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Signal's Meredith Whittaker: AI is fundamentally 'a surveillance technology' (techcrunch.com)

submitted 1 year ago by KLISHDFSDF@lemmy.ml to c/signal@lemmy.ml

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Why is it that so many companies that rely on monetizing the data of their users seem to be extremely hot on AI? If you ask Signal president Meredith Whittaker (and I did), she’ll tell you it’s simply because “AI is a surveillance technology.”

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[–] Maoo@hexbear.net -1 points 1 year ago

Absolutely.

Modern AI is nothing more than models that can be trained (have parameters set) by massive amounts of data to carry out certain pattern recognition / regurgitation tasks (with socially constructed bias of course).

Where are there pattern recognition problems to solve and massive data? Mostly text, images, location data, audio recordings, and (e-)commerce. The sources of these are nearly all a form of surveillance, and as a result, the models are also well-suites for it. The other side drives it: the government wants to surveil (cops, basically) and private corps want to create and dominate markets from nothing (and get government contracts).

Examples:

Worldwide high-res satellite imagery.
Facebook
Twitter
Reddit
Voice calls
Video calls
Translation engines
Your emails
Your personal location history
Your purchase history
Your web browsing habits
Street-level imagery
Your genome
How you play video games
What entertainment you watch.