I have nothing to hide and why wouldn't I want ads that better reflect my preferences?
Why do you want ads at all?
This is the actual question to ask. Advertising is either a convenient scapegoat by ruling classes, or it is inherently destructive. Either way, a clear headed free society would ban advertising in its current form and seek other means of providing the utility of advertisement for goods and services. At the end of the day, that is all advertising is supposed to provide. Yet somehow this relatively insignificant aspect of society is put front and center as the reason for all sort of shenanigans.
Kind of reminds me about how they say the highest level of automation of self-driving cars will be no steering wheel. Who decided that that was higher on the scale and a good thing? The "progress" defined here is complete control over all actions of individuals in society by an AI god. These scales by which progress toward the future is measured are a key ingredient of social engineering. One task that Free Software…
> Kind of reminds me about how they say the highest level of automation of self-driving cars will be no steering wheel. Who decided that that was higher on the scale and a good thing? Everyone who's ever sat in traffic. It's a miserable experience and it is indeed a fundamentally better thing to be able to use that time in a more productive or entertaining fashion. Few people care if the steering wheel is entirely ab…
> Who is defining progress that way?
It seems to be defined as convenience by any means necessary.
I read some of google's patent mentioned in the text and thought it was interesting. They basically want a connected network of devices that communicate with each other and with google. Most of the devices follow the following algorithm: watch -> think -> act -> report. What is interesting is the 'report' phase of the algorithm. I think there is a battle between two competing AI philosophies. One philosophy thinks AI…
This is scary, but it is important we recognize that we can be controlled and have our behaviour modified by altering our environment - and that is can be a good things. Who hasn't delete Steam from their computer for a few weeks, thrown out junk food or set up a good workspace in order to promote a behavior in ourselves we want to cultivate, to be more like the person we want to be? The important thing is that in th…
Good point until you dragged Google into it. They're no different than the tobacco companies of 60 years ago who were getting doctors to say smoking was good for you. Or the makers of junk food and Steam in your examples who would really prefer that you not toss their stuff, but you do anyway. No one is forcing you to use Google, and it's not that difficult to limit your exposure to whatever shenanigans they're engaging in to influence you, just like every organization has since the beginning of organizations. In fact, I think it's probably easier now than it has been at many points in history. How easy was it to escape the influence of the Catholic church a few hundred years ago?
Something just occurred to me: it seems like a lot of the outrage over ads and privacy is just intellectual elitism:
"Sure, I am too aware of these techniques and mentally strong to ever be influenced by marketing, but what about the rest of humanity? Google will control their minds like a virus and soon destroy the world!"
I read some of google's patent mentioned in the text and thought it was interesting. They basically want a connected network of devices that communicate with each other and with google. Most of the devices follow the following algorithm: watch -> think -> act -> report. What is interesting is the 'report' phase of the algorithm. I think there is a battle between two competing AI philosophies. One philosophy thinks AI…
>One philosophy thinks AI should be central > The other philosophy thinks AI should be local
I suspect is usually a mixture. For example Google Translate runs locally if you download a language pair, yet the training is not local. Google Gboard Swipe runs locally: in airplane mode I just added a new word to the dictionary and swipe recognised it, also contact names. However Google sends swipe information to a central location to improve the service...
I have nothing to hide and why wouldn't I want ads that better reflect my preferences?
This makes me shudder. Companies with powerful AI and enough data could control the population in ways indiscernible to an individual. By organizing goods in stores and placing the right ads at the right time it could be possible to lead users on a treasure hunt to a political or economic opinion.
How do you know you're not in the vanguard of that attack on humanity? How do you know the comment you just posted isn't propaganda in service of your puppetmaster. Perhaps you're bringing about that which you fear, powerless in the grip of an omnipotent AI possessed by a faceless bureaucracy somewhere.
If I catch said human assistant reporting my daily activities to a third party, they will be terminated with extreme prejudice.
It's not a third party. Google/Amazon is providing the service.
What if you hire a maid for a day from a service, and you find out that they have been keeping tabs on your dietary habits and daily routine and reporting it back to their employer? That's closer to what Google is doing.
This is scary, but it is important we recognize that we can be controlled and have our behaviour modified by altering our environment - and that is can be a good things. Who hasn't delete Steam from their computer for a few weeks, thrown out junk food or set up a good workspace in order to promote a behavior in ourselves we want to cultivate, to be more like the person we want to be? The important thing is that in th…
Good point until you dragged Google into it. They're no different than the tobacco companies of 60 years ago who were getting doctors to say smoking was good for you. Or the makers of junk food and Steam in your examples who would really prefer that you not toss their stuff, but you do anyway. No one is forcing you to use Google, and it's not that difficult to limit your exposure to whatever shenanigans they're engag…
> No one is forcing you to use Google,
Unless your organization uses Google Apps, or standardizes company cell phones on Android, or uses Google Cloud for hosting things...