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The biggest risk with AI, in the medium-term at least, is it will be used by governments and organizations with power to surveil and manipulate people on a prev

The biggest risk with AI, in the medium-term at least, is it will be used by governments and organizations with power to surveil and manipulate people on a previously-impossible scale. Automated systems monitoring everybody, pulling levers to prevent anybody from speaking out or causing trouble. In the long run, it will be the end of human freedom For example, it looks like Xi has been pretty actively pursuing this, based on the news over the last 10 years > China has one surveillance camera for every 2 citizens (...) These camera [sic] checks if people are wearing face mask, crossing the road before the green lights for pedestrians are turned on. If caught breaking rules, people lose their social credit points, are charged higher mortgage, extra taxes and slower internet speed. Not only that, public transport for them gets expensive as well, and the list goes on. [1] It's not like we're immune to this. All the malls I go to lately are packed with facial recognition systems to analyze our behaviour. [1] https://www.firstpost.com/world/big-brother-is-watching-china-has-one-surveillance-camera-for-every-2-citizens-12380062.html#:~:text=Every%20single%20person%2C%20be%20it,since%20the%20Covid%2D19%20pandemic https://www.firstpost.com/world/big-brother-is-watching-chin....

layer8 3y ago
Yeah, this vision from TFA: “Every person will have an AI assistant/coach/mentor/trainer/advisor/therapist that is infinitely patient, infinitely compassionate, infinitely knowledgeable, and infinitely helpful. The AI assistant will be present through all of life’s opportunities and challenges, maximizing every person’s outcomes.” …will more likely turn into an indoctrination and compliance machine under authoritarian regimes.
- foogazi 3y ago
  This just devolves into the same currently existing bad actor issue: authoritarian regimes You could say the same about weapons, radio, electricity, the internet They all could be abused by authoritarian regimes
  - layer8 3y ago
    We haven’t found a way yet to prevent authoritarian regimes from arising and spreading, so it’s unclear how AI will save the world. On the contrary, AI will make it easier for authoritarian regimes to expand and maintain their control.
    - gigel82 3y ago
      All regimes asymptotically tend towards authoritarian in the long run; from their POV it's just easier to do their job that way. AI will greatly accelerate this trend.
      - barking_biscuit 3y ago
        This feels like the correct take to me.
    - bbor 3y ago
      AI will also make it easier for freedom fighters and democracy. If everyone on earth held a four-year bachelors degree, don't you think that would pose an issue for demagogues and emotion-based politicians? Hopefully it's obvious to all of us that no technology, no matter how neat, will solve the social problems of humanity for us. And this is just the start of how I disagree with the author. But I would say it's not exactly a detriment either
      - barbariangrunge 3y ago
        Would it? If everyone on earth did have a 4-year bachelor’s degree, but you lived in a social-credit driven, machine vision, surveillance world, and you’re punished every time you step out of line—what are all those educated people going to do? They can’t even meet or communicate in private
        startupsfail 3y ago
        How about a world in which bullies who spit on the social contracts (and society in general) get a free ride, benefit from it and win? Would you prefer that?
- tetris11 3y ago
  "But you can train it however you want!" is the main counterargument I hear against this (alas, my strawman). Sure, you could, assuming accessible resources to decent compute nodes and good training data, but something tells me that this will be in the hands of a very few. Also, even if decent AI remains affordable for most people, most people will still mindlessly take the default route of a corporate/government pushed apps.
- dinvlad 3y ago
  Reminds me of Ms. Casey's "wellness sessions" in Severance
  - crabmusket 3y ago
    Your Outie enjoys the sound of RADAR.
- 0xcde4c3db 3y ago
  Not to mention members of certain "high-risk groups" getting their own AI police officers to issue warnings and citations. Obviously not based on race, just based on objective risk factors such as having a direct social link to someone with an arrest record...
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
zabzonk 3y ago
watched over by machines of loving grace
startupsfail 3y ago
The examples that you’ve given (obeying traffic laws and wearing masks during pandemic l) seem to be perfectly good social behaviors. It’s a balancing act between freedom and law. Go one way too far - you get Tiananmen Square and reeducation camps. Go another way too far - you get storming the White House and school shootings.
- acover 3y ago
  Traffic laws are often nonsense and ignored, see jay walking.
- candiodari 3y ago
  I hate this sort of thinking. You are making the implicit assumption that everything about our social environment happens simply on 1 variable: heavy-handed enforcement. When I put it like this, I hope you can see that it doesn't work like that. There are hundreds of variables you could change that would affect everything. We can prevent Congress storming (it was, btw, Congress, not the White House, that got stormed) without moving even 1 micrometer in the direction of reeducation camps.
  - monkeycantype 3y ago
    I initially read the comment you are responding to differently, in that I saw the ‘observer’ in the statement as not the state but the community, on re-reading I’m not sure that makes sense. All the same, reading HN politics, it often seems that a spectrum is presented that spans from freedom to state oppression. There are democracies where the public will not accept the state using power for its own benefit, but is comfortable with the state enforcing the social contract, because there is a stronger sense that this is defined democratically. This may be simply a matter of population size, the state in a nation of 20 million is a different beast to a state of 350m
    - pixl97 3y ago
      This brings up another question... How is a social contract defined when you have 20m people and 50m AI enabled bots forming relationships with them trying to change their mind on said social contract?
dinvlad 3y ago
I'd even say that the social networks are a precursor to this. Everyone is constantly observed by everyone else there, and many use a fake persona to try to "fit in", or god forbid say something they will regret later. And those aren't on them have trouble keeping in touch with the rest. Smh
boringuser2 3y ago
They're already pretty good at this. I am of the opinion that destruction of knowledge work and class mobility is more problematic.
zoogeny 3y ago
I was doing some research on facial recognition for a job where we were considering its use. I came across examples of sentiment analysis being used at Walmart and Target. They have big and conspicuous cameras in every one of their stores now. Most people assume it is for shoplifting mitigation, which it is. But that is not all. They can use it to track individual customer's paths through the store and then use cameras at the checkout to analyze your facial expression and rank your mood. They use this data to optimize their store layouts. The other use case was at high-end retail stores. Places like Luis Vuitton, Hermes, etc. They have facial recognition to log high spenders. If you drop 10k at Coach and then go down the street to Valentino their security system will recognize you and highlight you as a VIP customer. A specialized customer assistant then comes out to give you personal attention, maybe to invite you to the private shopping experience. I learned about these in 2017 I believe. Most non-technical people who I've told about this think it is some conspiracy theory and they often don't believe it. For some reason people are scared of the government but they remain totally docile or willfully ignorant in the face of corporate use.
- samstave 3y ago
  When we were evaluating employee entrance systems for a FAANG back in ~2012 we were demo'd systems that could do retinal scanning on streams of people as they walked through the turn styles and they could read your eyes even through polarized sun glasses. I cant recall its name though - but yeah - OpenAI basically brought capabilities for extreme real-time surveillance to an 11.
samstave 3y ago
>>The biggest risk with AI, in the medium-term at least, is it will be used by governments and organizations with power to surveil and manipulate people on a previously-impossible scale. Automated systems monitoring everybody, pulling levers to prevent anybody from speaking out or causing trouble. In the long run, it will be the end of human freedom.. THIS is exactly what I see happening. I personally think the "pause" on development is bullshit NationState jockeying for dominance by trying to gAIn AI Dominance - Israel, MI5, NSA, CCP <--- Every Intel Agency on the planet is building/buying/stealing/weaponizing whatever they can. I wonder what/where Palintir is in this fight? It feels REALLY Anime with the Sabre Rattling btwn the US and China over Taiwan and TSMC's chip fabs for AI cores. The hardware is still relatively infancy - but in 5 years it will be really interesting when we see the perfomance for 1hr or 1D problems cut down to minutes seconds for massive AI apps 5 years from now
JohnFen 3y ago
I think the biggest risk of AI, near-to-mid term, is massive unemployment and the resulting serious increase in poverty.
- pixl97 3y ago
  Poverty leads to populism and populism commonly leads to fascism. Great, now you have fascists with AI and an agenda of rancor.

layer8 3y ago

Yeah, this vision from TFA: “Every person will have an AI assistant/coach/mentor/trainer/advisor/therapist that is infinitely patient, infinitely compassionate, infinitely knowledgeable, and infinitely helpful. The AI assistant will be present through all of life’s opportunities and challenges, maximizing every person’s outcomes.” …will more likely turn into an indoctrination and compliance machine under authoritarian regimes.

foogazi 3y ago
This just devolves into the same currently existing bad actor issue: authoritarian regimes You could say the same about weapons, radio, electricity, the internet They all could be abused by authoritarian regimes
- layer8 3y ago
  We haven’t found a way yet to prevent authoritarian regimes from arising and spreading, so it’s unclear how AI will save the world. On the contrary, AI will make it easier for authoritarian regimes to expand and maintain their control.
  - gigel82 3y ago
    All regimes asymptotically tend towards authoritarian in the long run; from their POV it's just easier to do their job that way. AI will greatly accelerate this trend.
    - barking_biscuit 3y ago
      This feels like the correct take to me.
  - bbor 3y ago
    AI will also make it easier for freedom fighters and democracy. If everyone on earth held a four-year bachelors degree, don't you think that would pose an issue for demagogues and emotion-based politicians? Hopefully it's obvious to all of us that no technology, no matter how neat, will solve the social problems of humanity for us. And this is just the start of how I disagree with the author. But I would say it's not exactly a detriment either
    - barbariangrunge 3y ago
      Would it? If everyone on earth did have a 4-year bachelor’s degree, but you lived in a social-credit driven, machine vision, surveillance world, and you’re punished every time you step out of line—what are all those educated people going to do? They can’t even meet or communicate in private
      - startupsfail 3y ago
        How about a world in which bullies who spit on the social contracts (and society in general) get a free ride, benefit from it and win? Would you prefer that?
tetris11 3y ago
"But you can train it however you want!" is the main counterargument I hear against this (alas, my strawman). Sure, you could, assuming accessible resources to decent compute nodes and good training data, but something tells me that this will be in the hands of a very few. Also, even if decent AI remains affordable for most people, most people will still mindlessly take the default route of a corporate/government pushed apps.
dinvlad 3y ago
Reminds me of Ms. Casey's "wellness sessions" in Severance
- crabmusket 3y ago
  Your Outie enjoys the sound of RADAR.
0xcde4c3db 3y ago
Not to mention members of certain "high-risk groups" getting their own AI police officers to issue warnings and citations. Obviously not based on race, just based on objective risk factors such as having a direct social link to someone with an arrest record...

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

zabzonk 3y ago

watched over by machines of loving grace

startupsfail 3y ago

The examples that you’ve given (obeying traffic laws and wearing masks during pandemic l) seem to be perfectly good social behaviors. It’s a balancing act between freedom and law. Go one way too far - you get Tiananmen Square and reeducation camps. Go another way too far - you get storming the White House and school shootings.

acover 3y ago
Traffic laws are often nonsense and ignored, see jay walking.
candiodari 3y ago
I hate this sort of thinking. You are making the implicit assumption that everything about our social environment happens simply on 1 variable: heavy-handed enforcement. When I put it like this, I hope you can see that it doesn't work like that. There are hundreds of variables you could change that would affect everything. We can prevent Congress storming (it was, btw, Congress, not the White House, that got stormed) without moving even 1 micrometer in the direction of reeducation camps.
- monkeycantype 3y ago
  I initially read the comment you are responding to differently, in that I saw the ‘observer’ in the statement as not the state but the community, on re-reading I’m not sure that makes sense. All the same, reading HN politics, it often seems that a spectrum is presented that spans from freedom to state oppression. There are democracies where the public will not accept the state using power for its own benefit, but is comfortable with the state enforcing the social contract, because there is a stronger sense that this is defined democratically. This may be simply a matter of population size, the state in a nation of 20 million is a different beast to a state of 350m
  - pixl97 3y ago
    This brings up another question... How is a social contract defined when you have 20m people and 50m AI enabled bots forming relationships with them trying to change their mind on said social contract?

dinvlad 3y ago

I'd even say that the social networks are a precursor to this. Everyone is constantly observed by everyone else there, and many use a fake persona to try to "fit in", or god forbid say something they will regret later. And those aren't on them have trouble keeping in touch with the rest. Smh

boringuser2 3y ago

They're already pretty good at this. I am of the opinion that destruction of knowledge work and class mobility is more problematic.

zoogeny 3y ago

I was doing some research on facial recognition for a job where we were considering its use. I came across examples of sentiment analysis being used at Walmart and Target. They have big and conspicuous cameras in every one of their stores now. Most people assume it is for shoplifting mitigation, which it is. But that is not all. They can use it to track individual customer's paths through the store and then use cameras at the checkout to analyze your facial expression and rank your mood. They use this data to optimize their store layouts. The other use case was at high-end retail stores. Places like Luis Vuitton, Hermes, etc. They have facial recognition to log high spenders. If you drop 10k at Coach and then go down the street to Valentino their security system will recognize you and highlight you as a VIP customer. A specialized customer assistant then comes out to give you personal attention, maybe to invite you to the private shopping experience. I learned about these in 2017 I believe. Most non-technical people who I've told about this think it is some conspiracy theory and they often don't believe it. For some reason people are scared of the government but they remain totally docile or willfully ignorant in the face of corporate use.

samstave 3y ago
When we were evaluating employee entrance systems for a FAANG back in ~2012 we were demo'd systems that could do retinal scanning on streams of people as they walked through the turn styles and they could read your eyes even through polarized sun glasses. I cant recall its name though - but yeah - OpenAI basically brought capabilities for extreme real-time surveillance to an 11.

samstave 3y ago

>>The biggest risk with AI, in the medium-term at least, is it will be used by governments and organizations with power to surveil and manipulate people on a previously-impossible scale. Automated systems monitoring everybody, pulling levers to prevent anybody from speaking out or causing trouble. In the long run, it will be the end of human freedom.. THIS is exactly what I see happening. I personally think the "pause" on development is bullshit NationState jockeying for dominance by trying to gAIn AI Dominance - Israel, MI5, NSA, CCP <--- Every Intel Agency on the planet is building/buying/stealing/weaponizing whatever they can. I wonder what/where Palintir is in this fight? It feels REALLY Anime with the Sabre Rattling btwn the US and China over Taiwan and TSMC's chip fabs for AI cores. The hardware is still relatively infancy - but in 5 years it will be really interesting when we see the perfomance for 1hr or 1D problems cut down to minutes seconds for massive AI apps 5 years from now

JohnFen 3y ago

I think the biggest risk of AI, near-to-mid term, is massive unemployment and the resulting serious increase in poverty.

pixl97 3y ago
Poverty leads to populism and populism commonly leads to fascism. Great, now you have fascists with AI and an agenda of rancor.