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First, let’s talk about your social credit score, Mr. Family Man
If you don’t know, Artificial Intelligence, AI, is creeping inexorably into our lives. From facial recognition technology to autonomous vehicles, from drone swarms to Siri, from Tesla to Pandora’s “Musical DNA”, AI and Machine Learning are among the incredibly powerful – and largely invisible — forces driving our next cultural revolution.
There are even reports that shopping carts at the grocery store will soon be outfitted with AI, so that grocers, and presumably whoever else can afford to buy the data sets, can learn more about the habits of customers inside a store.
The commercial study of human behavior isn’t new – human beings have been studying other human beings for their commercial predilections since we started trading arrowheads around the campfire – but something in the invisibility, and intrusiveness, of AI feels new. It also feels dangerous, like a wood chipper is dangerous, and I’m not so convinced that the desired end state — ease and convenience and, eventually, the utter absence of personal responsibility — is finally worth what we may be giving up.
I don’t want to be studied in the grocery store. Or anywhere else.
The Fulfillment Machine is a lifeless place
In Baltimore, Amazon has constructed a one-million-square-foot distribution warehouse called, ominously, a “Fulfillment Machine.” The Fulfillment Machine consists of over 11 miles of conveyor belts, chutes, ladders, and AI pickers and packers that retrieve items from the shelf, drop them in a box, seal the box, and scoot them out the door into a waiting van. No humans required. AI also controls the inventory, deciding what items should be placed where, so that a human walking into the Machine with a clipboard and a pocket protector would probably not be able to find anything.
The computers run the show.
The Wall Street Journal – one of the last bastions of adult news on the planet – writes that Amazon requires “one minute of human labor to get a package onto a truck, but that number is headed to zero. Autonomous warehouses will merge with autonomous manufacturing and delivery to form a fully automated supply chain.”
It’s also possible that in the near future that package could be delivered to a fully automated brothel, now that the sex robot industry is an actual thing.
Call me folksy, but that’s just weird.
It also spurs the curious to wonder about all of those jobs Amazon promises to create, a thing they do to win enormous tax concessions in deals that almost always crater in the long run. Christopher Atkeson, a robotics professor at Carnegie Mellon, told the WSJ that even that one remaining minute of human labor is in danger because “a robotic arm capable of replacing Amazon’s warehouse workers will be available within five years.”
Just think of it: no unions, no workman’s comp, no healthcare plans, no retirement required — a robber baron’s wet dream.
Oh, and here’s one that might get your attention: both Amazon and Walmart “have patented blimplike warehouses that will float 1,000 feet in the air, armed with drones ready to deliver toothpaste and toilet paper to your doorstep as if they were files.”
No thanks
Drone swarms carpet-bombing cities with rolls of toilet paper would almost be worth watching.
It remains to be seen what kind of influence AI and Machine Learning will have on elections, though over in China the government has been working on gene-editing babies and — more ominously – by 2020 every Chinese citizen will be receiving a report card under a scheme known as the “social credit system.” Under this perfectly progressive idea one is graded on one’s behaviors by the government. It has been reported that some “nine million people with low scores have been blocked from buying tickets for domestic flights,” and “three million people are barred from getting business-class train tickets.”
The punishments run deeper than that, of course, from being banned from hotels to having your internet speed slowed to a crawl, and finally with a “public blacklist.”
At present, some of these “social credit systems” are controlled by city councils, and others are “scored by private tech platforms which hold personal data.” As we continue the transformation of human beings into little more than data-farmed credit cards with feet — remember that shopping cart? — this sort of thing seems to be the inevitable direction of humanity.
But resisting that sentiment is officially frowned on, at least in China, whose official slogan for social credit scores is “keeping trust is glorious and breaking trust is disgraceful.”
It’s unclear whose trust they are meaning, but given that the “exact methodology” for determining one’s social credit is a state secret, we can probably guess. And, back in the arena of free elections, we probably shouldn’t overlook Nicholas Carr’s cogent observation that “As society becomes ever more computerized, the programmer becomes its unacknowledged legislator.”
Which may not be the best world we can create. That’s especially true as we continue to build on the promise that our descendants will inherit a financial disaster, given that “by 2033 Social Security, health care spending, and interest on our national debt will consume every dollar of federal revenue.”
That’s known, in some circles, as The Great Baby-Boomer Dine and Dash, but we probably shouldn’t lament. After all, we will have toilet paper falling from the sky, Black Friday blowouts for skinny televisions, and Fulfillment Machines to ease the pain of the new American normal: super-efficient generational poverty.
Matthew says
I’m not worried about robot brothels (at least not for awhile) since the sex robots to me come across as more creepy than sexy.
The social credit system in China is frightening. It reminded me of the Japanese anime Psycho-pass which is set in a future where one can be judged and sentenced for ones psychological state. If the machines that run society believe you are a potential criminals you can be arrested or even simply executed even if you haven’t committed any crimes. Best one can hope for is to be hired as an enforcer to hunt other potential criminals. There is a revelation in the series that makes the society even more sinister. Interesting, they had an episode in which military drones are hacked by the bad guys and slaughter ensues.
RLT says
“Call me folksy, but that’s just weird.”
You’re folksy, Craig, but that IS weird!!
Relevant to that topic–excellent long form piece that starts at sex but ends up going much deeper into and offering insight into societal disfunctions that we’re trying to wrap our heads around here:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/573949/
Breaker Morant says
As Don Edwards sang and we have mentioned in other similar threads “I thanks the lord I wasn’t born no later than I was”-age 52.
TJ says
Parents called the police department this week on an “out of control seven year old.” They called the cops on their SEVEN year old.
I had that call a couple of times. Mine were ten. They are getting younger. I dont have to tell you what would have happened to me had I been “out of control” at that age. Of course, when I lived in texas the teachers had paddles, and used them. It worked.
That lyric comes up for me just about every single day.
As a fine matter of timing, this came across my radar yesterday;
The Amazon ‘can you feel it’ commercial–with music from the ‘Captain America: Winter Soldier’ soundtrack
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IPMavwtPkk
😀
WLR says
You guys are doing great work here. Superb writing. Keep on keepin us terrified, uhhhh, informed 😃 🤓
I could only think of Body Snatchers watching that…smiling boxes and all. Disturbing.
lane batot says
I don’t know, but at least where I live, I cain’t help but think them-thar drones is gonna be the BEST substitute for clay pigeons ever come up with!
Ugly Hombre says
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/08/world/asia/china-uighur-muslim-detention-camp.html?module=inline
“HOTAN, China — On the edge of a desert in far western China, an imposing building sits behind a fence topped with barbed wire. Large red characters on the facade urge people to learn Chinese, study law and acquire job skills. Guards make clear that visitors are not welcome.
Inside, hundreds of ethnic Uighur Muslims spend their days in a high-pressure indoctrination program, where they are forced to listen to lectures, sing hymns praising the Chinese Communist Party and write “self-criticism” essays, according to detainees who have been released.”
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/china-uighur-woman-abuse-chinese-internment-camp-muslim-minorities-xinjiang/
“A member of the Uighur minority on Monday detailed torture and abuse she says she experienced in one of the internment camps where the Chinese government has detained hundreds of thousands of religious minorities.”
“Mihrigul Tursun, speaking to reporters in Washington, said she was interrogated for four days in a row without sleep, had her hair shaved and was subjected to an intrusive medical examination following her second arrest in China in 2017. After she was arrested a third time, the treatment grew worse.”
“I thought that I would rather die than go through this torture and begged them to kill me,” Tursun, 29, told reporters at a meeting at the National Press Club.”
“Human rights groups say China has detained up to 2 million Uighurs to promote what the government calls “ethnic unity” in the country’s far west. On Monday, over 270 scholars from 26 countries released a statement drawing attention to “mass human rights abuses and deliberate attacks on indigenous cultures” taking place in China.”
The Chinese Communists hold the record for mass murder in the last century. Now they are putting up new Communist concentration camps all over China for those who object to Communist thought. Thanks to the wests stupidity- they have the money, technology and power to build a Bolshevik brave new world to the 9th power. And make the 1917 Russian Chekist horror’s seem like child’s play.
The social credit total social control Chicom program was built with assistance from American tech companies. “Just Do Evil”
https://www.androidpit.com/china-barres-millions-from-travel-with-social-credit-system-in-effect
“The Chinese social credit system has already been implemented in a number of the country’s regions. Earlier this year, the city of Hangzhou adopted a version of it, which rewarded positive behavior, such as volunteer work and punished traffic violations and other behavior deemed as negative.”
“As a result, millions in Hangzhou and other cities have already been affected by their negative personal score. According to Bloomberg, citing the National Development and Reform Commission, “people with bad credit in China have been blocked from booking more than 11 million flights and 4 million high-speed train trips”
It is going to be very bad for the Chinese people over all and it will be exported to the west, already the western press leftist enablers are bleating “it’s not so bad” and spiking the news about it.
Traitors.
No good will come of it for damn sure- tighten down your helmet straps.
Where the hell is Tank Man when you need him- anyway?
No question it is already making a mark in the west. It began creeping into US Law Enforcement under the warping of Compstat into a widget machine for the benefit of city council powerpoint presentations — cops driven by “stats” rather than discretion. It will get worse.
Ugly Hombre says
Yes no doubt…
https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3577095
“TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – In a manner similar to China’s existing social credit system, the Venezuelan government is reportedly preparing to introduce new smart ID cards capable of tracking and punishing its citizens.
“It was reported on Thursday, Nov. 15 that Venezuela, under the failing socialist government of Nicolas Maduro, is preparing to introduce a “Carnet de la Patria” (“Homeland Card”).”
“The database will reportedly control access to state-subsidized food assistance programs, healthcare programs, and even fuel purchases through the “Homeland Card.”
The Chicoms are exporting their total control citizen spy system to western socialist failed states already.
In Venezuela that wonderful Communist paradise where the people are starving and eating zoo animals, pet dogs and cats- and the women are leaving the country to work as “working girls” for food and hard money, The ruling Socialists thugs came up with big money and or oil to buy into the 9th power Chicom 1984 “Social Credit” system.. The better to destroy resistance to Communist Socialist thought,
Mao and Stalin are laughing and smoking in hell and happy to see it.
The western useless idiots are about to relearn what Communist rule really is. It won’t be pretty.
Wonder what Oliver Stone and Sean Penn’s “Social Credit” score would be?
How low can you go?
https://slate.com/technology/2018/11/venezuela-china-zte-authoritarian-surveillance-social-control-tech.html
The “Fatherland Card”
“The government has not only offered incentives related to IDs but also threats. In August, Maduro announced that only Venezuelans holding cards would continue to receive fuel subsidies. The latest Reuters report also said there are indications that the government has started denying subsidized food boxes to citizens without the card.”
Adolf that old National Socialist SOAB down there in Hades,- warmly approves.
lane batot says
Revelations, Chapter 13; 16–18th verse:“He required everyone–small and great, rich and poor, free and slave–to be given a mark on the right hand or on the forehead. And no one could buy or sell anything without that mark, which was either the name of the beast or the number representing his name.” Sorry to get all biblically prophetic there–just sayin’.….