Fuck AI

Richard Feynman once asked: Don't you have time to think?

And people in power, politicians, used car salesmen and other shysters read about that and thought: "ideally they do not, no."

It's genuinely depressing how often I see that sentiment expressed with 100% sincerity over on LinkedIn. I've muted more Connections in the last year than in the whole of the previous decade, just to stop myself from inevitably posting a professionally limiting comment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System

If anyone wants to read what's there and what is a misconception. I think the CCP is known to have a firm grip on people. They do a lot of surveillance, video and internet, they're inside of the apps of your phone like WeChat, they process that data and there's probably a lot stored in some central databases. We know since Snowden that the US does similar things, just that services aren't as centralized there... The Black Mirror episode variant of the "social score" is a myth. But there are media reports that they even track people abroad, like foreign students including their behaviour, and occasionally mess with them. But that works the old-school way. I'm not sure about expats. Interestingly China is big on AI and they reportedly use it for policing. But they signed a 2021 UN ban on using AI in social scoring. I think it's generally a bit difficult to tell the truth since governments aren't transparent with the surveillance stuff or predictive policing. It's some fascist fantasy to have that, but that has nothing to do with China in specific, we get that in other places as well. China is on the list, they're making an effort since 2016. Xi definitely announced then they were going to extensively use "information systems" to make the country harmonious and prosperous. I have no doubt they followed up on it. And it's used by several US police departments in several states, and I think India and the UK.