81–90 of 201 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can use communication tech to avoid surveillance, so no.
And in doing so you've created a data fingerprint that can be surveilled, and then the NSA just roots your phone or data provider or Google or whatever they want, so no, you really can't.
My mother birthing me made such an impact on the universe that can be surveilled. This is a moot point.
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> Not sure about this take. You need data at the end of the day, to build good AI models. I don't think she is saying that AI is predicated on surveillance as a source of training data (although that does happen in a few cases). She seems to be saying that surveillance is the primary use case for AI. Actually I don't think that's true, consider manufacturing robots. However, mass surveillance, a societal scourge and…
> Actually I don't think that's true, consider manufacturing robots. We're long way from making fully AI-driven robots. But much closer to other uses. Our current world is very data-centric: companies have been collecting, selling, sharing and stashing metadata with websites, social media and smartphones for the last decade. Now, language models will help them process it. I have one question: for what cause? Surely,…
Someone else asked that question in this same thread [0].
It's a good question.
The purposelessness of much technology is a problem Neil Postman addressed very robustly in "Technopoly" [1]. To date I have not heard any sane responses to his "Six Questions Regarding Technology" [2].
> not because of bad actors, but because of the 'pretending to be good' ones.
When you don't have any reason at all for doing something, and you're challenged, one tends to use imagination to dream up a plausible "good" reason.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37656891
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> It also says "By cross-checking everyone who enters the store against a database of identified shoplifters and unruly customers, facial recognition can detect and deter repeat offenders" and "Using facial recognition, retailers can know precisely when an employee arrives, takes breaks, and leaves for the day" Ofc you "can" - in principle. Is any of this currently being done, however?
> Is any of this currently being done, however? Companies aren't obligated to disclose the training process. So, we can't tell. Until, in the matter of months, it is available, accessible and almost impossible to regulate. And every company will start using it to not fall behind.
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> It also says "By cross-checking everyone who enters the store against a database of identified shoplifters and unruly customers, facial recognition can detect and deter repeat offenders" and "Using facial recognition, retailers can know precisely when an employee arrives, takes breaks, and leaves for the day" Ofc you "can" - in principle. Is any of this currently being done, however?
> Is any of this currently being done, however? Companies aren't obligated to disclose the training process. So, we can't tell. Until, in the matter of months, it is available, accessible and almost impossible to regulate. And every company will start using it to not fall behind.
I know in America this would be painted as an attack on the Holy Minority and therefore no one will be allowed to discuss it without being branded a blasphemer, so I'm curious what people on here think.
I feel like businesses should have this right, but I worry about slippery slopes. It might start with shoplifters, and 20 years later when 99% of stores are owned by the same 3 megacorps, people could get banned for wrongthink and for shaping the political views of the masses at large. Kinda like what they do now on social media.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And in doing so you've created a data fingerprint that can be surveilled, and then the NSA just roots your phone or data provider or Google or whatever they want, so no, you really can't.
>so you've created a data fingerprint that can be surveilled My mother birthing me made such an impact on the universe that can be surveilled. This is a moot point.
It's only a moot point when you move the goalposts outside of our lightcone.
It is concretely and objectively fact that attempts to avoid surveillance create a profile that can be used to surveil you, because the more you attempt to avoid surveillance, the more you stand out against the noise. Everything leaks.
And your counter argument is that "the material universe exists, and can be observed, therefore your argument is irrelevant?"
If you can't be bothered with a serious reply, just don't reply. It's fine. I don't expect much from Hacker News anymore.
Bad premise, and therefore nonsense conclusions, because AI can have many uses, aside from surveillance. In this regard, it's not like a gun, which is very specifically an instrument to kill, and has secondary uses like shooting sports, but rather it's a tool, like tongs, which can be used for building, cooking, and also to torture someone. Advertising companies are jumping at AI for two things: it is hoped that it c…
If you used said limitations to protect something you value, you have to start looking for a better protection. It's a constant process of adaptation. It cannot and should not be stopped. Instead we should be looking for ways to adapt, preferably ahead of time. Restrictions work to a rather small extent.
Be fully aware that a new scientific or engineering breakthrough will have all the potential to result in more deadly weapons, invasion of your privacy, undermining democracy, exacerbating inequality, putting you personally out of job, and disrupting whatever else you hold dear. It's always high time to think about factors which would eliminate or at least limit such consequences, and these must be positive factors, things people do willingly and profitably, not bans.
It's time to think not how to ban the privacy-invading AI (it will never work), but how to have a smaller footprint that may be used to invade your privacy, and, most importantly, how to run things in such.a way that invading your privacy is not profitable, even though still possible. And, inevitably, learn to live with even less privacy by default.
> [AI] requires the surveillance business model I think this is putting the horse before the cart. There is no doubt that the surveillance business model has captured tech. But "AI" - which to me is just the shortest possible way to say "algorithmic processing of digital information" - is just one more category of tools exploited to buttress and expand the dominance of said business model. It just happens that while…
> lets us not concede that surveillance capitalism owns every possible future of tech. It does as long as it's the only way to finance tech, which seems to be the case.
One of the many dramatic flaws of surveillance capitalism is that it cannot really provide the entire tech stack society needs. It thrives as a parasitic model, predicated on political dysfunction and public ignorance. Society must finance the bulk of the infrastructure and then hand over the keys to the digital kingdom as it were.
What is undeniable is that surveillance is the most lucrative mode. This is not surprising: borderline legal / morally dubious activities are always the most profitable.
Does anybody know of a facial recognition AI that actually classifies faces as (non)-liars as she claims? Not sure about this take. You need data at the end of the day, to build good AI models. These days it feels like anyone's public takes are more or less just a means to promote their own cause. And I say this as a happy and long-time Signal user.
Well, the full quote from Whittaker is: > “You know, you walk past a facial recognition camera that’s instrumented with pseudo-scientific emotion recognition, and it produces data about you, right or wrong, that says ‘you are happy, you are sad, you have a bad character, you’re a liar, whatever.’ While I'm not aware of any technology that claims to classify faces as liars the rest of the statement is broadly true. An…
Hadn't there been similar systems for phone conversations, based on voice stress analysis? I totally expect this to move to AI based systems, including audio and visual data, if it hasn't been done already. (Also, if a person has been tagged as "liar" – truthfully or not – in any customer history file, this data will be available, as soon as a face is matched.)
I think people do a disservice to their cause when they make semantic arguments like this. Isn't enough to say that AI can be used for enhanced surveillance by malicious actors? What does it mean to be a "surveillance technology"? Now you have people arguing about whether AI fits the definition of this made up term instead of talking about the potentially nefarious surveillance applications.
AI needs data [1], so in the end people compete on the data - this drives more and more surveillance type behaviour - including using AI to collect data [2].
[1] not controversial I hope [2] eg face recognition, identification by joining the dots from traded data.
It's not necessarily nefarious per se - just the dynamic - and once the data is out there....