7 ms·

Hey MrTonyD. I understand where your coming from. But honestly most people are using this for monitoring things like Solar Panels, Wind Turbines, detecting seal

Hey MrTonyD. I understand where your coming from. But honestly most people are using this for monitoring things like Solar Panels, Wind Turbines, detecting seals and crop prediction. We can't have a sustainable future without a lot of these technologies in place. https://nanonets.com/drone/wind-turbines/ https://nanonets.com/drone/wind-turbines/ https://nanonets.com/drone/solar-panels/ https://nanonets.com/drone/solar-panels/ All new technology will have some deviant use case associated with it. The internet is one of the worst enablers of child pornography, human trafficking and everything disgusting with the world. However it just means you try and control the use of technology not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

MrTonyD 8y ago
Well, I'm 60 now and I've worked in Silicon Valley for over 40 years. So I guess I hear about all the other uses of such technology. I've worked with NSA, CIA, DIA, all the branches of military, and a bunch of people who don't officially exist. So, while there are definitely things I can't say, I will say that the "dust sensors" have been in use for many years, and I'm not describing anything theoretical. We need to think about these things in order to address them. Simply saying that there also exist good uses isn't enough.
- sarthakjain 8y ago
  Given your expertise over the many years how would you recommend we control the use of such technology? Maybe my question is based on the assumption that you agree: stopping development of the technology in the first place is not the solution. Hopefully this assumption is correct.
  - MrTonyD 8y ago
    There is no way it can be stopped. Most of the development is secret and much further along than people believe. I think we need to regain community control over those who possess this technology - it will be deployed whether we like it or not. And, even more frightening, whoever deploys it first wins, and it will be so effective that it can no longer be defeated. This issue is more serious than global warming, jobs, healthcare, or World War 3 - it is about having any freedoms beyond those provided by whoever deploys these monitoring devices.
    - marvin 8y ago
      Infantry weapons powered by the kind of computer vision and facial recognition AI easily demonstrable today would be incredibly frightening, no matter how they were used. Of course there's no way of stopping this in an adversarial world. Surely it would only be a matter of choosing to increase the efforts for a year or so in order to take these weapons from proof-of-concept to highly effective. E.g. autonomous flying gun platforms that can be deployed en masse and let loose with small or no human oversight (e.g. "hold the button to kill the person the machine has identified as a valid target", if even that level of control), or the kind of flying, target-seeking grenades envisioned in the linked video. With any level of autonomy, loitering and communication with command. It's only ethics and public perception that stops this today. In total war, a 20% mis-classification rate doesn't matter. Bombing doctrine in WW2 was much, much worse than this in its effect on civilians. Hell, many military leaders emphasized killing civilians as a desirable objective. Even present-day attacks consider "collateral damage" acceptable, even if politicians sometimes pretend otherwise. Defending against weapons like that would be an arms race in itself, and completely beyond the reach of weaker actors. At least on a tactical level. Maybe there's strategies that could be employed as a low-cost defense, such as staying out of sensor range or confusing the sensors with adversarial patterns, but it would crush the resistance of anyone that tried a conventional defense. Does the post-WW2 doctrine of emphasizing trade and the un-profitability of war, or ensuring that it is more economical for everyone to support a stable, free democratic economic system, still have any hope of preventing such weapons from being used?
      - MrTonyD 8y ago
        I agree with you. But I think there is a bigger "weapon". When dust size monitoring is pervasive, how can anyone acquire weapons or coordinate any resistance? Dust is everywhere. And teams of nano-weapons can kill people (this has been reported as research for well over a decade, so anyone could reasonably assume that unreported research has gotten a lot further.) You don't need armies when nobody can effectively fight you or even acquire or build any weapon of any sort. So I don't worry as much about WW3 - since WW3 can be prevented with the pervasive monitoring technology on the near horizon. (There may be a WW3, but we have bigger problems coming up.)
- jotm 8y ago
  Yeah, they worked amazingly well at stopping some terrorists. Let's see them stop me from procuring a weapon. FFS, even my ISP is more of a problem than dust sensors.
  - MrTonyD 8y ago
    In case it wasn't clear, we don't have pervasive monitoring deployed yet (not for lack of steps in that direction), so catching terrorists is still hard. But I guess you've already determined the limitations of future systems, so I don't even need to say that.

MrTonyD 8y ago

Well, I'm 60 now and I've worked in Silicon Valley for over 40 years. So I guess I hear about all the other uses of such technology. I've worked with NSA, CIA, DIA, all the branches of military, and a bunch of people who don't officially exist. So, while there are definitely things I can't say, I will say that the "dust sensors" have been in use for many years, and I'm not describing anything theoretical. We need to think about these things in order to address them. Simply saying that there also exist good uses isn't enough.

sarthakjain 8y ago
Given your expertise over the many years how would you recommend we control the use of such technology? Maybe my question is based on the assumption that you agree: stopping development of the technology in the first place is not the solution. Hopefully this assumption is correct.
- MrTonyD 8y ago
  There is no way it can be stopped. Most of the development is secret and much further along than people believe. I think we need to regain community control over those who possess this technology - it will be deployed whether we like it or not. And, even more frightening, whoever deploys it first wins, and it will be so effective that it can no longer be defeated. This issue is more serious than global warming, jobs, healthcare, or World War 3 - it is about having any freedoms beyond those provided by whoever deploys these monitoring devices.
  - marvin 8y ago
    Infantry weapons powered by the kind of computer vision and facial recognition AI easily demonstrable today would be incredibly frightening, no matter how they were used. Of course there's no way of stopping this in an adversarial world. Surely it would only be a matter of choosing to increase the efforts for a year or so in order to take these weapons from proof-of-concept to highly effective. E.g. autonomous flying gun platforms that can be deployed en masse and let loose with small or no human oversight (e.g. "hold the button to kill the person the machine has identified as a valid target", if even that level of control), or the kind of flying, target-seeking grenades envisioned in the linked video. With any level of autonomy, loitering and communication with command. It's only ethics and public perception that stops this today. In total war, a 20% mis-classification rate doesn't matter. Bombing doctrine in WW2 was much, much worse than this in its effect on civilians. Hell, many military leaders emphasized killing civilians as a desirable objective. Even present-day attacks consider "collateral damage" acceptable, even if politicians sometimes pretend otherwise. Defending against weapons like that would be an arms race in itself, and completely beyond the reach of weaker actors. At least on a tactical level. Maybe there's strategies that could be employed as a low-cost defense, such as staying out of sensor range or confusing the sensors with adversarial patterns, but it would crush the resistance of anyone that tried a conventional defense. Does the post-WW2 doctrine of emphasizing trade and the un-profitability of war, or ensuring that it is more economical for everyone to support a stable, free democratic economic system, still have any hope of preventing such weapons from being used?
    - MrTonyD 8y ago
      I agree with you. But I think there is a bigger "weapon". When dust size monitoring is pervasive, how can anyone acquire weapons or coordinate any resistance? Dust is everywhere. And teams of nano-weapons can kill people (this has been reported as research for well over a decade, so anyone could reasonably assume that unreported research has gotten a lot further.) You don't need armies when nobody can effectively fight you or even acquire or build any weapon of any sort. So I don't worry as much about WW3 - since WW3 can be prevented with the pervasive monitoring technology on the near horizon. (There may be a WW3, but we have bigger problems coming up.)
jotm 8y ago
Yeah, they worked amazingly well at stopping some terrorists. Let's see them stop me from procuring a weapon. FFS, even my ISP is more of a problem than dust sensors.
- MrTonyD 8y ago
  In case it wasn't clear, we don't have pervasive monitoring deployed yet (not for lack of steps in that direction), so catching terrorists is still hard. But I guess you've already determined the limitations of future systems, so I don't even need to say that.