Big Blue fears human rights violations and mass surveillance.
Category: surveillance – Page 21
Jacinta González on ICE, Palantir, Big Tech and Surveillance
Jacinta González isn’t a scientist or technologist but her experience of surveillance technology is as eye-opening as any expert’s.
The Panopticon Is Already Here
Despite China’s considerable strides, industry analysts expect America to retain its current AI lead for another decade at least. But this is cold comfort: China is already developing powerful new surveillance tools, and exporting them to dozens of the world’s actual and would-be autocracies. Over the next few years, those technologies will be refined and integrated into all-encompassing surveillance systems that dictators can plug and play.
Xi Jinping is using artificial intelligence to enhance his government’s totalitarian control—and he’s exporting this technology to regimes around the globe.
How to hide from a drone – the subtle art of ‘ghosting’ in the age of surveillance
Drones of all sizes are being used by environmental advocates to monitor deforestation, by conservationists to track poachers, and by journalists and activists to document large protests. As a political sociologist who studies social movements and drones, I document a wide range of nonviolent and pro-social drone uses in my new book, “The Good Drone.” I show that these efforts have the potential to democratize surveillance.
But when the Department of Homeland Security redirects large, fixed-wing drones from the U.S.-Mexico border to monitor protests, and when towns experiment with using drones to test people for fevers, it’s time to think about how many eyes are in the sky and how to avoid unwanted aerial surveillance. One way that’s within reach of nearly everyone is learning how to simply disappear from view.
Sophia Life: Interview with AI Researcher Tina White
I am for ethical Ai. What about you?
Sophia interviews Stanford AI Researcher Tina White about how A.I. & Robotics can help stop the spread of Covid19 through contact tracing while preserving users’ privacy.
- What are you doing to stop the spread? 0:50
- What is contact tracing? How does it help stop the spread? 2:28
- How did you get the idea for your app? 2:54
- Why is privacy important to humans? 3:46.
Check out Tina’s app here: https://www.covid-watch.org/
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China Can Now Enforce Its “Brave New World” Tyranny
Anyone here comfortable with these levels of surveillance?
Such mercantile tactics are alleged, practices which have been able to undercut prices against those of the products of legitimately operating free market companies here in the US and elsewhere!
So how should we Americans respond? Certainly by being alert to any incursions into our personal freedoms, although it does not seem the US Supreme Court’s recent demand that Trump supply authorities with his Federal and State tax returns was inappropriate.
Let’s face it, it is becoming harder and harder to keep the freedoms we have in a world rife with constant invasive attempts to gain access to private personal information.
China and AI: What the World Can Learn and What It Should Be Wary of
China announced in 2017 its ambition to become the world leader in artificial intelligence (AI) by 2030. While the US still leads in absolute terms, China appears to be making more rapid progress than either the US or the EU, and central and local government spending on AI in China is estimated to be in the tens of billions of dollars.
The move has led — at least in the West — to warnings of a global AI arms race and concerns about the growing reach of China’s authoritarian surveillance state. But treating China as a “villain” in this way is both overly simplistic and potentially costly. While there are undoubtedly aspects of the Chinese government’s approach to AI that are highly concerning and rightly should be condemned, it’s important that this does not cloud all analysis of China’s AI innovation.
The world needs to engage seriously with China’s AI development and take a closer look at what’s really going on. The story is complex and it’s important to highlight where China is making promising advances in useful AI applications and to challenge common misconceptions, as well as to caution against problematic uses.
Why China’s Race For AI Dominance Depends On Math
The best way to prevent this is by focusing on the basics. America needs a major all-of-society push to increase the number of U.S. students being trained in both the fundamentals of math and in the more advanced, rigorous, and creative mathematics. Leadership in implementing this effort will have to come from the U.S. government and leading technology companies, and through the funding of ambitious programs. A few ideas come to mind: talent-spotting schemes, the establishment of math centers, and a modern successor to the post-Sputnik National Defense Education Act, which would provide math scholarships to promising students along with guaranteed employment in either public or private enterprises.
Forget about “AI” itself: it’s all about the math, and America is failing to train enough citizens in the right kinds of mathematics to remain dominant.
THE WORLD first took notice of Beijing’s prowess in artificial intelligence (AI) in late 2017, when BBC reporter John Sudworth, hiding in a remote southwestern city, was located by China’s CCTV system in just seven minutes. At the time, it was a shocking demonstration of power. Today, companies like YITU Technology and Megvii, leaders in facial recognition technology, have compressed those seven minutes into mere seconds. What makes those companies so advanced, and what powers not only China’s surveillance state but also its broader economic development, is not simply its AI capability, but rather the math power underlying it.