101–110 of 283 posts
What really gets to me is how big tech isn't even pretending anymore to serve society. They clearly feel superior to the rest of us and entitled to rule.
Power corrupts. It’s one of the most predictable effects throughout human history. It’s interesting because it doesn’t seem like it needs to be intrinsic to power, and yet every time someone gains it they eventually become corrupt.
I think the really dangerous part here is not just “surveillance bad”. It is that AI removes the labour cost that used to limit surveillance. CCTV was already a problem, but someone still had to watch it, search it, interpret it, escalate it. AI changes that. It makes surveillance searchable, scalable and administratively useful. The shift is from “you may be observed” to “your behaviour can be continuously machine-i…
Another unpredictable outcome of social media I guess.
Something about stalking people online and digital exhibitionism, pushed the Overton window of surveillance.
To people like me, who do not have such loud and transparent online presence, this is unsettling. I only now crash head first into modern mentality as it is starting to affect me.
I wonder how long will I be able to evade the databases. Up until now it has been not that hard as long as you have a lot of money, live analog life, pay in crypto/cash and avoid big cities.
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If you frame it this way in your mind you will be surprised when people pick surveillance over public disorder. If you don't like that world (I don't either) you can't bury your head in the sand about the problems it is solving, you need a "No, but... " framing where you give answers that actually work. There is a ground-level appeal of the China-style panopticon because it delivers public order and clean streets. La…
> There is a ground-level appeal of the China-style panopticon because it delivers public order and clean streets. Does it? Japan is also famously clean, so maybe it’s the ethnic homogeneity? On the other hand, Singapore is very heterogeneous and clean, and eastern Kentucky is very homogenous and run-down. So maybe this whole attributing outcomes of society to singular factors isn’t very founded in science or reason…
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There's definitely people who blindly praise and romanticize China and ignore how dystopian all the monitoring systems there are, there is essentially no privacy. Even chat apps are infiltrated or Chinese run in some way, shape, or form.
usually people romanticize china when they're comparing it to the united states. are chat apps in the US not infiltrated or run by america?
I think the really dangerous part here is not just “surveillance bad”. It is that AI removes the labour cost that used to limit surveillance. CCTV was already a problem, but someone still had to watch it, search it, interpret it, escalate it. AI changes that. It makes surveillance searchable, scalable and administratively useful. The shift is from “you may be observed” to “your behaviour can be continuously machine-i…
We have had that kind of system, now, for just about everything. Not just from the Big Brother direction, but also the Little Brother direction. At any time, a mob of people might decide to pull up your old digital footprint and condemn you for it.
Likewise, even before AI, at any time the IRS could decide to audit your past tax filings, or data breaches could expose your personal secrets, or street camera can nab you for a traffic violation, or someone could decide to pull up surveillance footage and get you for something, and so on.
The exact degree of difference between the two systems is significant, but much of the marginal psychological burden of such things has already been paid by everyone living in industrial civilization. And, as with the panopticon, just the small chances of active monitoring already provided 80% of the sought-after result.
Indeed, that kind of condition is what people like Ted Kaczynski were so bothered by decades ago.
Those living in the epicenters of civilization, like those in the largest cities, have basically been under almost constant surveillance now for decades.
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Bryan Cantrill warns, "Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphizing Larry Ellison. You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. You don't anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn. You stick your hand in there and it'll chop it off, the end. You don't think 'oh, the lawnmower hates me' -- the lawnmower doesn't give a shit about you, the lawnmower can't hate you. Don'…
Eh. That quote conflates Ellison and Oracle and I don't think that's correct. I think there's a danger in just accepting that a human being is abhorrent. It _should_ outrage us that Ellison is the way he is. It's silly to think "the lawnmower hates me" because it isn't capable of hate. Ellison is capable of hate and it's not deluded to think he might hate you and I and want to control our lives.
Agreed, he's only 41% of Oracle.
I think the really dangerous part here is not just “surveillance bad”. It is that AI removes the labour cost that used to limit surveillance. CCTV was already a problem, but someone still had to watch it, search it, interpret it, escalate it. AI changes that. It makes surveillance searchable, scalable and administratively useful. The shift is from “you may be observed” to “your behaviour can be continuously machine-i…
I think this misunderstands their goals. They don't care how society/a company is built. All they care about is that they are the one building it and that they are at the top of the hierarchy.
Just like with the startups and tech companies they built, they see speed as a critical advantage so that they can be the first-mover and establish a moat. Long-term viability and health is a distant secondary or even tertiary concern. If the panopticon and some weirdly neofeudal technofacist society can be built faster than something more egalitarian, then that neofeudal technofacist society is - from their perspective - better and that is what they will bias towards and build.
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Haha, ground level appeal in a one party government? How would you know? Of course someone likes China's system, but who? How do you know ?
Lookup China subreddits and on YouTube. Tons of Americans wish they could just pick up and move to China. Most Americans that visit China for the first time love it. It is pretty awesome. Have you been?
An average tourist visiting a country - any country - has a much rosier experience of the country than the average person living there long-term.