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AI and Mass Spying

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Re: AI and Mass Spying

#321

Post by erikerikson »

StanislavPetrov wrote: post #320
erikerikson wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We agree that defining such terms involves trade-offs yet the perfect should not be the enemy of the better.

Certainly the perfect should not be the enemy of the good. But the bad should be the enemy of the good. The very core of freedom is the ability to have your own thoughts, your own value system and your own autonomy. In a free society, laws exists so that individuals are able to enjoy their own thoughts, values and autonomy while being constrained from harming others. Obviously, there is a balance to strike (which is…

We agree that the bad and good are enemies, or so at least the bad would like you to think. The good might be convinced the bad has good points that need refining, growth, and improvement. I'm fine with those disagreeing.

I think what you're saying is that it's hard to meditate between everyone which is true. Perhaps you are also saying that the implication of a standard of correctness is inherently totalitarian. It's seems to me you weakened that by admitting there are things that should be universally barred in free societies. Violence was your reference but murder might be even easier. Easier yet that breast cancer is bad? We make allowances for boxing and war but broad agreement can be found in society and across societies by careful anthropologists.

However, it seems you project over me (or perhaps the AI) a "Highlander hypothesis" that there can be only one correctness or even any notion of correct within the system. Such a system can operate simply on what appears to be with strings of evidence for such description. As you note, beyond a small set of mostly-agreed-to matters we are more diverse and there are spectrums spanning scoped policies (say by public and private institutions) all the way to individual relationship agreements custom fit to two. It is, in fact, the nature of a free society to allow us such diversity and self selection of the rules we apply to ourselves (or not). An ever present AI could meditate compatibilities, translate paradigms to reduce misunderstanding or adverse outcomes (as expected by the system over the involved parties), and generally scale the social knowing and selection of one another. It could provide a guide to navigating life and education for our self knowing and choosing of our participation more broadly. The notion there isn't to define correctness so much as to see what is and facilitate self selection of individual correctnesses as based on our life choices and expressed preferences.

To be honest in closing, this has dipped into some idealisms and I don't mean to be confused in suggesting a probability of such outcomes.

Re: AI and Mass Spying

#322

Post by t0bia_s »

landemva wrote: post #95
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…

In a democracy we would have a chance to vote on individual issues such as data privacy, or war against whomever. USA is a federal republic.

Most people don't bother about it. Consumerism makes people more conform and less conflicting.

Re: AI and Mass Spying

#323

Post by darepublic »

klik99 wrote: post #72

I don't know why this isn't being discussed more. The reality of the surveillance state is that the sheer amount of data couldn't realistically be monitored - AI very directly solves this problem by summarizing complex data. This, IMO, is the real danger of AI, at least in the short term - not a planet of paperclips, not a moral misalignment, not a media landscape bereft of creativity - but rather a tool for targetin…

An AI summary could be made of your post by cutting it off after > This, IMO, is the real danger of AI (at present)

Then the following part would be condensed into emotional rhetorical metadata. It follows the rhetorical pattern , "not a, not b, not c - but d" which do in fact add some content value but more so add flavour. What it shows is that you might be a trouble maker. But also combined with other bits of data that you might be interested in the following movies and products

Re: AI and Mass Spying

#324

Post by jononor »

sigilis wrote: post #295
JohnFen wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think if you bring up a dystopian nightmare, it assumes someone in power acting in bad faith. I don't agree with this. I think it's entirely possible for a dystopian nightmare to happen without anyone acting in bad faith at all. "The road to hell is paved with good intentions" is a common phrase for a reason.

It may be a common phrase, but I’ve never seen such a road myself. Mostly bad outcomes are preceded by bad intentions, or lazy ones, or selfish ones. I’d be interested in a couple of examples, if anyone has good ones, but I’m pretty sure that if we put stuff like 737MAX MCAS, the Texas power grid fiasco, etc the count of badly paved roads would be greater.

The people that support the War on drugs would say it's with good intentions. But it has put a lot of people in jail where it neither benefits them nor people around them, nor society at large. In many cases leading to worse outcomes for affected communities.

War on terror is not without adverse side effects either.

Re: AI and Mass Spying

#325

Post by Teever »

arka2147483647 wrote: post #252
petsfed wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The solution is sousveillance.

If they watch us, we watch them.

Re: AI and Mass Spying

#326

Post by sugarplant »

stillwithit wrote: post #19
kozikow wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's too far-fetched. To see where it's going look at social score in China. You say something wrong about a party, suddenly you can't board a plane, take a mortgage, enter some buildings, ... Your credit score would look at how compliant you are with policies that can get increasingly nonsensical.

Humans existed under religious nonsense, and other forms of nonsense (sure, sure legal racism and sexism up until the last 30-40 years and obviously politically contrived social norms means the “right people won” free market capitalism) What’s one more form of BS hallucination foisted upon the meat based cassettes we exist as?

this post is pretentious nonsense

Re: AI and Mass Spying

#327

Post by sebastianconcpt »

Yesterday I've watched again "Enemy of the State" from 1998 and the movie was entertaining but the fact that the evil force is coming from just one bad actor felt so naive compared to real life that it was tragicomical.

Re: AI and Mass Spying

#328

Post by yterdy »

whythre wrote: post #178
yterdy wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The software that already exists along these lines already exhibit bias against marginalized groups. I have no trouble foreseeing a filter put on the end of the spigot that exempts certain people from the inconvenience of such surveillance. Might need a new law (it'll get passed).

Sounds like the devil is in the details. Often the AI seems to struggle with darker skin… are you suggesting we sift who can be monitored/prosecuted based on skin darkness? That sounds like a mess to try to enshrine in law. Strong (and unhealthy) biases already exist when using this tech, but I am not sure that is the lever to pull that will fix the problem.

You know that's not what I was suggesting. I'm saying that if precedence is anything to go by, companies will be perfectly happy extending the paradigm established with sentencing software to anyone who can't pay or leverage their connections. If we continue down this path, tomorrow's just today, but worse, and more. (Please try to have a more rationale understanding of today, tomorrow.)

Re: AI and Mass Spying

#329

Post by red-iron-pine »

edouard-harris wrote: post #269
petsfed wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is the correct take. As the cost to do a bad thing decreases, the amount of political will society needs to exert to do that bad thing decreases as well. In fact, if that cost gets low enough, eventually society needs to start exerting political will just to avoid doing the bad thing. And this does look to be where we're headed with at least some of the knock-on effects of AI. (Though many of the knock-on effect…

> eventually society needs to start exerting political will just to avoid doing the bad thing

we hit that point years ago. the renewal of the Patriot Act comes to mind.

all they needed to do was to let it expire. literally do nothing.

Re: AI and Mass Spying

#330

Post by red-iron-pine »

JohnFen wrote: post #290
gosub100 wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

then at some point was expanded to whites.

It always applied to whites and everyone else, of course. But back then, whites were not huge users of it.

Hippies. It was explicitly targeted at the anti-war, vaguely USSR-sympathetic left. Can't
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