[tabletiptop]

You can take the "precog" metaphor used in Minority Report and replace it what's actually happening - dragnet surveillance combined with predictive modeling algorithms to assess each individual's threat level. This is happening so openly that the DHS have done a public Kaggle competition to improve their algos for body scanners at airports. Now extrapolate a very short distance from there and think about what they're doing that's classified. Even the most unimaginative of us can see what's happening here.

Over the past several years I've seen the automatic reflex response to this concern go from "well if you've got nothing to hide" to "well, I mean they're not watching me or you specifically, they don't have the man power". Well, you're right, but not for the reason you think. The fact is they don't need man power any longer. The algos are watching you.

[ataturk]

It is amazing how on the one hand people can detest Nazis and Soviets saying things like "I can't believe they could have been so stupid to have gone along with that" and then on the other hand, aid and abet the police state in a Kaggle competition of all things! I know it is naive of me to think that if I don't assist that it won't happen because someone will step up if for no other reason than bragging rights.

A long time ago I made a decision about my career and that was that I would not work for the MIC. It was a tough choice at times because so much US industry is involved with government one way or another and even private companies have governments as their major customers so it is all intertwined. Not all government is bad, though, but the shit like body scanners and all that--that's your technocratic police state writ large.

I don't imagine the future is going to be very rosy. It is top down control forever.

[dsfyu404ed]

The Stalin, Hilter, Mao, etc. created secret police and whatnot to enforce their continued rule. They are despised mostly for what their rule entailed, not for having secret police.

We're* creating secret police but in the absence of an oppressive government for them to act on the whims of nobody much cares.

It'll get worse before it gets better.

* We = most nations formerly on the "right" side of the iron curtain

[nwah1]

The bottom-up control scenarios aren't really that much better. The scary part is the power of AI itself.

If a twitter mob gets a hold of it, or a non-state terrorist network, or just some lone wolf, then the results can be as bad or worse than any Big Brother scenario.