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Everything Is Going Deep: ‘The Age of Surveillance Capitalism’

nytimes.com

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Re: Everything Is Going Deep: ‘The Age of Surveillance Capitalism’

#41

Post by _emacsomancer_ »

baxtr wrote: post #34
mark_l_watson wrote: post #2

I manage a deep learning team but I have some reservations about the technology. IMO deep learning is best for optimizing back end systems and not good for systems that ‘touch’ people: deciding to loan money, automated sentencing of criminals, targeted marketing from personal information, etc. For me, the problems are lack of explainability and possible bias. There are many great applications for deep learning and AI…

I think you have captured the essence of it. What I wonder though: have systems before been without bias? Is the DL/ML bias worse than the one we had before?

But if the logic before (for, say, whether to loan people money) was some sort of flowchart or checklist or whatever, it may be bad, but it's inspectable, and so could be examined, evaluated, and changed. The DL/ML creates effectively uninspectable black boxes.

Re: Everything Is Going Deep: ‘The Age of Surveillance Capitalism’

#42

Post by _emacsomancer_ »

buboard wrote: post #10

if surveillance capitalism was so successful, you would expect the overall ad spending to have spiked recently , since people claim to have found the holy grail that turns ads directly into profits. But it hasn't.

And they can sell information to your insurance company etc. It doesn't have to be only about targetting you with ads. Information about you can be valuable in other ways.

Re: Everything Is Going Deep: ‘The Age of Surveillance Capitalism’

#43

Post by whatshisface »

KineticLensman wrote: post #40
nabla9 wrote: post #8

Shoshana Zuboff is one of those people that make me upset when I discover them. Why didn't I hear about them and their books books much earlier? Is it only because she is not marketing her books well enough? The Age of the Smart Machine (1988) is truly visionary and well written. edit: I'm currently reading The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. The book has well developed concepts like 'behavioral surplus and 'instrume…

I've also just started reading 'The Age of Surveillance Capitalism'. Some of my colleagues at work use the term 'digital native' to refer to (young) people who have grown up with ubiquitous computing. Next time someone says that, I should now perhaps say "oh, you mean, the wage slaves of the surveillance capitalists".

>oh, you mean, the wage slaves of the surveillance capitalists

That phrase is just a series of boo words concatenated together, as in, "wage (booooo) slave (booooo) of the surveillance (I'll give you that one) capitalists (boooo)." It is too woven in with the "capitalists (boooo)" movement to be effective as a rallying point for people that don't want to overturn all of society.

Re: Everything Is Going Deep: ‘The Age of Surveillance Capitalism’

#44

Post by phry »

chobeat wrote: post #32
nabla9 wrote: post #8

Shoshana Zuboff is one of those people that make me upset when I discover them. Why didn't I hear about them and their books books much earlier? Is it only because she is not marketing her books well enough? The Age of the Smart Machine (1988) is truly visionary and well written. edit: I'm currently reading The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. The book has well developed concepts like 'behavioral surplus and 'instrume…

This kind of books go through different channels than the ones that are followed by the engineers. Engineers pick up this stuff when it ends up in the mainstream but they don't really participate that much in the tech critique world.

somewhat unfortunate vicious cycle it seems like, engineers either don't consider the ramifications of what they build or are willing to handwave it away, until it all starts to come back around

Re: Everything Is Going Deep: ‘The Age of Surveillance Capitalism’

#45

Post by Nasrudith »

Novashi wrote: post #16
maxxxxx wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These systems will be the perfect "faceless bureaucracy". Nobody knows exactly why they are doing what they do and can't be held responsible but the people who deployed them will get the profits.

Until people figure out how to hack them for profit. An AI with permissions to spend money on the company's behalf is going to fuck up eventually (and eventually in a major way). Then it's back to human bureaucracy.

The funny thing is that has already happened with automated traders and they still keep at it. They have gotten fooled before by misparsing twitter feeds and they keep at it. They have gotten some kid-glove reversals though.

The thing is that it just needs to mess up less than humans to be worth sticking with it or have the political inertia to be 'preferable' to humans bureaucracies making the decisions even if it is sub-optimal. Zero Tolerance in schools is a godawful policy but because it lets them cover their asses even when it results in them getting sued and losing due to wrongdoing by trying to avoid frivolous lawsuits which they would win it is unfortunately sticking around.

The whole reason bureaucracies proved useful over just fiefdoms is that constraining to rules worked better than leaving everything to the discretion. Even the infamous 'flower poetry' Chinese exams were a leap forward because it meant that anyone who could prove sufficient literacy could get government jobs instead of just those connected and offered a floor. Not a great one mind you but literacy is a pretty good baseline for 'capable of handling paperwork and worth giving a decent paying indoor job'.

Re: Everything Is Going Deep: ‘The Age of Surveillance Capitalism’

#46

Post by Nasrudith »

_emacsomancer_ wrote: post #42
buboard wrote: post #10

if surveillance capitalism was so successful, you would expect the overall ad spending to have spiked recently , since people claim to have found the holy grail that turns ads directly into profits. But it hasn't.

And they can sell information to your insurance company etc. It doesn't have to be only about targetting you with ads. Information about you can be valuable in other ways.

And it doesn't even have to be useful to the companies although it certainly helps. They just need to /think/ it is useful to sell it. Theranos raked in lots of money before it was revealed to be a lie.

Capitalism and values are fundamentally a means of resource allocation - if everyone is wrong about what really matters that means it is valued even if its true utility is nill or negative.

Re: Everything Is Going Deep: ‘The Age of Surveillance Capitalism’

#47

Post by phry »

user764743 wrote: post #20

The term 'surveillance capitalism' has become rather misleading, especially since Snowden pretty much showed the whole thing wasn't either all about terrorism or capitalism but control. It is forgetting about the relationship between big tech and the state, which today sometimes mean the same thing.

capitalism IS control, at the most basic level control of private property ensured by the state

Re: Everything Is Going Deep: ‘The Age of Surveillance Capitalism’

#48

Post by ilovecaching »

I wonder if it’s time for software engineers to form our own union or guild to combat misusing our profession in corrupt and immoral ways. We would have immense power as a group, but on our own we’re all beholden to our employers which makes us complicit in doing work without thought to the long term societal damage we do.

Re: Everything Is Going Deep: ‘The Age of Surveillance Capitalism’

#49

Post by ACow_Adonis »

iamnafets wrote: post #37
baxtr wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you have captured the essence of it. What I wonder though: have systems before been without bias? Is the DL/ML bias worse than the one we had before?

For ML systems, it's an engineering mistake to deploy a complex model when you don't have a simpler baseline (e.g. does this outperform a basic n-gram model?). Similarly, it's a strategic mistake to deploy a deep learning model without assessing the baseline of human performance (including bias). I see the problem of inexplicability as less salient than (1) responsible, informed deployments of models, and (2) ongoing…

The important phrase there is engineering mistake.

Intelligibility and ongoing responsible measurement creates a performance metric, and a line of responsibility.

To many, especially if they receive large pay but are incompetent and/or face legal risks if found liable, these are significant benefits.

/depressing, I know...

Re: Everything Is Going Deep: ‘The Age of Surveillance Capitalism’

#50

Post by 60654 »

kingkawn wrote: post #6
60654 wrote: post #5

> "That’s why the adjective that so many people are affixing to all of these new capabilities to convey their awesome power is “deep.”" One of the best pieces of academic marketing was calling this set of techniques "deep" learning. The word is so rich with connotations, it immediately brings to mind all the synonyms: profound, complex, arcane, etc. It makes people ascribe far more complexity to the system than it ac…

People will nearly always opt for the language that conveys the most meaning, even if doing so outstrips the underlying phenomena being named, since the point of language is to convey meaning

That doesn't mean the meaning has to be precise or truthful. Poetry, metaphors, marketing, implication, white lies - they all rely on meaning being multifaceted, and bringing things to mind without actually saying them explicitly.
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