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AI and Mass Spying

schneier.com

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Re: AI and Mass Spying

#251

Post by mullingitover »

This kind of thing will probably never fly, because Americans expect that they can break the law and in most cases will not suffer any consequences. Anything that threatens this would be, in their eyes, oppression. Imagine if you immediately got a text informing you of your $300 speeding ticket within a few seconds of you going a mile per hour over. People would riot.

However, Americans expect that the law is enforced vigorously upon other people, especially people they hate. If AI enabled immediate immigration enforcement on undocumented migrants, large portions of the population would injure themselves running to the voting booth to have it added to the Constitution.

It's the whole expectation that for my group the law protects but does not bind, and for others it binds but does not protect.

Re: AI and Mass Spying

#252

Post by arka2147483647 »

petsfed wrote: post #222
somenameforme wrote: post #58

This is a political problem, not a technological one. The USSR (alongside Germany and others) managed effective at scale spying with primitive technology: paperwork for everything and every movement, informants, audio surveillance, and so on. The reason such things did not come to places like the US in the same way is not because we were incapable of such, but because there was no political interest in it. And when o…

You and I are in agreement that the surveillance needs to stop, but I think we differ on how to explain the problem. My explanation follows, but note that its not directed at you. At its peak, the KGB employed ~500,000 people directly, with untold more employed as informants. The FBI currently employs ~35,000 people. What if I told you that the FBI could reach the KGB's peak level of reach, without meaningfully incre…

> The FBI currently employs ~35,000 people. What if I told you that the FBI could reach the KGB's peak level of reach,

You are, if anything, underselling the point. AI will allow a future where every person will have their very own agent following them.

Or even worse, as there are multiple private addtech companies doing surveillance, and domestic and foreign intelligence agencies, so you might have a dozen AI agents on your personal case.

Re: AI and Mass Spying

#253

Post by repentless_ape »

mullingitover wrote: post #251

This kind of thing will probably never fly, because Americans expect that they can break the law and in most cases will not suffer any consequences. Anything that threatens this would be, in their eyes, oppression. Imagine if you immediately got a text informing you of your $300 speeding ticket within a few seconds of you going a mile per hour over. People would riot. However, Americans expect that the law is enforce…

Yeah this is all uniquely American and not prevalent in every society on earth throughout all of human history.

Re: AI and Mass Spying

#254

Post by dfxm12 »

mullingitover wrote: post #248
dfxm12 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make it a crime for a business to have the wrong opinion when it comes to who they want to serve FWIW, businesses who refuse to do business with people generally win their legal cases [0], [1], [2], and I'm not sure if they are ever criminal... 0 - https://www.npr.org/2023/06/30/1182121291/colorado-supreme-c... 1 - https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/04/us/politics/supreme-court... 2 - https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/11…

These are selection bias, businesses who "refuse to do business with people" and then suffer the legal ramifications of their discrimination usually have lawyers who wisely tell them not to fight it in court because they'll rightfully lose. In these particular cases, it took a couple decades of court-packing to install the right reactionaries to get their token wins.

It would have been easy for the parent poster to not be so incredibly vague. I suspect it's because they are discussing this point in bad faith, ready to move the goalposts when any evidence to the contrary was brought up like this.

Re: AI and Mass Spying

#255

Post by pixl97 »

tempsy wrote: post #172
trinsic2 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea this is a good point. If justice is executed by systems, rather than people (the end result from this scenario), we have lost the ability to challenge the process or the people involved in so many ways. It will make challenging how the law is executed almost impossible because there will be no person there to hold responsible.

It's not that "justice is executed by systems", it's that possible crimes will be flagged by AI systems for humans to then review. eg AI will analyze stock trades for the SEC and surface likely insider trading. Pretty sure they already use tools like Palantir to do exactly this, it's just that advanced AI will supercharge this even further.

>, it's that possible crimes will be flagged by AI systems for humans to then review.

Eh, this is problematic for a number of reasons that need addressed when adding any component that can increase the workload for said humans. This will cause people to take shortcuts that commonly lead to groups that are less able to represent and defend themselves legally taking the brunt of the prosecutions.

Re: AI and Mass Spying

#256

Post by forward1 »

somenameforme wrote: post #58

This is a political problem, not a technological one. The USSR (alongside Germany and others) managed effective at scale spying with primitive technology: paperwork for everything and every movement, informants, audio surveillance, and so on. The reason such things did not come to places like the US in the same way is not because we were incapable of such, but because there was no political interest in it. And when o…

Laws limiting collection of data to solve privacy is akin to halting the production of fossil fuels to solve climate change: naive and ignorant of basic economic forces.

Re: AI and Mass Spying

#257

Post by beej71 »

indigo0086 wrote: post #144

"Bitcoin will enable terrorism" "Ghost guns will enable criminals to commit murder" "Social media will enable hate speech" AI will be a useful and world changing innovation which is why FUD rag articles like this will become more prevalent until it's total adoption, even by the article writer themselves

None of your three examples are of the government using technology against its citizens.

Re: AI and Mass Spying

#258

Post by forward1 »

TheLoafOfBread wrote: post #212
forward1 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the same fallacious trope as "click on irrelevant ads to confuse marketers". People are not good at deceiving algorithms at scale.

That actually works. Sure one click is not enough, but purposefully browsing women's products on Amazon for few hours confused something and since then I am getting ads for women's products only.

What problem have you actually solved by doing that, because you're still receiving ads and being manipulated through your continued use of those platforms.

Re: AI and Mass Spying

#259

Post by pixl97 »

whelp_24 wrote: post #209
kenjackson wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many of our criminal laws are written with the implicit assumption that it takes resources to investigate and prosecute a crime, I think this depends on the law. For jaywalking, sure. For murder and robbery probably less so. And law enforcement resources seem scarce on all of them.

Murder and robbery too. Those crimes are just worth investigating.

The problem here is this is not a bureaucratic view of how law enforcement actually works in the field.

https://www.kxan.com/news/national-news/traffic-tickets-can-...

>We counted the number of days judges waited before suspending a driver’s license. Then, we looked at whether the city was experiencing a revenue shortfall. We found that judges suspend licenses faster when their cities need more money. The effect was pretty large: A 1% decrease in revenue caused licenses to be suspended three days faster.

So what typically happens is these AI systems are sold at catching murderers, but at the end of the day they are revenue generation systems for tickets. And then those systems get stuck in places where a smaller percent of the population can afford lawyers to prevent said ticketing systems from becoming cost centers.

Re: AI and Mass Spying

#260

Post by pixl97 »

newscracker wrote: post #124
namaria wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If it hurts people I hate I accept" - Every endorsement of authoritarian rule ever

Reminds me of this quote attributed to a past Peruvian president and general, Benavides: “For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law.”

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