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IBM promised to back off facial recognition, then signed a $70M contract for it

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Re: IBM promised to back off facial recognition, then signed a $70M contract for it

#33
post #4

Who the hell is signing a large contract with IBM and expecting them to deliver working tech? > IBM signed a $69.8 million (£54.7 million) contract with the British government Ah, just good old fashioned grift. Nothing to be concerned about. The money is being spent on executive bonuses and government official kickbacks, not developing facial recognition.

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Re: IBM promised to back off facial recognition, then signed a $70M contract for it

#34
post #3

I think it s impossible to hold off the oncoming onslaught of Big State powered by AI , but i think we are doing a very bad job of telling the public to prepare for it, starting with AI powered online manipulation

Just tell folks on the right that ai is going to take their rights, freedoms and guns and let them run with it. I am not joking, the only way to "wake" people up is to leverage those that, oddly enough, have predicted many of the upcoming changes. The issues with their conspiracy theories are with the how, whom, and why. There's no cabal of folks injecting people with microcips to control them and covid wasn't it. It…

The only problem with that plan is that it's going to warp in ways that make us facepalm, especially because they like to have a named antagonist. Impossible to predict how it would go, but one thought might be that it will turn into "Bill Gates is investing in facial recognition so he can put us all in prison camps" or something.

Unfortunately the damage from that will be severe and will probably make everyone on the left double down about how AI is "safe" and all that. Remember Alex Jones et al conspiracy theories about powerful people being involved in a pedophile ring? For years it was widely mocked and dismissed (including by me) and then Epstein came to light. The prediction was far from perfect, but was right in overall gist, but the suicide was largely the end of the reporting. A lawsuit here and there but very little news coverage and a lot of weird stuff was happening around that, to the point that even "regular" people think it was a conspiracy and Epstein didn't kill himself. But it went nowhere.

Re: IBM promised to back off facial recognition, then signed a $70M contract for it

#35
post #3

I think it s impossible to hold off the oncoming onslaught of Big State powered by AI , but i think we are doing a very bad job of telling the public to prepare for it, starting with AI powered online manipulation

The general public won’t care until it impacts them personally. Time to buy that country estate surrounded by trees so the surveillance state can’t see the finer details of your eyes with their AI cameras

And never leave. No going to the store. No driving. No friends coming by. No servants. Every supply run is a clandestine operation.

Individualist solutions don't work here. Only regulatory solutions can address the source of the problem and those require solidarity and collective action.

Re: IBM promised to back off facial recognition, then signed a $70M contract for it

#36
post #4

Who the hell is signing a large contract with IBM and expecting them to deliver working tech? > IBM signed a $69.8 million (£54.7 million) contract with the British government Ah, just good old fashioned grift. Nothing to be concerned about. The money is being spent on executive bonuses and government official kickbacks, not developing facial recognition.

> Who the hell is signing a large contract with IBM and expecting them to deliver working tech? Considering they have tens of billions in revenue every year, a lot of people. But what's IBM's niche? I remember they promoted watson a few years back and nothing seems to have come out of that. IBM is such an iconic name in tech but I don't remember them doing anything noteworthy for a long time. At this point IBM is jus…

Afaik a ton of companies use Watson.

IBM doesn’t market services… they market solutions. You contract with them and they figure out how they build something for you. And it may include Watson.

Re: IBM promised to back off facial recognition, then signed a $70M contract for it

#39
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who the hell is signing a large contract with IBM and expecting them to deliver working tech? Considering they have tens of billions in revenue every year, a lot of people. But what's IBM's niche? I remember they promoted watson a few years back and nothing seems to have come out of that. IBM is such an iconic name in tech but I don't remember them doing anything noteworthy for a long time. At this point IBM is jus…

Afaik a ton of companies use Watson. IBM doesn’t market services… they market solutions. You contract with them and they figure out how they build something for you. And it may include Watson.

Yeah, though it's not really what people think of from the Bob Dylan ads. Watson started as a specific piece of technology (an attempt to turn the Jeopardy-winning system into a general AI engine) and later morphed into just a catch-all brand for everything IBM offers in AI and ML.

Re: IBM promised to back off facial recognition, then signed a $70M contract for it

#40

“IBM firmly opposes and will not condone uses of any technology, including facial recognition technology offered by other vendors…” They didn’t feel the need to “include” themselves in their definition of “any”

IBM's solutions are so ancient they are no longer considered technology.
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