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Comment by swalsh | Hacker News Reader

10 years ago I was so excited and optimistic about the future technology was going to bring us. As that future comes closer it's quickly becoming quite clear that this entire industry is bringing us a giant dystopian future. Tech companies have more power then governments, individual privacy is gone. Corporations, already pretty impersonal, have completed the transition to treating people as "resources", completely dropping the word "human".

We all need to think about the future we're building here.

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I wish it wasn't true, but the path we're headed down is pretty much set now.

I can't help feeling that the habit of removing identifying markers (names, ages, etc) from resumes to try to ensure equality in hiring is also part of the same ill-fated direction.

I dearly wish that the world I was leaving my kids wasn't so dehumanised.

It goes beyond resumes. Our criminal justice system also uses AI to make judgement decisions. I understand the need to eliminate bias from systems (though I question how much bias is actually being eliminated via these systems) but the need to humanize people when they are most vulnerable is important.

> I can't help feeling that the habit of removing identifying markers (names, ages, etc) from resumes to try to ensure equality in hiring is also part of the same ill-fated direction.

What? There is well documented and clear evidence that these indicators actually lead to highly biased decisions regarding who gets interviewed. Removing them is the right thing to do.

There are positives, and there are also negatives. Both have been well-documented.

My point was a more general one, that we are being sucked into a strangely anti-human world where those in power would like nothing more than to reduce us to a mere employee number. Just data in a spreadsheet. It's so much less messy that way, right?

My plan when I retire (about 10 years) is to have no internet and no mobile phone. I really can't see what I'd be losing.

Sounds a bit Black Mirror Complex. People were complaining about being treated as resources since the industrial revolution - and before then serfs knew that they were resources! More power than governments, seriously? The only time I have seen that rhetoric come up is complete fucking morons complaining about encryption and wanting to outlaw math.

Help help! I’m being repressed! https://youtu.be/ZtYU87QNjPw

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