41–50 of 349 posts
Seems inevitable enough that we may have to accept it and try to work within the context of (what we'd tend to think of today as) mass-spying. I mean, even if we pass laws to offer more protections, as computation gets cheaper, it ought to become easier-and-easier for anyone to start a mass-spying operation -- even by just buying a bunch of cheap sensors and doing all of the work on their personal-computer. A decent…
Many of our criminal laws are written with the implicit assumption that it takes resources to investigate and prosecute a crime, and that this will limit the effective scope of the law. Prosecutorial discretion.
Putting aside for the moment the (very serious) injustice that comes with the inequitable use of prosecutorial discretion, let's imagine a world without this discretion. Perhaps it's contrived, but one could imagine AI making it at least possible. Even by the book as it's currently written, is it a better world?
Suddenly, an AI monitoring public activity can trigger an AI investigator to draft a warrant to be signed by an AI judge to approve the warrant and draft an opinion. One could argue that due process is had, and a record is available to the public showing that there was in fact probable cause for further investigation or even arrest.
Maybe a ticket just pops out of the wall like in Demolition Man, but listing in writing clearly articulated probable cause and well-presented evidence.
Investigating and prosecuting silly examples suddenly becomes possible. A CCTV camera catches someone finding a $20 bill on the street, and finds that they didn't report it on their tax return. The myriad of ways one can violate the CFAA. A passing mention of music piracy on a subway train can become an investigation and prosecution. Dilated pupils and a staggering gait could support a drug investigation. Heck, jaywalking tickets given out as though by speed camera. Who cares if the juice wasn't worth the squeeze when it's a cheap AI doing the squeezing.
Is this a better world, or have we just all subjected ourselves to a life hyper-analyzed by a motivated prosecutor.
Turning back in the general direction of reality, I'm aware that arguing "if we enforced all of our laws, it would be chaos" is more an indictment of our criminal justice system than it is of AI. I think that AI gives us a lens to imagine a world where we actually do that, however. And maybe thinking about it will help us build a better system.
Never in the history of humanity has such powerful privacy tech existed for anyone who wants to use it. Using common off the shelf, open source, heavily audited tools, it's trivial today, even for a non-technical 10 year old, to create a new identity and collaborate with anyone anywhere in the world. They can do research, get paid, make payments, and contribute to private communities in such a way that no existing su…
> Never in the history of humanity has such powerful privacy tech existed for anyone who wants to use it. True. > it's trivial today, even for a non-technical 10 year old Not even close. It's difficult even for a technical 30 year old. You're talking about acquiring cash that has passed through several people's hands without touching an ATM that recorded its serial numbers. Using it to acquire Bitcoin from a stranger…
The new Google, Meta, Microsoft, etc. bots won't just crawl the web or social networks--they will crawl specific topics and people. Lots of cultures have the concept of a "guardian angel" or "ancestral spirits" that watch over the lives of their descendants. In the not-so-distant technofedualist future you'll have a "personal assistant bot" provided by a large corporation that will "help" you by answering questions,…
I guarantee that I won't. That, at least, is a nightmare that I can choose to avoid. I don't think I can avoid the other dystopian things AI is promising to bring, but I can at least avoid that one.
Seems inevitable enough that we may have to accept it and try to work within the context of (what we'd tend to think of today as) mass-spying. I mean, even if we pass laws to offer more protections, as computation gets cheaper, it ought to become easier-and-easier for anyone to start a mass-spying operation -- even by just buying a bunch of cheap sensors and doing all of the work on their personal-computer. A decent…
The cynical response: you won't be able to do that, because buying that equipment will set off red flags. Only existing users -- corporations and governments -- will be allowed to play.
This happened during the last big technological advancement -- search. Suddenly it became possible for a government to theoretically sift through all of our communications and people online made constant reference to it talking directly to their "FBI agent." But it was and still is a nothingburger and this will be the same because it doesn't enable anything except "better search." We've had comparable abilities for a…
Search has become a mass surveillance tool for the government. That is the article's point. If you think it's a nothingburger, you aren't aware of how often a person's Google searches are used to establish criminal intent in criminal trials. Also, they can be used to bolster probable cause for search warrants and arrests. Also, check out geofence warrants. Essentially, the government can ask google for the IP's of pe…
These aren't mass surveillance. The threat of search is government systems passively sifting through all information in existence looking for "criminal activity" and then throwing the book at you.
In both of these cases the government is asking Google to run a SQL query against their database that wouldn't be aided by an LLM or even the current crop of search engines.
The new Google, Meta, Microsoft, etc. bots won't just crawl the web or social networks--they will crawl specific topics and people. Lots of cultures have the concept of a "guardian angel" or "ancestral spirits" that watch over the lives of their descendants. In the not-so-distant technofedualist future you'll have a "personal assistant bot" provided by a large corporation that will "help" you by answering questions,…
Never in the history of humanity has such powerful privacy tech existed for anyone who wants to use it. Using common off the shelf, open source, heavily audited tools, it's trivial today, even for a non-technical 10 year old, to create a new identity and collaborate with anyone anywhere in the world. They can do research, get paid, make payments, and contribute to private communities in such a way that no existing su…
The new Google, Meta, Microsoft, etc. bots won't just crawl the web or social networks--they will crawl specific topics and people. Lots of cultures have the concept of a "guardian angel" or "ancestral spirits" that watch over the lives of their descendants. In the not-so-distant technofedualist future you'll have a "personal assistant bot" provided by a large corporation that will "help" you by answering questions,…
I wish people would stop believing that "smart" things are always better.
But, we're basically being trained for the future you mentioned. Folks are getting more comfortable talking to their handheld devices, relying on mapping apps for navigation (I'm guilty), and writing AI query prompts.
The new Google, Meta, Microsoft, etc. bots won't just crawl the web or social networks--they will crawl specific topics and people. Lots of cultures have the concept of a "guardian angel" or "ancestral spirits" that watch over the lives of their descendants. In the not-so-distant technofedualist future you'll have a "personal assistant bot" provided by a large corporation that will "help" you by answering questions,…
> In the not-so-distant technofedualist future you'll have [...] I guarantee that I won't. That, at least, is a nightmare that I can choose to avoid. I don't think I can avoid the other dystopian things AI is promising to bring, but I can at least avoid that one.
Like happened with mobile phones.