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The limiting factor is usually, someone has to pay for the spying and the punishment. A lot (most?) of troublemakers just aren’t worth the trouble of spying o

The limiting factor is usually, someone has to pay for the spying and the punishment. A lot (most?) of troublemakers just aren’t worth the trouble of spying or punishing.

sonicanatidae 3y ago
I suspect this will be the hoovering approach. Suck it all up, then figure out what you care to act on. The government is a lot of things, and none of them are subtle. Source: The ironically named PATRIOT ACT and similar.
ilovetux 3y ago
The problem is that if AI enables mass spying, then the costs will no longer be prohibitive to target an individual because the infrastructure could be built out once and then reused to target individuals at scale with AI doing all of the correlation behind the scenes.
- ben_w 3y ago
  That would resolve the spying cost, but not the punishment cost. My go-to example here is heroin: class A drug in the UK, 7 years for possession and life for supply, so far as I can see nobody has anything good to say about it, and it has around three times as many users in the UK as the entire UK prison population. Could implement punishment for that specific crime, at huge cost, but you can't expand that to all crimes. Well, I suppose you could try feudalism mark 2 where most of the population is determined to be criminal and therefore spends their life "having to work of their debt to society", but then you have to find out the hard way why we stopped doing feudalism mark 1.
  - barrysteve 3y ago
    A computer owned society doesn't really need jails. You can deny 90% of services to a criminal and track and limit their movement digitally. We are already in the jail.
    - ben_w 3y ago
      I think prisoners are usually denied voting rights? Might be wrong about that. Certainly don't get many travel opportunities.
- hruzgar 3y ago
  they most likely already do this and honestly it's really really scary
kozikow 3y ago
I don't think it's too far-fetched. To see where it's going look at social score in China. You say something wrong about a party, suddenly you can't board a plane, take a mortgage, enter some buildings, ... Your credit score would look at how compliant you are with policies that can get increasingly nonsensical.
- stillwithit 3y ago
  Humans existed under religious nonsense, and other forms of nonsense (sure, sure legal racism and sexism up until the last 30-40 years and obviously politically contrived social norms means the “right people won” free market capitalism) What’s one more form of BS hallucination foisted upon the meat based cassettes we exist as?
  - sugarplant 3y ago
    this post is pretentious nonsense
- datadrivenangel 3y ago
  Same thing happens in the US. Post a tweet too critical of the government, and you might get investigated and added to a no-fly list. Background checks can reveal investigations, so you may end up not getting a job because the government didn't like your tweet...
iAMkenough 3y ago
AI reduces the labor involved, reducing barriers to invest time or money. Spying isn't just for troublemakers either. It's probably worth the trouble to the vindictive ex-husband willing to install a hidden microphone in his ex-wife's house and in order to have access to a written summary of any conversations related to him.
nathanfig 3y ago
Fining offenses is a great way to fund finding more offenses.

The limiting factor is usually, someone has to pay for the spying and the punishment. A lot (most?) of troublemakers just aren’t worth the trouble of spying or punishing.

sonicanatidae 3y ago

I suspect this will be the hoovering approach. Suck it all up, then figure out what you care to act on. The government is a lot of things, and none of them are subtle. Source: The ironically named PATRIOT ACT and similar.

ilovetux 3y ago

The problem is that if AI enables mass spying, then the costs will no longer be prohibitive to target an individual because the infrastructure could be built out once and then reused to target individuals at scale with AI doing all of the correlation behind the scenes.

ben_w 3y ago
That would resolve the spying cost, but not the punishment cost. My go-to example here is heroin: class A drug in the UK, 7 years for possession and life for supply, so far as I can see nobody has anything good to say about it, and it has around three times as many users in the UK as the entire UK prison population. Could implement punishment for that specific crime, at huge cost, but you can't expand that to all crimes. Well, I suppose you could try feudalism mark 2 where most of the population is determined to be criminal and therefore spends their life "having to work of their debt to society", but then you have to find out the hard way why we stopped doing feudalism mark 1.
- barrysteve 3y ago
  A computer owned society doesn't really need jails. You can deny 90% of services to a criminal and track and limit their movement digitally. We are already in the jail.
  - ben_w 3y ago
    I think prisoners are usually denied voting rights? Might be wrong about that. Certainly don't get many travel opportunities.
hruzgar 3y ago
they most likely already do this and honestly it's really really scary

kozikow 3y ago

I don't think it's too far-fetched. To see where it's going look at social score in China. You say something wrong about a party, suddenly you can't board a plane, take a mortgage, enter some buildings, ... Your credit score would look at how compliant you are with policies that can get increasingly nonsensical.

stillwithit 3y ago
Humans existed under religious nonsense, and other forms of nonsense (sure, sure legal racism and sexism up until the last 30-40 years and obviously politically contrived social norms means the “right people won” free market capitalism) What’s one more form of BS hallucination foisted upon the meat based cassettes we exist as?
- sugarplant 3y ago
  this post is pretentious nonsense
datadrivenangel 3y ago
Same thing happens in the US. Post a tweet too critical of the government, and you might get investigated and added to a no-fly list. Background checks can reveal investigations, so you may end up not getting a job because the government didn't like your tweet...

iAMkenough 3y ago

AI reduces the labor involved, reducing barriers to invest time or money. Spying isn't just for troublemakers either. It's probably worth the trouble to the vindictive ex-husband willing to install a hidden microphone in his ex-wife's house and in order to have access to a written summary of any conversations related to him.

nathanfig 3y ago

Fining offenses is a great way to fund finding more offenses.