The fact that they find all this in privacy statements is more or less the lawyers creating legal room, but that in itself doesn’t mean they are doing it. But the fact that the commercial car data hubs are booming (and what these leeches purport to be able to sell) suggests they are. I also wonder how this works in the EU where there are stricter rules. Both here and in GAI we are starting to see that Joseph Stalin was right when he said “quantity has its own quality”. And that is the league these surveillance capitalists are in.
When the car companies were building robots to help build cars, they bragged that it would make employee’s lives easier. They lost their jobs. AI is going to do the same thing, only on a huge scale. It’s even learning how to write poetry!
This is hardly a call for "absolute privacy". The situation described is a complaint against absolute lack of privacy.
And the argument about "criminals, child abusers, and so on" is the old "think of the children". Those do their abusing just fine whether car companies, your e-toaster, and the various apps you use collect data about you or not.
It's even less about them selling your data (of course they only collect them to sell them or use them themselves for advertising and marketing purposes).
And, no, we don't "benefit from free services". We might not have to pay for them, but their impact is hardly a benefit, to society and democracy, and that's before we even added the privacy issues in that.
Besides, if you like them "free", they can still be free with static ads, without data collection about their users. They will just make less money, and that's fine. We could do with less powerful tech behemoths.
I suspect you're right, but I don't like the fact that this trade-off has not been presented clearly to the public.
"You like all these free websites, right? Well the reason they're free is they collect and sell your data."
Most people will still take this deal. But, it's a crap choice: consent to lord-knows-only-what, or pay individual subscription fees for every single website you want to visit.
My dream is that a bunch of high-quality websites get together and bundle subscriptions, much like how we buy bundled groups of TV channels. People used to moan about this: "why can't I just pay for the channels I want?!". But now that we've seen the alternative (pay for gazillions of separate individual subscriptions), the old way looks alright. So let's apply it to subscription websites.
"Absolute privacy does not exist, and likely it is not even desirable. People who will benefit most from it are criminals, child abusers, and so on."
With respect, you have been conditioned to think this is the case. What's actually happened is a slow but inexorable descent from a state where citizens had a right to privacy and a reasonable expectation of privacy, to one where privacy has been stripped from nearly all citizens. Like the frogs in the proverbial pan of boiling water, we have been bought to the boil slowly so our privacy peeled away softly, without clinging, just like the frog's skin.
What you might consider is protest. Organized, mass protest. Before abuse of power follows.
“ Given that 99.9% of the AI is HOMO built, engineered and managed, the only known-known is they'll be grooming lots of little new homos” is like saying that 99.9% of AI is built by left-handers and they’re grooming lots of little new left-handers. (I.e. the. most likely source of all kinds of gender and sexuality fluidity is genetic variations that individually have some advantage and combine to create a range of sexual orientations and genders; just like left-handedness is no longer suppressed by society, this sexual orientation and gender fluidity has been less forced into a single pattern and you’re not seeing people changing their makeup, but seeing the removal of some suppression). If this scares you, don’t be. Nobody is going to be able to make you other-handed, and the fact that there are people who are other-handed is not a threat.
But the “X in, X out” is mostly true. Humans are not very analytic, their energy efficiency (that brain uses maybe 25W) requires a lot of autopilot, including during creating your convictions which mainly come from copying sources you trust or you consume often. Both attention-driven social media and GAI exploit our ingrained vulnerability on this point. So, the above will not make you change your convictions…
Thanks ... I dont think that the connection between AI and surveillance capitalism gets enough attention.
exactly!
The fact that they find all this in privacy statements is more or less the lawyers creating legal room, but that in itself doesn’t mean they are doing it. But the fact that the commercial car data hubs are booming (and what these leeches purport to be able to sell) suggests they are. I also wonder how this works in the EU where there are stricter rules. Both here and in GAI we are starting to see that Joseph Stalin was right when he said “quantity has its own quality”. And that is the league these surveillance capitalists are in.
I drive a 1991 Acura. It ain't collecting a thing :)
From “dumb phones” to “dumb cars.” I like it.
When the car companies were building robots to help build cars, they bragged that it would make employee’s lives easier. They lost their jobs. AI is going to do the same thing, only on a huge scale. It’s even learning how to write poetry!
Regulate 3rd party access to data. It covers privacy as well as ML safety (trademarks, accountability, disclosure, etc).
This is hardly a call for "absolute privacy". The situation described is a complaint against absolute lack of privacy.
And the argument about "criminals, child abusers, and so on" is the old "think of the children". Those do their abusing just fine whether car companies, your e-toaster, and the various apps you use collect data about you or not.
It's even less about them selling your data (of course they only collect them to sell them or use them themselves for advertising and marketing purposes).
And, no, we don't "benefit from free services". We might not have to pay for them, but their impact is hardly a benefit, to society and democracy, and that's before we even added the privacy issues in that.
Besides, if you like them "free", they can still be free with static ads, without data collection about their users. They will just make less money, and that's fine. We could do with less powerful tech behemoths.
"Data collection enable tailored ads"
That's just another word for personalized propaganda: for your wallet but also for your beliefs (political ads, "message" ads, and so on).
I suspect you're right, but I don't like the fact that this trade-off has not been presented clearly to the public.
"You like all these free websites, right? Well the reason they're free is they collect and sell your data."
Most people will still take this deal. But, it's a crap choice: consent to lord-knows-only-what, or pay individual subscription fees for every single website you want to visit.
My dream is that a bunch of high-quality websites get together and bundle subscriptions, much like how we buy bundled groups of TV channels. People used to moan about this: "why can't I just pay for the channels I want?!". But now that we've seen the alternative (pay for gazillions of separate individual subscriptions), the old way looks alright. So let's apply it to subscription websites.
"Absolute privacy does not exist, and likely it is not even desirable. People who will benefit most from it are criminals, child abusers, and so on."
With respect, you have been conditioned to think this is the case. What's actually happened is a slow but inexorable descent from a state where citizens had a right to privacy and a reasonable expectation of privacy, to one where privacy has been stripped from nearly all citizens. Like the frogs in the proverbial pan of boiling water, we have been bought to the boil slowly so our privacy peeled away softly, without clinging, just like the frog's skin.
What you might consider is protest. Organized, mass protest. Before abuse of power follows.
This was a very informative post. I now know that absolutely anyone can have a Substack.
“ Given that 99.9% of the AI is HOMO built, engineered and managed, the only known-known is they'll be grooming lots of little new homos” is like saying that 99.9% of AI is built by left-handers and they’re grooming lots of little new left-handers. (I.e. the. most likely source of all kinds of gender and sexuality fluidity is genetic variations that individually have some advantage and combine to create a range of sexual orientations and genders; just like left-handedness is no longer suppressed by society, this sexual orientation and gender fluidity has been less forced into a single pattern and you’re not seeing people changing their makeup, but seeing the removal of some suppression). If this scares you, don’t be. Nobody is going to be able to make you other-handed, and the fact that there are people who are other-handed is not a threat.
But the “X in, X out” is mostly true. Humans are not very analytic, their energy efficiency (that brain uses maybe 25W) requires a lot of autopilot, including during creating your convictions which mainly come from copying sources you trust or you consume often. Both attention-driven social media and GAI exploit our ingrained vulnerability on this point. So, the above will not make you change your convictions…