A disheartening glimpse into the future....
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Interesting if frightening article on how China plans to use digital information to rate it's citizens "social credit"....
The tyranny of algorithms is part of our lives: soon they could rate everything we do
Using a secret algorithm, Sesame credit constantly scores people from 350 to 950, and its ratings are based on factors including considerations of “interpersonal relationships” and consumer habits. Bluntly put, being friends with low-rated people is bad news. Buying video games, for example, gets you marked down. Participation is voluntary but easily secured, thanks to an array of enticements. High scores unlock privileges such as being able to rent a car without a deposit, and fast-tracked European visa applications. There are also more romantic benefits: the online dating service Baihe gives people with good scores prominence on its platforms.
Exactly how all this will relate to the version of social credit eventually implemented is unclear: licences that might have enabled the systems to be rolled out further ran out last year. There again, Ant Financial has stated that it wants to “help build a social integrity system” – and the existing public and private pilots have a similar sense of social control, and look set to feed the same social divisions. If you are mouldering away towards the bottom of the hierarchies, life will clearly be unpleasant. But if you manage to be a high-flyer, the pleasures of fast-tracking and open doors will be all yours, though even the most fleeting human interaction will give off the crackle of status anxiety.
In the short term, the biggest consequences will arrive in the field of insurance, where the collective pooling of risk is set to be supplanted by models that focus tightly on individuals. Thanks to connected devices, insurers could soon know how much television you watch, whether you always obey traffic signals, and how well your household plumbing works. Already, car insurance schemes offer lower premiums if people install tracking devices that monitor their driving habits; and health insurance companies such as the British firm Vitality offer deals based on access to data from fitness trackers. In the near future, as with Sesame Credit, people will presumably sign up for surveillance-based insurance in their droves because of such simple incentives, and those squeamish about privacy may simply have to pay more. Many people, of course, will simply be deemed impossible to protect.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/05/algorithms-rate-cr...
Coming soon to a government near you?
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Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: Hitchhiker awaiting "true call"
Your viva social credit score
Your viva social credit score is higher than mine.
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: Ausonius
I don't want any social
I don't want any social credit score and I certainly don't want people making decisions that can affect my life based on one.
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: Mylar
I was going to post a time
I was going to post a time traveling joke, but nobody laughed.
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: vivalavuvuzela
It already happens now, in a
It already happens now, in a roundabout and lesser way.... Some employers will check your credit score as part of a background check, and I'd say at least every potential hire gets at least a gander on Facebook and The Googles, so it's kinda the same thing, ain't it? Insurance companies factor in any and all data they can get their hands on already and have always been ahead on that curve.
Dangerous and scary technology for sure... but I'm strangely captivated by the prospect of overlaying a person's consumer habits and negative/violent social interactions on top of our current financial-only ranking system.
Especially if it was public access... what scope are we talking here? 
Just who gets to decide the metrics and the effective limits of use? Some things are easy... like excessive or environmentally irresponsible consumption, criminal or violent tendencies... etc. I agree that video games should incur a small ding. LOL Bullets? The algorithm could also cross check for dangerous combos. Like if you take psychotropic meds and buy tons of bullets and FPS games, your score tanks and maybe even sends off a red flag somewhere. LOL
We all laugh, but this is the direction of things. It doesn't really come as stretch - or surprise to me - to combine social behaviors with the current financial ranking system, especially given technology capable of it. It's intriguing and frightening all at the same time. It all comes down to how much you trust those in control of such a system.
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: Druba
When I first got on Facebook,
When I first got on Facebook, I got spammed with lots of musical sales (mostly musician friends, I was still playing a fair amount), then as my hospital coworkers started to friend me i'd get lots of medical spam, now it's lots of mining spam. To make matters worse, I don't have a cell phone, and I don't use my laptop in the field, but my truck is fairly new (2013), and wherever it goes, my spam follows! If I spend some time in SW Oregon, all my "searches" change to the Grants Pass / Medford locations (movies, supermarkets, etc). And when I come back home it often doesn't reset, so they can follow me in my stupid truck...
woe to the republic, and the fascist theocracy for which it falls...
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: Def. High
It's a Brave New World.
It's a Brave New World.
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: 19.5 Degrees
Yet, if a supermarket tracks
Yet, if a supermarket tracks your every move inside their store and out - under the auspices of "marketing" - it's OK because all is fair under capitalism?
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: Briank
I’ve watched one Black Mirror
I’ve watched one Black Mirror (Netflix) episode, “Nosedive.” It’s about a world where lives are dictated by their social media ratings.
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: An organ grinder’s tune
this should make you happy
this should make you happy thom.
the consolidation of the corporation and govt. is precisely what you "conservatives" have been aiming for.
this is bad because its "china"?
lol.
you have nobody to blame but yourself.
everything is for sale.
corporations are people.
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: Ausonius
Give it a rest Turtle, it's
Give it a rest Turtle, it's really getting old.
"so it's kinda the same thing, ain't it? "
I'd say the difference is that this is a supercharged version of what is currently taking place. And in this specific instance it is not being used by corporations to try to get you to buy more stuff but is being used (or will be) by the government to make decisions about what options you will have in the future regarding career prospects and lifestyle choices. If they think that your activities don't mesh with their preferred choices then they will curtail your options in the future.
On the other hand, if it kept Turtle off the Zone maybe it would all be worth it.
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: _
>> the consolidation of the
>> the consolidation of the corporation and govt. is precisely what you "conservatives" have been aiming for.
I have never heard any conservatives express an idea like this.
Conservatives are against public ownership of corporations. They want minimal governmental regulation towards corporations. They want minimal corporate taxes. How does any of that equate to a consolidation?
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: An organ grinder’s tune
the corporations make the
the corporations make the laws.
do you two have trouble seeing this?
ps. what's getting old is your "liberal" knee jerk commentary.
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: An organ grinder’s tune
>They want ZERO minimal
>They want ZERO
minimalgovernmental regulation towards corporations.<fixed it fer ya.
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: jeff
Hillary Clinton hates you
Hillary Clinton is an amazing woman.
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: Hitchhiker awaiting "true call"
>>>>>Give it a rest Turtle,
>>>>>Give it a rest Turtle, it's really getting old.
Was this originally an admin email with your name on it?
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: _
>> Hillary Clinton is an
>> Hillary Clinton is an amazing woman.
JR, I think it's time you pass the trolling torch to Knotesau and Chacho. It's been a few years since you've gone over 100 posts and you're showing a lack of creativity.
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: Druba
Isn't the RNC and DNC just
Isn't the RNC and DNC just different wings of the same bird, and lobbying leaders is the political process. And while Billionaire Oligarchs battle it out over resources and contracts, this is about information, and boxing up the public into the various categories that are of interest to them. No need to be concerned how the "other" side is going to screw us, they've both been taking turns for a very long time. I have to admit though, those Russians make some pretty funny memes, maybe if they sold lithographs of them they could balance their stupid budget too!
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: ________
.
.
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: Ausonius
And to further complicate
And to further complicate matters.....
AI reconstructs whatever you see just by reading a brain scan
AI can pluck images directly from a person’s brain. Given an fMRI scan of someone looking at a picture, an algorithm can reconstruct the original picture from the scan. Though the results aren’t yet perfect, they are still often recognisable and hint at what may be possible in the future.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2162862-ai-reconstructs-whatever-yo...
But hey, not to worry. I'm sure that as we consolidate more power to a centralized government that they will only use this technology for benign and compassionate uses. Big Government Is Our Friend.
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: ________
Big business is so much
Big business is so much better. Move along.
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: An organ grinder’s tune
i had a brain scan recently.
i had a brain scan recently.
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: Def. High
Did they find one?
Did they find one?
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: An organ grinder’s tune
haven't gotten the results
haven't gotten the results back yet surf.
the dr. looked like buster from arrested development...
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: jazfish
Thread title. Don't forget
Thread title. Don't forget about those Millennials.
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: jazfish
(((Future brains))))))
(((Future brains))))))
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: Hitchhiker awaiting "true call"
Millennials won't be able to
Millennials won't be able to afford housing. That's worse than the great depression.
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: New & Improved
>> If I spend some time in
>> If I spend some time in SW Oregon, all my "searches" change to the Grants Pass / Medford locations (movies, supermarkets, etc). <<
Billboards work the same way. Just sayin'.
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: Ausonius
Update....
Update....
Scientists race to finish line for AI that reads human minds
Real-life scientists are engaged in constructing some artificial intelligence algorithms that can pretty much do just that — see into a person’s mind and determine what’s being thought.
What’s more, they’re making gains.
They called their process “deep image reconstruction,” which is really quite different from most of the previous science-based, mind-reading approaches that have used MRI scans to record brain activity and piece together the pixels in image with various, albeit tepid, results.
As CNBC put it: “Machine learning has previously been used to study brain scans … and generate visualizations of what a person is thinking when referring to simple, binary images like black and white letters or simple geographic shapes.”
But these Japanese researchers have gone beyond. They’ve tapped into AI to decode images with colors and shapes and objects — complexities of the imagination.
Not all are the reviews are glowing.
Next Shark, the so-dubbed “Voice of Global Asians,” reacted with this rather bleak headline: “Japanese Scientists Just Used AI to Read Minds and We Are Scared AF.”
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/mar/5/scientists-race-to-finis...
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: ________
no one care about your stupid
no one cares about your stupid updates
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: Hitchhiker awaiting "true call"
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: Fly
But but I got mines!!!
Is this new to anyone? People have been unwittingly and even knowingly providing their data for years. Companies have been collecting and selling it for just as long. Its just easier in a digital world where people don't care about it anymore. The genie is out.
sigh.
mylar made me laugh!
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: An organ grinder’s tune
corporations uber alles
corporations uber alles
because pretty much every time thom says "government" you can replace that with "corporations".