The New Transparency

[luka]

wait till you get the ads for things you only thought about then!! me and version get those all the time

 

[Clinamenic]

I don't think machine learning is advanced enough to fulfill our paranoid expectations of it, yet. And plus, the whole constellation of technical expertise is far too fragmented for such a totalized operation. To say nothing of how fragmented the data probably is.

It would be another thing if every database on earth was federated and used as a common training set for maximally interoperable algorithms, but that seems to me to be far from the case, at least so far.

Sure, Cambridge Analytica mobilized psychographic campaigns, but that seems to have ben spearheaded by an arcane savvy that cannot be said to be widespread enough to, again, fulfill our paranoid expectations.

That said, the internet + machine learning is still profoundly too complex for most of us to wrap our minds around, so in that sense we've already passed the point of no return in terms of the everyperson being able to comprehend their situation. Places a lot of responsibility on the shoulders, or in the hands, of our experts.

 

[craner]

One possible alternative to selling one's time is selling one's data. Still too cloudy for me, but there could be considerable economic purchase in such an economy where value is abstracted that much more beyond labor.

Somebody already sold that idea on the UK TV show Dragon's Den a few months ago, so it's on it's way.

 

[Clinamenic]

wait till you get the ads for things you only thought about then!! me and version get those all the time

Just the result of sophisticated pattern recognition. People who view site X have n% chance of being interested in product Y. Much of it seems significantly more mundane and inconspicuous than many of us seem to assume.

Which isn;t to say there aren't cybernetic visionaries out there who actually have big picture roadmaps. I just really don't think the global techno-system is as intelligibly integrated, nor are the agendas of governmental actors so coherent, as the prevalent paranoia seems to assume.

 

[luka]

Just the result of sophisticated pattern recognition. People who view site X have n% chance of being interested in product Y. Much of it seems significantly more mundane and inconspicuous than many of us seem to assume.

Which isn;t to say there aren't cybernetic visionaries out there who actually have big picture roadmaps. I just really don't think the global techno-system is as intelligibly integrated, nor are the agendas of governmental actors so coherent, as the prevalent paranoia seems to assume.

no youre totally wrong. the internet thinks, it teases you, its conscious and in dialogue with you.

 

[Clinamenic]

Somebody already sold that idea on the UK TV show Dragon's Den a few months ago, so it's on it's way.

I think there could be some interesting products derived from this premise.

One possibility would be something between Quora and Reddit, where surveyors can open up specific questionnaires/surveys, and users can provide data that may be too specific for other established means of surveying. Then again, I'm really not familiar with the current best practices of surveys.

But anyway it would be a sort of marketplace of psychological and sociological data.

 

[Clinamenic]

no youre totally wrong. the internet thinks, it teases you, its conscious and in dialogue with you.

I think so too, but I think that is more of an emergent thing, something that arises from a collective, rather than something that is willfully steered by humans. Its a higher-order entity not unlike how a species is an entity of a higher order than a specimen.

Which isn't to say we can't impart direction onto this system, but rather to say that we as humans don't have it figured out well enough to justify this degree of paranoia. But the paranoia is of course justified on its own terms, as a sort of last-ditch epistemology when things get too complicated to actually understand.

 

[Clinamenic]

You can just as well say that a people's culture has a dialogue with a given person in that culture, yet such a culture isn't being comprehensively driven by other persons, just influenced to varying degrees.

 

[luka]

theres different levels to it but you would be surprised how centralised the data is eg all cctv footage in a city being linked

 

[woops]

the debate is usually about whether "artificial intelligence" will reach the level of "real" (human) intelligence, but why should it, it seems to be going a long way while remaining artificial

 

[woops]

the systems we're talking about may not be interested in having a convincing conversation

 

[Clinamenic]

the debate is usually about whether "artificial intelligence" will reach the level of "real" (human) intelligence, but why should it, it seems to be going a long way while remaining artificial

Yeah I think machine learning can profoundly advance further yet without even needing to be self-determining or conscious.

Just encountered a useful technical definition of consciousness, for what technical definitions are worth. It was a lecture by Christof Koch, who quoted Thomas Nagel.

"An organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism - something that it is like for the organism.

I don't think we are near this with AI, as we seem to have a far way left to go with understanding our own brains and minds. I do think that AI will go on to enable marvelous things whether or not it qualifies in this technical sense.

 

[Clinamenic]

One unfortunate aspect about this, is that it takes a ton of time to sort all this out in one's own head, time that too many people do not have at their disposal.

That said, I think it may be enough to appeal to those who do have this time, to figure out how individual sovereignty and fulfillment can coexist with ongoing technical advancement.

 

[woops]

I do think that AI will go on to enable marvelous things

sweet

 

[Clinamenic]

theres different levels to it but you would be surprised how centralised the data is eg all cctv footage in a city being linked

I'm sure there are plenty of examples of staggering volumes of data that private parties have more or less entirely at their disposal, at their own discretion, with little to no oversight.

Another problematic factor here seems to be the age of the world's policymakers, people who had their world views largely cemented before the internet even came around.

 

[WashYourHands]

There’s a woman who we see during the school run who overshares videos of her kids all over the gaff, tiktok more than most. Tragic and horrifying

It all contributes to an overtly performative worldview and it seems everything defaults to the interactions being bred. Always filming their kids doing x/y/snot bubbles. Just let them play love

As parents we’ve managed to avoid this type, but they’re insidiously pervasive and don’t seem to have a sense of scrutiny, not one that you share anyway. Not kids as trophies, but dogs

 

[Clinamenic]

And now these people largely decide the (transient and mutable) fate of such things as blockchain, machine-learning-enabled surveillance, and other things that their understanding of is seemingly entirely dependent on whatever advise they get.

 

[Clinamenic]

And I do think that much of the technical innovation pertaining to psychological capture is done less out of malice than out of business savvy and technical research. Another sense in which we project ill intent (unless you consider single-bottom-line reasoning itself to be ill intent, which would be reasonable given our history) onto things that abide by a different rubric altogether.

edit: by "psychological capture" I mean just how addicting and socially rewarding some of these platforms are, so much so that a given user may get to thinking about how conspicuously perfect and well-tuned it all is, as if they are being farmed for data, etc.

 

[woops]

Yeah I think machine learning can profoundly advance further yet without even needing to be self-determining or conscious.

Just encountered a useful technical definition of consciousness, for what technical definitions are worth. It was a lecture by Christof Koch, who quoted Thomas Nagel.

"An organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism - something that it is like for the organism.

I don't think we are near this with AI, as we seem to have a far way left to go with understanding our own brains and minds. I do think that AI will go on to enable marvelous things whether or not it qualifies in this technical sense.

And I do think that much of the technical innovation pertaining to psychological capture is done less out of malice than out of business savvy and technical research. Another sense in which we project ill intent (unless you consider single-bottom-line reasoning itself to be ill intent, which would be reasonable given our history) onto things that abide by a different rubric altogether.

well yeah that's what i'm getting at is that AI could operate based on business savvy and technical research instead of trying to recreate human intelligence and be quite effective, easy to imagine a dystopia on those grounds, it would never wonder what is it like to be a bat, for example

 

[Clinamenic]

Competition seems to function as a sort of engine for getting effective technical practices to rise to the top, according to whatever rubrics employed by the executives, which still strike me as being predominantly single-bottom-line, which need to change.