7/24/17: MARKING YOUR TERRITORY
MARKING YOUR TERRITORY
Today, I was reading a story about how Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook was conducting a Facebook Live while he was barbequing meats in his back yard. He was taking questions from his followers. While most of the questions were about grilling techniques, someone asked a question.
A user submitted a question, which Zuckerberg read out loud: “I watched a recent interview with Elon Musk and his largest fear for future was AI. What are your thoughts on AI and how it could affect the world?”
Earlier in July, Musk, the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, said that artificial intelligence will cause massive job disruption, that robots “will be able to do everything better than us.”
Musk also expressed dire concern over a future shared with robots.
Zuckerberg countered by saying that he doesn’t understand people who are naysayers and try to drum up these doomsday scenarios — he continued by saying that It’s really negative and in some ways he thinks it is pretty irresponsible.
Zuckerberg says “In the next five to 10 years, AI is going to deliver so many improvements in the quality of our lives.”
It depends on what can be called quality.
Back in the year 2014, Allison Gopnik wrote an insightful column in The Wall Street Journal, “The Kid Who Wouldn’t Let Go of the Device” In it, she recounted the story of a little girl who was given “The Device” when she was only age 2. “It worked through a powerful and sophisticated optic nerve/brain/mind interface, injecting its content into her cortex. By the time she was 5, she had been utterly swept away into the alternative universe that The Device created.”
Gopnik goes on to recount how the images planted by The Device were more vivid to her than her own memories. As a grown woman, she was addicted to The Device and panicked at the thought that she might have to spend a day without it.
The Device was the printed book.
Even though this was a cute way of demonstrating that books still have appeal in some small groups of society – the reality is something different.
Books are losing to electronic media.
In the future, there will be no need for a device of any kind.
We are developing digital brains with new circuits for skimming as opposed to in-depth reading comprehension. This technique makes for quick browsing for children but it does not promote comprehension.
It doesn’t promote in depth reading nor gives it time to ponder the meaning – it gives an interface with selective key words that run directly into the brain through a device that can be implanted of tattooed on the skin.
Voice to Skull technology can also beam audio books directly into the brain. Adults are now reporting increased difficulty reading books with long sentences that have multiple clauses and in-depth background information.
The attention span for books is now dwindling. The average screen time of persons addicted to desktop and mobile devices now tops five hours per day.
In addition to selective skimming, the reader is distracted by social networking and email invitations that are not available in a book. Processes in social media are geared towards reading headlines and entry sentences without fully comprehending what is being published.
There is also pop up distractions that function as click bait—it is there to test neuro-reaction and interest.
Electronic game producers spend millions of dollars developing fascinating visual displays to seduce young children. Electronic devices are interactive. This raises the probability of addiction.
It also raises concerns about attention span — the future is here and the plan is to chip the next generation for a virtual reboot into a world that is fraught with all sorts of hypereality.
During this year’s San Diego Comic Con, attendees were treated to a number of science fiction movie previews. One of the previews was for a new Steven Spielberg film called, “Ready Player One.” The film is a very insightful look at a bleak future where an energy crisis and severe weather has created a need for escape. People (mostly young people) turn to the OASIS, a virtual reality simulator accessible by players using visors and haptic technology such as gloves. Haptic technology is a tactile technology that enhances the virtual experience with touch.
In the near future, tactile technology can be implemented with gloves or microchips, in order for the person to interact with the technology. Tactile technology is being used today with touch screen technology; however, the future is that the hand may be able to virtually pet a kitten or touch simulated skin.
It will also help in identifying players and having their preferences already stored in a cloud.
In the film, Ready Player One, the OASIS program acts as both a Massive Multiplayer Online Role playing Game and as a virtual society, with its currency being the most stable in the real world.
OASIS isn’t just a general-purpose Metaverse. It’s an escape from the film’s dismal future, where the environment is ravaged, the protagonist lives in desperate poverty, and the best employer is an openly evil mega-corporation.
I am sure that OASIS has a data base of all of its users, and not only is the Virtual Reality archive invasive to the mind – it may be intrusive to privacy.
If you think that this type of invasive tech will remain on the screen you are dead wrong.
There’s this term in the processed food industry for when something is quantifiably at its most delicious, but also critically unsatisfying enough that you always crave more. It’s called the bliss point, and it’s what ensures that you always want another sip of that soft drink, or the crunch of that potato chip. It’s about maximizing the bliss of consumption so that you consume more.
Now, Disney Research has developed a neural network that seems to be chasing a similar idea–but for the world of movies. It is called, “Factorized Variational Autoencoders for Modeling Audience Reactions to Movies.”
The system has been trained to watch an audience of theatergoers as they watch a film. It can track reactions like smiling and laughter on hundreds of faces in a dark theater, allowing Disney to quantify whether or not a film is working as intended on a granular scale. It’s easy to imagine such technology eventually reaching well beyond the movie theater.
As AI allows media companies to take advantage of these insights in real time, one can imagine Disney not just changing the way a film is cut during the test market phase, but actually recutting content in real time for a viewer’s maximum pleasure.
Now, we could be moving toward an age when AI is the crucial differentiator of media, an age where cameras lurk in movie theaters, or even our smartphones, and every entertainment company’s best weapon is its ability to reshape content, dynamically, to our liking.
So get ready for future movies that will be cut and re-cut in order to satisfy sample audiences. This means the future of movies will be base on AI sampling and neuroreactive responses.
This is also the same technology that police will use in determining possible future perpetrators of crime.
China is hoping to use artificial intelligence to look into the future and help police predict crimes before they have even been committed.
Much like in the 2002 film, Minority Report, starring Tom Cruise, authorities in the East Asian country wants to catch criminals before they have done any wrongdoing.
The police in the surveillance state have enlisted the help of AI to determine who is going to commit a crime before it’s happened.
Li Meng, Vice-Minister of Science, said: “If we use our smart systems and smart facilities well, we can know beforehand… who might be a terrorist, who might do something bad.”
One of the ways China is hoping to peek into the future is with facial recognition firm Cloud Walk which is trying out software that gathers data on where people are what they are doing.
For example, if a citizen is to visit a weapons shop then the firm can combine this with other data to assess the individual’s chance of committing a crime.
Another way that the police can use AI to predict crimes is through algorithms that use “crowd analysis” to detect “suspicious” patterns of individuals to determine if they are a thief, for example.
Authorities are also set to use “personal re-identification” software to match someone’s identification even if they are in an entirely new location and attempting to disguise themselves.
The United States uses the Next Generation Identification system on order to do the same type of work.
The NGI system contains nearly 125 million criminal and civilian fingerprints and 24 million mug shots. As the technology matures, the FBI said it has the capability to analyze everything from a suspect’s scars and tattoos to their voices to their eyes – remember the iris scanners in the movie “Minority Report.
What is also creepy about the technology is that your face is probably in the mix because the database uses photos from various social media forums like Instagram.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which describes itself as defending your rights in the digital world, sued the FBI in 2013 to “shine light on the program and its face-recognition components.
They testified that Biometrics programs present critical threats to civil liberties and privacy. Face-recognition technology is among the most alarming new developments, because Americans cannot easily take precautions against the covert, remote, and mass capture of their images.
Technology is not solely to blame for the erosion of privacy in this nation. Government and businesses have been trying to keep track of you and your habits since the days of filing and collating.
From census taking to tax filing, vehicle registration and social security – tracking has been with us but now it appears that it is becoming more pervasive and from what we can now see is more intrusive.
So much in fact that it is becoming something that is infringing upon your cognitive liberty .
With the ability to blend vast databases containing personal information and the sophistication of tracking devices that can announce your presence along with myriad vital statistics when you cross a bridge or enter a room Americans are now at a crossroads.
Do we shrug and concede that privacy is lost? Should we just “get over it?”
Or do we look for ways to draw the line, to identify means and places where employers and governments should not dare to tread? They are now using our faces, our bodies and our minds to track us and mark their territory – or as they see us their property.
As in the futuristic film “Minority Report” with the refinement of toothpick-thick microchips that can be implanted in your arm and packed with loads of personally identifiable information that can be beamed to the world. These radio-frequency identification (RFID) devices or “talking bar codes” amount to miniature antennas that transmit the types of information that might otherwise be held on a swipe card.
This seemingly impossible future is on the drawing board. These tiny computer chips can track items at a distance. Chipping inanimate objects is just the start. Pets and livestock are already being chipped.
Now they are beginning the idea of chipping Alzheimer’s patients and eventually convicts, parolees, etc., until one day a majority of Americans falling into one category or another would find themselves electronically tagged. Businesses like the idea of spy chipping products, but the seamy details they have uncovered reveal the secrets they don’t want you to know. There is so much more. It is your future, and you should know what is in the planning stages.
A Wisconsin company is about to become the first in the U.S. to offer microchip implants to its employees.
The company is called Three Square Market and they design software for break room markets that are commonly found in office complexes.
We have an Avanti market system in my office building and so far no one has asked us to use a chip to buy any of the products.
However, a person can scan an item at a kiosk and then instead of using a phone or a card, along with an item that can be purchased by just holding a chipped hand to the screen.
More than 50 Three Square Market employees are having the devices implanted starting next week.
Along with purchasing market kiosk items, employees will be able to use the chip to get into the front door and log onto their computers.
Each chip costs $300, and the company is picking up the tab. They’re implanted between a person’s thumb and forefinger. Westby added the data is both encrypted and secure.
No one is required to get the chip though.
It is unlawful to require anyone in Wisconsin to have a microchip.
A microchip implanted on human beings has chilling implications, conjuring up images of the “Mark of the Beast” as mentioned in the Book of revelations. Such an accessory would certainly be a boon for a totalitarian society – and there are scientists who say that there would be some distinct advantages with microchips for all.
Back in 2010 The Virginia House of Representatives actually proposed to outlaw the chips because of concerns about the Mark of the beast. Opponents mocked the bill because it was seen as legislating the Apocalypse and opined that it was most definitely a clash between church and state.
Taking a chip into the body may or may not be the Mark of the Beast; however, we have to consider that complexities involved with accepting a technocratic government that brings with it a well-oiled surveillance state.
Not just any surveillance state but a technocracy created in order to collect data on your DNA, your blood and bloodline and your genetic contribution to the workforce. The technocracy sees you as a resource or just another part to the machine that fuels the empire.
Just think of it the syringe slides in between the thumb and index finger. Then, with a click, a microchip is injected into your hand.
For the older generations there is a pause for clarity – for the young it is like a tattoo or a piercing of a body part.
What could pass for a dystopian vision of the world will become routine for younger generations.
