NSCAI Eric Schmidt says Mass Surveillance killer tool/opportunity pg 88-99 [PDF] (2019) | Hacker News Reader

NSCAI Eric Schmidt says Mass Surveillance killer tool/opportunity pg 88-99 [PDF] (2019)

epic.org

40 pointsBlackCherry12 comments

This presentation is actually titled "Chinese Tech Landscape Overview." It's from May 2019. It contains candid evaluations of American technology companies' strengths and weaknesses along side those of Chinese companies [1].

I originally intended to jump forward to the pages 88-99 that were highlighted by the submitter. Instead, I read or skimmed every page in the document. This is the most riveting presentation I have seen in years. Mass surveillance coupled with AI is only one of many sections.

It also addresses:

- China's homegrown digital innovators

- China's dependence on imported semiconductors

- AI in transportation and medicine

- Banking and payment systems

- The future global manufacturing landscape

- The future of global development and governance

Among others.

[1] Mostly candid. I found it a bit self-congratulatory toward Google's TPU technology and Waymo.

I agree, being fascinated by the confluence of tech, economies, and global struggle.

I have no idea how COVID-19, global power struggle, effects of quantitative easing, etc. will play out but I will enjoy watching the show.

Is it a comedy or a horror? I'm having trouble interpreting.

Well, it is the world we live in. You and I have little control over the world but we can control our reaction to it.

In a crazy world, it is up to us as individuals, family groups, and friend groups to make life as good as possible given constraints we live in.

My wife and I have a strategy for investing a small amount of money as donations for the upcoming elections. Doing that and voting is all I can do, so otherwise it is kicking back and watching the show.

Sorry if my previous comment sounded cavalier in any way.

What’s the difference?

Horror with comic relief.

Neither. It’s a tragedy.

Mass Surveillance is a killer tool for societal control and not much else. 15% faster ambulances for complete loss of privacy? Is it worth it? Would this sort of system even be faster in a less dense area (like most of US vs China)? There are a lot of spurious conclusions drawn from this data. Is WeChat superior? Do I really want my whole life to run through one app? No, no I don't. In fact, I've gone on a social media diet and I feel like my well being has improved dramatically. I also like having a mix of companies to choose from for engaging in commerce.

From my perspective, AI seems to have more draconian potential than liberating potential. I get that it's a technology we should pursue, but it's got loads of ethical risks that China will pay no mind to. Will that recklessness and wanton disregard for human rights (including the right to privacy) lead to Chinese dominance in AI tech? Maybe.

Will we be at a strategic disadvantage without draconian AI tech? I'm not so sure.

Quick correction - 15% faster was overall, it was 50% faster for ambulances.

Point still stands. In the U.S. our ambulances are equipped with remotes to trigger light changes to improve speed. The roads are also much wider, with bigger shoulders that are less dense, etc. This is a very dubious claim, to be able to achieve 50% faster response times in the U.S., an ambulance would have to on average travel twice as fast, which is not necessarily even safe or desirable from present speeds traveled.

Just to add some context to the people who put this presentation together back in 2019-09-11:

https://www.nscai.gov/about/commissioners

Eric Schmidt, Chairman Schmidt Futures

Robert O. Work, Vice Chairman TeamWork

Safra Catz Oracle

Steve Chien Jet Propulsion Lab

Mignon Clyburn MLC Strategies

Chris Darby In-Q-Tel

Eric Horvitz Microsoft Research

Andy Jassy Amazon Web Services

Andrew Moore Google

William Mark SRI

Gilman Louie Alsop Louie Partners

Jason Matheny Georgetown University

Katharina McFarland Chair, National Academies of Science Board of Army Research and Development

Ken Ford Florida Institute for Human & Machine Cognition

José-Marie Griffiths Dakota State University

On p41 of the .pdf:

> Paytm may not be a direct competitor building a search engine, but all of these use cases are user journeys that never touch Google.

Emphasis in the original. I found this interesting given the target audience of this presentation and what we know from Snowden about the American intelligence community's integration with Google.

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