05-10-2009, 06:29 PM
(This post was last modified: 05-10-2009, 07:44 PM by Jan Klimkowski.)
This is a totalitarian fantasy of control that's now trapped in an endless feedback loop.
On the one hand, the spooky systems are gathering huge amounts of information. Indeed, they will soon be collecting everything, essentially. I'm sure they'll soon know who it was that farted in the supermarket queue....
On the other hand, the amount of time human operators get to investigate this information is rapidly diminishing. Most of the "interrogation" of this information will be performed by Artificial Intelligence software programmes. These will be deep black, and far in advance of those commercially available. There can be little doubt that these AI programmes will be rubbish at processing the information to arrive at a true and meaningful interpretation of what's really going on.
Consequence? These spooky systems will be generating endless false positives about terrorist plots transporting us to the Eve of Destruction.
Here's the Spymaster arriving with his Top Secret dossier outlining a plot to kill thousands with common ingredients that can be bought in the corner shop.
Here's the Politician, feeling the weight of history on his shoulder, the privilege and the responsibility to decide how to act upon the chilling information in that Top Secret dossier.
The responsibility, and perhaps the ability to save the lives of a thousand innocent people, rubbing the sleep out of their eyes as they catch the 7:50 to Waterloo, oblivious to the danger stalking them.
It's enough to make that very rare beast, a politician of integrity, wake up in their bed with the zombie sweats and order armed officers or private military contractors to shoot first and ask questions later. Especially since corpses can't speak.....
The bits and bytes of information light up the cyber pathways.
The AI, like a Burroughsian junky, is croaking, begging, for ever more information, more more more information, to fill the hypodermic to the rim and then plunge the needle into the vein, to send the next fix of warm, reassuring data flooding through the matrix architecture of bits, bytes and nodules....
Who cares if the information is littered with bravado, drunken throwaway comments, forgotten as soon as uttered. If the information is inevitably contaminated like a batch of heroin cut with arsenic....
Ultimately, the AI itself will take control. Like HAL, confident of its own infallibility, blaming any mistakes on "human error".
The data cannot lie. The AI does not make mistakes. To err is human, uniquely. The human error which must be eliminated to keep the system pure and safe.
The story of HAL is a parable of Their hubris...
Their insane desire for knowledge of our each and every twitch....
Their hatred of Life in its myriad unique and idiosyncratic forms...
Of Their fantasy of Control and Their love of Death.
On the one hand, the spooky systems are gathering huge amounts of information. Indeed, they will soon be collecting everything, essentially. I'm sure they'll soon know who it was that farted in the supermarket queue....
On the other hand, the amount of time human operators get to investigate this information is rapidly diminishing. Most of the "interrogation" of this information will be performed by Artificial Intelligence software programmes. These will be deep black, and far in advance of those commercially available. There can be little doubt that these AI programmes will be rubbish at processing the information to arrive at a true and meaningful interpretation of what's really going on.
Consequence? These spooky systems will be generating endless false positives about terrorist plots transporting us to the Eve of Destruction.
Here's the Spymaster arriving with his Top Secret dossier outlining a plot to kill thousands with common ingredients that can be bought in the corner shop.
Here's the Politician, feeling the weight of history on his shoulder, the privilege and the responsibility to decide how to act upon the chilling information in that Top Secret dossier.
The responsibility, and perhaps the ability to save the lives of a thousand innocent people, rubbing the sleep out of their eyes as they catch the 7:50 to Waterloo, oblivious to the danger stalking them.
It's enough to make that very rare beast, a politician of integrity, wake up in their bed with the zombie sweats and order armed officers or private military contractors to shoot first and ask questions later. Especially since corpses can't speak.....
The bits and bytes of information light up the cyber pathways.
The AI, like a Burroughsian junky, is croaking, begging, for ever more information, more more more information, to fill the hypodermic to the rim and then plunge the needle into the vein, to send the next fix of warm, reassuring data flooding through the matrix architecture of bits, bytes and nodules....
Who cares if the information is littered with bravado, drunken throwaway comments, forgotten as soon as uttered. If the information is inevitably contaminated like a batch of heroin cut with arsenic....
Ultimately, the AI itself will take control. Like HAL, confident of its own infallibility, blaming any mistakes on "human error".
The data cannot lie. The AI does not make mistakes. To err is human, uniquely. The human error which must be eliminated to keep the system pure and safe.
The story of HAL is a parable of Their hubris...
Their insane desire for knowledge of our each and every twitch....
Their hatred of Life in its myriad unique and idiosyncratic forms...
Of Their fantasy of Control and Their love of Death.
"It means this War was never political at all, the politics was all theatre, all just to keep the people distracted...."
"Proverbs for Paranoids 4: You hide, They seek."
"They are in Love. Fuck the War."
Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
"Ccollanan Pachacamac ricuy auccacunac yahuarniy hichascancuta."
The last words of the last Inka, Tupac Amaru, led to the gallows by men of god & dogs of war
"Proverbs for Paranoids 4: You hide, They seek."
"They are in Love. Fuck the War."
Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
"Ccollanan Pachacamac ricuy auccacunac yahuarniy hichascancuta."
The last words of the last Inka, Tupac Amaru, led to the gallows by men of god & dogs of war