I've just sent this link to a friend with a comment which I consider too uncouth to post here. Needless to say, this stuff scares the shit out of me.
I'm far from being a tech Luddite but if this stuff continues to go the way its going without any public discussion and oversight and strict concomitant regulation then we humans will effectively lose all of our autonomy—we'll cease to be humans and become automatons who are scared of our own shadows.
Essentially, this tech has the potential to relegate the traditional authoritarian police state, the Stasi et al back into the kindergarten class—we won't know what's struck us if or when this happens.
There are evil techie shits in this world who dream up evil stuff like this, we normal techies need to rally against them before it's too late.
This is a prime example of why the study of ethics has to become a major and significant part of all science and engineering courses. It won't change human behavior but mandating it into courses will ensure that everyone understands the implications of their research and work.
That's to say that in future no techie would ever be able to use the Nuremberg Defense after they've caused the shit to hit the fan.
Blaming engineers for what is essentially a political issue will not solve the problem. There will always be smart people willing to work for either a lot of money or in the name of national defense.
If you want a change, work on and fix the political system. Get laws passed that will prevent this, and get oversight put in place that would prevent the under-the-table surveillance that seems to be more and more previlant.
No, absolving engineers from responsibility is the wrong move. People are responsible for what they make: hiding behind "oh it's the system's fault not mine!" is morally bankrupt. It's literally being a coward.
And there will always be strong young men willing to commit more immediately tangible atrocities and brutalize the weak, for money or national defense.
What would techies rallying against them even do compared to anyone else? I mean sinister half-mirror surveillance shit like this is bad but I don't see how them being against it is relevant to stopping it. Adversarial patterns maybe but that doesn't seem very effective as a counter.
Especially when sinister mass surveillance approaches tend to be big, dumb, and not caring about accuracy because it is incidental to their goals. We have been screaming at them about how fighting cryptography only hurts yourself and that their use of facial recognition at scale is illiterate but they don't care.
I'm far from being a tech Luddite but if this stuff continues to go the way its going without any public discussion and oversight and strict concomitant regulation then we humans will effectively lose all of our autonomy—we'll cease to be humans and become automatons who are scared of our own shadows.
Essentially, this tech has the potential to relegate the traditional authoritarian police state, the Stasi et al back into the kindergarten class—we won't know what's struck us if or when this happens.
There are evil techie shits in this world who dream up evil stuff like this, we normal techies need to rally against them before it's too late.
This is a prime example of why the study of ethics has to become a major and significant part of all science and engineering courses. It won't change human behavior but mandating it into courses will ensure that everyone understands the implications of their research and work.
That's to say that in future no techie would ever be able to use the Nuremberg Defense after they've caused the shit to hit the fan.