been a war-on-science going on for quite a while now, if there is a dark age coming I would fully expect that to be the real origin.
Perhaps this "war on science", however naive and inarticulate its proponents, is actually a war on the abuses of technology, such as the parent describes. In which case, not only it's not the real origin of some upcoming dark age, but the last voice of freedom before it.
>Perhaps this "war on science", however naive and inarticulate its proponents, is actually a war on the abuses of technology, such as the parent describes.
No, like in the case of global climate change, the war on science is to enable the abuses of technology, not eliminate it. And that is true for many other cases.
In other cases like evolution and the age of the universe, the motivation is religious, not the abuses of technology. I have read recently that this true for many of the flat-earthers.
I am rather puzzled that you seem to be unaware of the various motivations involved.
Re: Inside China’s Dystopian Dreams: A.I., Shame and Lots of Cameras
#73The technology isn't quite there, and Chinese law enforcement clearly exaggerates in order to maximize the current impact. However, we are very close to the point where everything could be tracked, and recorded in a usable way - including the exact location of most citizens at all times, discrepancies in utility bills, shopping, internet activity (except possibly for those few with impeccable OpSec, and even that for…
“The goal is algorithmic governance,” he added.
Given that the tech isn’t there, maybe the idea is just to say “the algorithm did it” on a national scale. The technology might not be worth much at doing more than providing much wanted pretext for arbitrary action.
Re: Inside China’s Dystopian Dreams: A.I., Shame and Lots of Cameras
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
you want local perspective? this is what happens when it's implemented against a religious and ethnic minority: https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/02/asia/china-xinjiang-detention... https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/travel-0327201816200... https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/03/opinion/sunday/china-surv... https://www.economist.com/briefing/2018/05/31/china-has-turn...
Xinjiang is like Afghanistan, its not a police state, its a war zone. You should not only pity the minority, the Han people are equally forced there because the government needs maintain control. These articles, do care about the people, but not all of them.
I've spent literally years living and working in Afghanistan, so I take your comment about as seriously as something I'd see on Infowars.
Re: Inside China’s Dystopian Dreams: A.I., Shame and Lots of Cameras
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sounds like Google Facebook and Amazon
> Sounds like Google Facebook and Amazon Except Google, Facebook, and Amazon don't control your right to travel, can't use violence against you, can't seize your assets, don't have armies, and aren't states. (edit for missing word and apostrophe)
The OP knows that perfectly well, but he doesn't care. That's because he is a what-abouter who is trying to divert the conversation away from China.
Re: Inside China’s Dystopian Dreams: A.I., Shame and Lots of Cameras
#76We were recently approached by a contractor who works behalf the Chinese gov. Basically, they wanted to purchase an insane number of commercial licenses of our embedded computer vision library[1] to implement face tracking (detection and recognition) for a custom OpenBSD fork running on a homegrown CPU architecture with 512MB of RAM. They didn't tell more about this hardware but impression is that is the new generati…
Actually what I am surprised about is that they even approached you at all. Products manufactured for the domestic Chinese market generally don't need to give a shit about the legal aspects of the GPL. Until somebody successfully sues a Chinese company in a domestic court and wins damages (vanishingly unlikely), BSD, GPL, LGPL, Apache and other licensed open source things will continue to be incorporated into embedded products with no attribution or licensing agreement.
Re: Inside China’s Dystopian Dreams: A.I., Shame and Lots of Cameras
#77This article examines A.I., policing and authoritarianism from a Western perspective, rather than the local perspective. I think it would have served the article's balance to get a more local and relativist view on the intersectionality of the things they are looking to be objective about. That said, if the technology delivers on the potential the gov't claims, I think they will have to relax the laws or make it flex…
you want local perspective? this is what happens when it's implemented against a religious and ethnic minority: https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/02/asia/china-xinjiang-detention... https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/travel-0327201816200... https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/03/opinion/sunday/china-surv... https://www.economist.com/briefing/2018/05/31/china-has-turn...
That's not local perspective. Please don't take these threads further into political or national flamewar. They're flammable enough already.
Re: Inside China’s Dystopian Dreams: A.I., Shame and Lots of Cameras
#78The article says there are four times as many cameras in China than in the US. This means approximately the same number of cameras per citizen. Where is the NYT article about the US' dystopian dreams?
>Where is the NYT article about the US' dystopian dreams?
Huh? The NYT has endless articles about the dystopian dreams of Trump and the Republican party. Or perhaps you an authoritarian who thinks those dreams are actually a utopia.
Re: Inside China’s Dystopian Dreams: A.I., Shame and Lots of Cameras
#79It should be pointed out that, with or without AI, the cultural impulses are the same. This is an issue of authoritarianism, not of AI. If it should be feared more universally then the fear should be the authoritarian streak within all of us.
You're absolutely correct. Things are just as bad in the US as China, and so we should ignore what is happening in China and instead turn all our attentions inward.
Re: Inside China’s Dystopian Dreams: A.I., Shame and Lots of Cameras
#80India has almost the same population as China, and yet they don't choose to wield an authoritative system of population control and management with all the psychological techniques of manipulation and deception that China is. So how is India doing - worse than China? Every country is different so can't really be compared like that, but I am fascinated to see whether Chinese people will come to rise up against such an…
You are confusing incompetence with benevolence. if India had money and AI PhDs anywhere even half way close to China, politicians there would have rushed to implement social credit system and it would have been called "Karma Card". It would have promise to improve security for women getting raped and people getting robed. I haven't studied Indian constitution myself but I have been told that its one of the shittiest…
Look at the disaster of data breaches from the Aadhar card deployment as an example of what can go wrong. It's a heady mixture of localized corruption and incompetence.
https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=aad...