Tech Dystopia

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/63687232

Ukrainian Forces Captured A Russian Position Using ONLY Unmanned Ground Robotic Systems

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.today/post/50462470

Lack of social interaction causes stress and boredom in birds, especially more intelligent ones like parrots, leading to pterotillomania - plucking out their own feathers. How much more then do humans need social interaction to stay healthy? Wikipedia claims feather plucking has similar characteristics to trichotillomania - humans pulling out their own hair. This is often caused by anxiety.

Since the industrial revolution technology has been a disaster for human social interaction. First we replaced our fellow workers and even work animals with machines. Then we made trains to get further away from our own communities. Then transport became individualized and isolated with cars. Human interaction was removed from entertainment through radio, television and eventually personal smartphones. And worst of all, socialization itself became mediated via the phone then the internet, and finally it lost all humanity when people began to talk with AIs.

Is it any wonder that anxiety, depression and mental illness have been sharply rising in the 21st century, and have been rising even since 1938? The coming crisis of AI-induced psychosis is just the latest in a long line of mental health disasters caused by modern technology.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.today/post/50424637

UKHSA will explore options to work with ‘big tech’ to use live location data and artificial intelligence (AI) for a more rapid, large-scale detection and alert system during pandemics. These services will adopt a whole-of-society approach with accessible and multilingual formats, and UKHSA will work to consider and build the equivalent tools needed for digitally excluded communities.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/pandemic-preparedness-strategy-building-our-capabilities/uk-government-approach-to-implementing-the-strategy-england-only

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.today/post/49749386

If the video isn't working, try these links:

• https://cdn.videy.co/8f2f25e11.mp4
• https://streamable.com/0xj1ni (slightly better quality but only up for 2 days)

Clipped from full hour long video (around 49 minutes in): https://www.removedute.com/video/jmhFAjqbxnQ

Europol report: https://www.europol.europa.eu/cms/sites/default/files/documents/The-Unmanned-Future-Report.pdf

cross-posted from: https://awful.systems/post/7449888

h/t to Ed Zitron: https://bsky.app/profile/edzitron.com/post/3mfxqjqoias2q

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WSJ PATRICK SISON/ASSOCIATED PRESS Within hours of declaring that the federal government will end its use of artificial-intelligence tools made by tech company Anthropic, President Trump launched a major air attack in Iran with the help of those very same tools. Commands around the world, including U.S. Central Command in the Middle East, use Anthropic's Claude AI tool, people familiar with the matter confirmed. Centcom declined to comment about specific systems being used in its ongoing operation against Iran. The command uses the tool for intelligence assessments, target identification and simulating battle scenarios even as tension between the company and Pentagon ratcheted up, the people said, highlighting how embedded the AI tools are in military operations. The administration and Anthropic have been feuding for months over how its AI models can be used by the Pentagon. Trump on Friday ordered agencies to stop working with the company and the Defense Department designated it a security threat and risk to its supply chain.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.today/post/48410284

Article: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2516885-ais-cant-stop-recommending-nuclear-strikes-in-war-game-simulations/

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. — Upton Sinclair

Swisher is a great example of what went wrong in tech reporting through Silicon Valley’s long boom, from the starting gun of internet privatization to the post-Trump techlash. Journalists like Swisher got far too close to the people they covered and bought into the lies they were weaving as the money rushed in and everyone got rich. They got too absorbed in the deceptive story the industry told itself to question whether it all made sense, even as they helped sell the narrative of tech’s promise and inevitability to the public. Now we’re all dealing with the fallout of that period, and while some have admitted they got it wrong, far too many are trying to pretend they were asking the hard questions the whole time.

Swisher spends her last chapter repeating much of the bullshit about generative AI that tech executives have been spreading for the past year, calling it a new “Cambrian explosion,” musing about the ways it could improve virtually every aspect of life, and complimenting Musk for conflating human and computer intelligence a few years back. It shows just how little she’s able to cast a critical eye on what she covers, and how influenced her opinions are by the tech power players she turns to for assessments of the industry. Swisher closes the book by pasting in some nonsense generated by ChatGPT and repeating claims about driverless cars and workplace automation that feel a decade out of date. After all this time, she still can’t see through the hype when it actually matters.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/103229

We have, in Western society, managed to simultaneously botch the dreams of democracy, capitalism, social coherence, and techno-utopianism, all at once. It's embarrassing actually. I am embarrassed. You should be embarrassed.

The truth is, functioning markets are not "free" at all. They are regulated. Unregulated markets rapidly devolve into monopolies, oligopolies, monopsonies, and, if things get really bad, libertarianism.

The job of market regulation - fundamentally a restriction on your freedom - is to prevent all that bad stuff. Markets work well as long as they're in, as we call it in engineering, the "continuous control region," that is, the part far away from any weird outliers. You need no participant in the market to have too much power. You need downside protection (bankruptcy, social safety net, insurance). You need fair enforcement of contracts (which is different from literal enforcement of contracts).

The major rework we need isn't some math theory, some kind of Paxos for Capitalism, or Paxos for Government. The sad, boring fact is that no fundamental advances in math or computer science are needed to solve these problems.