Omnipresent AI cameras will ensure good behavior, says Larry Ellison
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
He's not even trying to frame it as "the weight of crime will be lifted from the people so they can prosper". It's "citizens will be on their best behavior". I've got a suspicion that he envisions a separate world for himself that does not involve such monitoring.
'Yes,' said O'Brien, 'we can turn it off. We have that privilege.'
(Nineteen Eighty Four)
An excellent book. I spent the first part of my life thinking it mainly spoke to the past (we learned our lesson, right?), and that a Brave New World style future was more likely, but now I think it’s deeper than that. Totalitarianism shows up because of a flaw in the human psyche, and we need to be fucking CAREFUL.
“It's not just us keeping them apart. It's everyone in Beszel and everyone in Ul Qoma. Every minute, every day. We're only the last ditch: it's everyone in the cities who does most of the work. It works because you don't blink. That's why unseeing and unsensing are so vital. No one can admit it doesn't work. So if you don't admit it, it does. But if you breach, even if it's not your fault, for more than the shortest time ... you can't come back from that.”
― China Miéville, The City & the CityThe state in this case believes this is "good behaviour", but this would be shocking to most HN readers. This is a good example of why you should never give one person or organisation too much power.
Who gets to define what "Good behaviour" is?
This particular example is not even difficult to deduct from some pretty basic axioms of morality, mainly that disadvantaging someone on the basis of their sex is wrong and that people should have personal freedom so long as it doesn't infringe on the rights of others.
A lot of those women who cover themselves from head to toe believe it's the right thing to do, and also believe that forcing other women to do the same is the right thing to do.
That's his point. What you believe is right and wrong is not the central basis for morality.
I think this ‘provocative’ comment has forgotten the human element in this.
They do so because they believe it is right.
This gets so overblown especially by people who benefit from this idea being spread, while the truth is that the amount of people who actually do want Sharia is very low and the amount of people who are actually "marching" to get it implemented is even lower.
If democratic self-governance relies on an informed citizenry, Penney wrote, then “surveillance-related chilling effects,” by “deterring people from exercising their rights,” including “…the freedom to read, think, and communicate privately,” are “corrosive to political discourse.”
.. “Governments, of course, know this. China.. wants people to self-censor, because it knows it can’t stop everybody. The idea is that if you don’t know where the line is, and the penalty for crossing it is severe, you will stay far away from it.. if your goal is to control a population,” Schneier says, “mass surveillance is awesome.”
.. The social challenge now, [Zuboff] says, is to insist on a new social contract.. “We have to create the political context in which privacy can be successfully defended, protected, and affirmed as a human right. Then we’d have a context in which the privacy battles can be won.”Not the politics, not what he really thinks: A reason which matches a market opportunity he thinks Oracle can seize.
Technology this powerful is the bedrock of a successful hypothetical totalitarian state, a big prerequisite. What do we do once it's within reach?
Under the second amendment to the us constitution of 1787, and through the intentionally inflammatory language of the Declaration of Independence, many believe that citizens are empowered to “throw off the yoke” of an oppressive government. But the knowledge that — in an emergency — we could break open the glass of the second amendment and regain our rights blinds us to the by-degrees ratcheting towards authoritarianism. Without the false promise of the ability to overthrow a profoundly evil government, we would be more aggressive against the immediate threats, knowing that once we got too far, there was no ultra violence route back.
(This is not a great argument, merely the best I could make on no notice).
"Every police officer is going to be supervised at all times, and if there's a problem, AI will report the problem and report it to the appropriate person."
Mercy without justice is the mother of dissolution.
- St. Thomas Acquinas
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.
- W.H. Auden
https://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/12/technology/oracles-chief-...
Or is he only worried about the behavior of people who aren't billionaires?
Say no more.
- ALL the focus is on asset allocation and ordinary people surveillance, nothing on who control AND OWN the controllers, or the "AI" mentioned;
- smartphones, mobile connectivity the key to make people pay the surveillance, obviously for the profit of the controller.
Instead of FTTH to focus on stable and high performance links to WFH focus on mobile surveillance, I'm curious why we IT workers do no agree a MASSIVE, WORLDWIDE STRIKE asking for mandatory WFH for all eligible jobs "we run the nervous system of the society, we build it, we will not be flesh-based bots of some manager in a smart-city lager", and focus on desktop computing instead of mobile, because here happen anything else.
It seems the important questions are whether such systems will define what is right or whether they will support the population in decentralized social decision making and synchronization the same way capitalism supports distributed allocation decisions.
... and certainly wont be throwing IoT remotes against the wall in anger, publicly berating employees, or storming off angrily in their F1s, etc, etc. Hypocritical jerk.
Additionally, you are using "libertarian" in an incorrect manner. A libertarian is someone who believes in minimal state intervention in personal affairs, which is at odds with a desire for total state surveillance.
as for “libertarian”: principle vs practice. think of the Christians. local businessman has the Gospels on his lips, has the checkbook wide-open for the church, but when that secretary is looking sweet and juicy…
> as for “libertarian”: principle vs practice. think of the Christians
Are you claiming that Ellison is a private libertarian, or a public one? He has a clear history of backing GOP candidates, has not claimed to be libertarian, and so I am confused by what you mean. He neither preaches nor practices libertarianism, publicly or privately.
As for the ADHD sensitivity, deal with it. People who get so stuck on their diagnoses only do it because they aren’t performing. It’s very important to milk it for maximum victimhood, so that the next time the boss/customer/client gets pissed at him for not delivering the goods, he can sue them for discrimination against his “disability”, instead of getting fired for being a flake. I don’t care what people say about ADHD because I perform, and see that sort of play as an ignoble win.
Apparently lack of empathy is now a job requirement.
It wasn't a very short stick. You had savings, family and friends to depend on. It's privileged to assume everyone has access to these three things, or that lack of access to them is their fault.