4 ms·

It seems that some tech executives, having more money than any person could spend, often seek what they see as the next level of accomplishment, which is proxim

by lsy 5y ago

It seems that some tech executives, having more money than any person could spend, often seek what they see as the next level of accomplishment, which is proximity to power and decisions over life and death. That shows up as this sort of militaristic nationalism along lines that conveniently happen to align with their claimed expertise. Of course neither of the executives interviewed in this article really knows that much about "AI", so the predictions in the article are not based on any kind of evidence, so much as they are political statements designed to create and maintain the conditions for making themselves seem essential to the defense industry.

aeternum 5y ago
>so the predictions in the article are not based on any kind of evidence Like the assertions in your comment?
postpawl 5y ago
You don’t think AI is a “threat to democracy”? I think the threat isn’t just AI being used by governments to control citizens. Advertising companies want to influence behavior too, and their customers are mostly private corporations. They already have a lot of power and advertising is a $100+ Billion dollar industry for a reason.. it works. If you haven’t seen it, I’d encourage you to watch Can’t Get You Out of My Head by Adam Curtis, which talks a lot about the increasing influence corporations have on the masses (by using technology): https://youtu.be/pga0Oi1cZvo https://youtu.be/pga0Oi1cZvo
- judge2020 5y ago
  AI is as much a threat to democracy as the newspaper is - they eventually become the only means of input and politicians adapt to catering to them so that they can remain on a level playing field in terms of getting their policies and (potentially sensational) messages to people.
  - postpawl 5y ago
    The issue is that AI is going to make it even more economical to bombard your target with coherent information through an extremely effective means of influence (writing). Have you seen some of the posts recently about AIs getting better at writing?: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27032828 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27032828 It’s much more of a threat than a bogus newspaper. I can imagine a future where the signal is even more drowned out by noise. Think Twitter bots x1000.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - tachyonbeam 5y ago
      It's not just bots writing articles, there are already bots posting in online forums. Most people tend to align with the predominant opinion, and these commenter bots make it seem like the public opinion goes a certain way when it doesn't. Bot-written articles might still have obvious tells, but can you tell if a two-sentence comment was written by a bot? No, you probably can't. And of course, the next level of this is to tailor the articles you see, their content, and the response you get online specifically to you. Eventually, these systems will get progressively better and influencing your specific opinion. Social media giants can also affect things like which events you end up going to, the people you meet, who you end up in a relationship with, which jobs you apply to, etc. Soon it will be possible for corporations and governments to have sophisticated, subtle, relatively fine-grained influence over your life and that of your friends. You'd better hope Google and Facebook view your success and emotional well-being as good for their profits, otherwise, they could try to optimize your life for different outcomes.
      - mike_hearn 5y ago
        Detecting bots isn't that hard. You're acting like bots don't already try to advertise to people every day but of course they do, just open your spam folder to see what they're selling. Bots are everywhere trying to sell us things, and they're usually pretty obvious because subtly manipulating people through political spamming (a) probably doesn't work well [1], and (b) isn't profitable, yet spamming costs money. I worked on bot detection at Google for a while. There are lots of ways to detect them that aren't based on analysing the quality of writing. We were able to get a very long way with a tiny team playing tricks with JavaScript and that was hardly the peak of what's achievable if there were to ever be a real "bot crisis". At any rate, Brad Smith's argument in the linked news story isn't about bots writing messages to affect politics. He's concerned about the far more plausible problem of bots transcribing everything you say or do inside your own homes and then uploading it to the mothership for analysis. This is a far more plausible problem because "third parties spamming forums" puts well resourced tech firms in the defense position, but Smith's scenario puts them in the adversarial position. And it could happen today. Nothing stops Google pushing a software update that runs their voice recognition models 24/7 in the background and uploads transcripts of things people are saying to their datacenters for sentiment analysis, except maybe that a few geeks would notice battery drain, but no problem, if Google is doing it then most likely there are sympathisers to the cause at other local tech firms who will collaborate to cover it up. Previously even they would have been stopped by the cost, but advances in AI have driven the cost of speech recognition through the floor. It's entirely feasible now to consider recording, transcribing and filtering the entire world's conversations, all the time. And that's a real problem. When I hear stories from former friends and colleagues who are still at Google I feel I hardly recognize what the company has become. If they're willing to erase people en-masse from their platform and fire workers for pointing out obviously true things (like "SARS-CoV-2 might have leaked from the nearby lab doing experiments on similar viruses" or "women are on average less interested in computers than men"), who knows if or when their employees might decide that e.g. listening in on popular conservative politicians in their own homes is justified? Certainly, Pichai cannot be trusted to reign in these kinds of behaviours if the past 5 years is anything to judge by, nor is there any obvious way to stop them from doing it given the root-like access Play Services has to people's phones. [1] there are studies trying to spot correlations between political campaign spending vs voting outcomes by district and IIRC they conclude that it works up to a low level, but probably only by informing people there's a vote happening in the first place, and beyond that it hardly seems to matter. Trump beating Clinton despite a 1:2 spending ratio provides a large scale anecdotal example of this effect.
- dvfjsdhgfv 5y ago
  > You don’t think AI is a “threat to democracy”? First, we have to define what "AI" is. In the current context, it might be Machine Learning or a collection of algorithms defining what to display to a give user, for example. Both ML and algorithms are completely neutral by themselves, it is their use that makes them "dangerous". You can use it for decades, e.g. collecting data from sensors and classifying them, an nothing bad happens. But the moment a human being connects a software system to an actuator - news feed, an engine, a rocket, an x-ray machine - they explicitly take responsibility for the functioning of such a connected system. If it fails, putting the blame on "AI" is ridiculous.
pkdpic_y9k 5y ago
That is SUCH a good point. This is exactly why I get all my news from HN. (not a good idea) Possibly related Noam Chimpsky paraphrased superaccuratequote - "Look at all the conflicts China is involved in, they're regional. They don't venture anywhere close to our territory. It's all posturing to coerce the obedience of their own population. Ultimately they represent no real threat and are being cast as a boogieman possibly to coerce our obedience. My name is Noam Chomsky. I teach at Arizona Community College now for some reason and Im probably a millionaire." Seriously though the most Orwellian part of this whole thing might (might) be Big Tech Brother casting China as the perpetual Eurasian superenemy. Or not? Idunno I wouldn't take a job in China.
- DSingularity 5y ago
  Which context is that Chomsky quote from? The latter part makes no sense.
  - usmannk 5y ago
    hence the, presumably tongue in cheek, "paraphrased superaccuratequote" warning
  - alanbernstein 5y ago
    It's actually a Noam Chimpsky quote
    - DSingularity 5y ago
      Not disputing it, just would like to hear the context.
      - pkdpic_y9k 5y ago
        He's said similar things more than once but I found at least one decent example. Towards the end of the video. --> https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ni3j1mhU5M https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ni3j1mhU5M
- 5y ago

by lsy 5y ago

aeternum 5y ago

>so the predictions in the article are not based on any kind of evidence Like the assertions in your comment?

postpawl 5y ago

You don’t think AI is a “threat to democracy”? I think the threat isn’t just AI being used by governments to control citizens. Advertising companies want to influence behavior too, and their customers are mostly private corporations. They already have a lot of power and advertising is a $100+ Billion dollar industry for a reason.. it works. If you haven’t seen it, I’d encourage you to watch Can’t Get You Out of My Head by Adam Curtis, which talks a lot about the increasing influence corporations have on the masses (by using technology): https://youtu.be/pga0Oi1cZvo https://youtu.be/pga0Oi1cZvo

judge2020 5y ago
AI is as much a threat to democracy as the newspaper is - they eventually become the only means of input and politicians adapt to catering to them so that they can remain on a level playing field in terms of getting their policies and (potentially sensational) messages to people.
- postpawl 5y ago
  The issue is that AI is going to make it even more economical to bombard your target with coherent information through an extremely effective means of influence (writing). Have you seen some of the posts recently about AIs getting better at writing?: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27032828 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27032828 It’s much more of a threat than a bogus newspaper. I can imagine a future where the signal is even more drowned out by noise. Think Twitter bots x1000.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - tachyonbeam 5y ago
    It's not just bots writing articles, there are already bots posting in online forums. Most people tend to align with the predominant opinion, and these commenter bots make it seem like the public opinion goes a certain way when it doesn't. Bot-written articles might still have obvious tells, but can you tell if a two-sentence comment was written by a bot? No, you probably can't. And of course, the next level of this is to tailor the articles you see, their content, and the response you get online specifically to you. Eventually, these systems will get progressively better and influencing your specific opinion. Social media giants can also affect things like which events you end up going to, the people you meet, who you end up in a relationship with, which jobs you apply to, etc. Soon it will be possible for corporations and governments to have sophisticated, subtle, relatively fine-grained influence over your life and that of your friends. You'd better hope Google and Facebook view your success and emotional well-being as good for their profits, otherwise, they could try to optimize your life for different outcomes.
    - mike_hearn 5y ago
      Detecting bots isn't that hard. You're acting like bots don't already try to advertise to people every day but of course they do, just open your spam folder to see what they're selling. Bots are everywhere trying to sell us things, and they're usually pretty obvious because subtly manipulating people through political spamming (a) probably doesn't work well [1], and (b) isn't profitable, yet spamming costs money. I worked on bot detection at Google for a while. There are lots of ways to detect them that aren't based on analysing the quality of writing. We were able to get a very long way with a tiny team playing tricks with JavaScript and that was hardly the peak of what's achievable if there were to ever be a real "bot crisis". At any rate, Brad Smith's argument in the linked news story isn't about bots writing messages to affect politics. He's concerned about the far more plausible problem of bots transcribing everything you say or do inside your own homes and then uploading it to the mothership for analysis. This is a far more plausible problem because "third parties spamming forums" puts well resourced tech firms in the defense position, but Smith's scenario puts them in the adversarial position. And it could happen today. Nothing stops Google pushing a software update that runs their voice recognition models 24/7 in the background and uploads transcripts of things people are saying to their datacenters for sentiment analysis, except maybe that a few geeks would notice battery drain, but no problem, if Google is doing it then most likely there are sympathisers to the cause at other local tech firms who will collaborate to cover it up. Previously even they would have been stopped by the cost, but advances in AI have driven the cost of speech recognition through the floor. It's entirely feasible now to consider recording, transcribing and filtering the entire world's conversations, all the time. And that's a real problem. When I hear stories from former friends and colleagues who are still at Google I feel I hardly recognize what the company has become. If they're willing to erase people en-masse from their platform and fire workers for pointing out obviously true things (like "SARS-CoV-2 might have leaked from the nearby lab doing experiments on similar viruses" or "women are on average less interested in computers than men"), who knows if or when their employees might decide that e.g. listening in on popular conservative politicians in their own homes is justified? Certainly, Pichai cannot be trusted to reign in these kinds of behaviours if the past 5 years is anything to judge by, nor is there any obvious way to stop them from doing it given the root-like access Play Services has to people's phones. [1] there are studies trying to spot correlations between political campaign spending vs voting outcomes by district and IIRC they conclude that it works up to a low level, but probably only by informing people there's a vote happening in the first place, and beyond that it hardly seems to matter. Trump beating Clinton despite a 1:2 spending ratio provides a large scale anecdotal example of this effect.
dvfjsdhgfv 5y ago
> You don’t think AI is a “threat to democracy”? First, we have to define what "AI" is. In the current context, it might be Machine Learning or a collection of algorithms defining what to display to a give user, for example. Both ML and algorithms are completely neutral by themselves, it is their use that makes them "dangerous". You can use it for decades, e.g. collecting data from sensors and classifying them, an nothing bad happens. But the moment a human being connects a software system to an actuator - news feed, an engine, a rocket, an x-ray machine - they explicitly take responsibility for the functioning of such a connected system. If it fails, putting the blame on "AI" is ridiculous.

pkdpic_y9k 5y ago

That is SUCH a good point. This is exactly why I get all my news from HN. (not a good idea) Possibly related Noam Chimpsky paraphrased superaccuratequote - "Look at all the conflicts China is involved in, they're regional. They don't venture anywhere close to our territory. It's all posturing to coerce the obedience of their own population. Ultimately they represent no real threat and are being cast as a boogieman possibly to coerce our obedience. My name is Noam Chomsky. I teach at Arizona Community College now for some reason and Im probably a millionaire." Seriously though the most Orwellian part of this whole thing might (might) be Big Tech Brother casting China as the perpetual Eurasian superenemy. Or not? Idunno I wouldn't take a job in China.

DSingularity 5y ago
Which context is that Chomsky quote from? The latter part makes no sense.
- usmannk 5y ago
  hence the, presumably tongue in cheek, "paraphrased superaccuratequote" warning
- alanbernstein 5y ago
  It's actually a Noam Chimpsky quote
  - DSingularity 5y ago
    Not disputing it, just would like to hear the context.
    - pkdpic_y9k 5y ago
      He's said similar things more than once but I found at least one decent example. Towards the end of the video. --> https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ni3j1mhU5M https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ni3j1mhU5M
5y ago