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AI is fundamentally ‘a surveillance technology’

techcrunch.com

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Re: AI is fundamentally ‘a surveillance technology’

#191

Post by insanitybit »

reducesuffering wrote: post #190
insanitybit wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is nothing in your comment that has You mean like me directly quoting parts of the article from both the beginning and end? Like me pointing out how the article talks about surveillance and then attempts to clumsily tie it to AI? Fuck off lol

Truly, I have never seen someone quote the HN guidelines at someone else and then immediately proceed to so blatantly disregard them. > How about when you comment you follow HN guidelines? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I'm quite the scamp.

Re: AI is fundamentally ‘a surveillance technology’

#192

Post by olalonde »

pixl97 wrote: post #180
olalonde wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it not? Cambridge dictionary: the careful watching of a person or place, especially by the police or army, because of a crime that has happened or is expected.

Because this is the description of the act "the careful watching of a person or place" This is a non-inclusive list of reasons why and whom may perform the act "especially by the police or army", "for the purposes of catching criminals" There are many acts that are defined by 'who' does it. The act of surveillance is not one of them. For example a private investigator can surveil you. A business can do the same by in…

Historically, surveillance has always been used in the context of detective work, police, spying, security, crime prevention, supervision, etc. No one thought of data collection for the purpose of improving services and serving ads as "surveillance" until a few years ago when critics of Google started abusing that term.

Re: AI is fundamentally ‘a surveillance technology’

#193

Post by cratermoon »

jdthedisciple wrote: post #5

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.

> Does anybody know of a facial recognition AI that actually classifies faces as (non)-liars as she claims?

https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/03/13/905323/ai-lie-de...

Re: AI is fundamentally ‘a surveillance technology’

#194

Post by lmpdev »

fsflover wrote: post #164
lmpdev wrote: post #134

This thread is caught up in semantics, which is regrettable The thesis of the article should have been articulated "AI is disproportionately used as a surveillance technology owning to its computational requirements, the current state of industrial-user relations and the inability for legal systems to respond fast enough to protect individuals" Edit 1: I don't know how to make that more consise without losing the mea…

> We really need the equivalent to unions but for representating the rights of users. You mean like https://eff.org ?

I don't see how eff has any leverage on large tech companies?

Re: AI is fundamentally ‘a surveillance technology’

#195

Post by exodust »

npteljes wrote: post #133
exodust wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a gun, which is very specifically an instrument to kill Is it though? Maybe a gun is the most efficient way to send a destructive projectile to a nearby target. Any "killing living things" part is secondary to the primary function. > which can be used for building, cooking, and also to torture someone. Okay but that may imply AI is a building technology, & cooking technology... and surveillance technology. That's h…

Yes, in retrospect, guns are instruments created to destruct or hurt, rather than kill. Still, the original point stands: guns are created and used for specific problems, and other tools, in which I include AI, are much more general in usage, even with potential to abuse.

I agree with your point about AI being a more general tool. I can also appreciate the point in article, that tech services are pushing AI, rushing to normalize it. Some are concerned how our data is used to facilitate new AI features, given the track record of tech companies to put profit ahead of privacy, or ecosystem lock-in ahead of open flexibility.

Re: AI is fundamentally ‘a surveillance technology’

#196

Post by bavsinksc »

insanitybit wrote: post #123

I can run models locally on my laptop, so no, it isn't. I can even train it locally on my own data if I want to. Hyperbole really serves no purpose when it's so extreme. Instead of talking about the merits of "how can this technology be abused?" you're putting everyone else on the defensive, having to say "I'm not abusing it". Like, > AI is a way, I think, to entrench and expand the surveillance business model,” she…

You've missed the point. AI is a surveillance technology because training it to a point of realistic usefulness requires enough data that you can't produce it yourself, without mass surveillance. Surveillance is the prerequisite, not the intended use.

That's... not actually stated outright in the article, so I get the confusion. But it seems to me like it's the only logical explanation for what is stated.

Re: AI is fundamentally ‘a surveillance technology’

#197

Post by rldjbpin »

with discussions such as this, and for other common AI fearmongering (e.g. work and education), the conclusion i always find is that machine learning is only making things "easier" or more accessible for thrid parties to do.

in mad men days, advertizers would come up with own their rationale on what to show you in the screen from market surveys; person of interest may get followed throughout the day during investigation; what have you. the motivations of people haven't changed; the technology only made some things more feasible or easier to implement.

in the end, just being cognizant of how internet companies farm our data in general should empower anyone enough to find their own middle ground. or you can wait for the technology to become mature enough for on-device solutions for your homework problem (similar to how Firefox is handling translation - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37658915)

Re: AI is fundamentally ‘a surveillance technology’

#198

Post by johnnyworker »

newswasboring wrote: post #103
HourglassFR wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you met humans?

Have you? Humans can use anything as a form of oppression, they don't even need tools, they were oppressing the masses with "traditions" for millennia. I am not saying AI tools don't supercharge these things, but the solution to this problem is not crippling technology, it's to improve society. The printing press was used to both distribute hate speech and progressive manifestoes.

Who proposed "crippling" AI tools? Or "blaming" them?

We're still at the step of raising awareness, and that is achieved by making it clear that the situation and the trends are really fucking bad, no ifs and buts and maybes about it.

This tech as a body pillow stuff is really grating to me. Tech doesn't care about you, tech doesn't know you, tech doesn't need you -- other people (and arguably animals) do, right now.

Re: AI is fundamentally ‘a surveillance technology’

#199

Post by johnnyworker »

pradn wrote: post #106
johnnyworker wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the thing it does make more efficient, which was predictable. And accuracy doesn't matter. If it's 99% and the powerful are whitelisted for human review, that's enough. That's enough to pull a mesh so fine over every human being on the planet, forever, that reaches deeply into them before they can even begin to form a personality. The jump from individuals listening to individual phone calls as they were happeni…

Imagine an adversary country surveilling all the youth of another, or even just at elite schools, and being able to use that as blackmail as they age into the leadership class. Or maybe we just won’t care any more. We’ve recently had a US president accused of all sorts of unsavory things, but who still retains a massive following, even among Evangelicals. What possible revelation could bring him down?

I think it really depends on the person. If you're Assange, it doesn't matter if you did it. It's easier if you did it, but it doesn't have priority. For your in-group (be that cult followers or large power structures), you can get away with pretty much anything.

Which I think makes it even harder to get people to understand how shit this timeline is, because everybody is dreaming about what it could do for them, not to them. And the people who have reason to believe to never be at the wrong end of these sticks, have no idea how it deforms them, either.

Humanity has proven its skill at dehumanizing humans in all sorts of ways, with all sorts of rhetorical and technological means, so yeah, sure, "AI" (which in practicality means "surveil everyone and get them to like/do what you want them to like and do", the rest are gimmicks and chaff) is "nothing new", but it's still like humans going from "always having had weapons" to "fucking nukes".

Re: AI is fundamentally ‘a surveillance technology’

#200

Post by newswasboring »

johnnyworker wrote: post #198
newswasboring wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you? Humans can use anything as a form of oppression, they don't even need tools, they were oppressing the masses with "traditions" for millennia. I am not saying AI tools don't supercharge these things, but the solution to this problem is not crippling technology, it's to improve society. The printing press was used to both distribute hate speech and progressive manifestoes.

Who proposed "crippling" AI tools? Or "blaming" them? We're still at the step of raising awareness, and that is achieved by making it clear that the situation and the trends are really fucking bad , no ifs and buts and maybes about it. This tech as a body pillow stuff is really grating to me. Tech doesn't care about you, tech doesn't know you, tech doesn't need you -- other people (and arguably animals) do, right now…

Seems like we are getting to different conclusion from the same premise. Both agree AI tech isn't the problem, the system we live in it is. So I don't understand why should AI take up so much space in public discourse while we should be talking about how to fix the larger societal issues.
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