MI6 chief: Tech giants are closer to running the world than politicians | Hacker News Reader

MI6 chief: Tech giants are closer to running the world than politicians

inews.co.uk

30 pointsnabla96 comments

This is exactly why I left the US intelligence community and all public service starting in 2011.

It’s all about the data. Used to be that the govt had the best data about the world and could theoretically use it to help the citizens (though almost never in practice). That flipped around the year 2000 and the Govt spent a decade to catch up to the ISPs post 9/11. However the govt investment into data/AI couldn’t match private investment even barely. I saw this up front and personal and NOBODY in congress or the White House cared about data or AI - arguably they still don’t and have no real data/AI talent left in the government.

It was very clear by then that Automation broadly was going to consume the planet, and that whomever controlled the data flow behind it would control the levers of power, overthrowing the veneer of “rule by the consent of the governed” (which is an impossible fantasy that can’t actually ever exist).

When Hintons lab won ILVRC in 2012 based on a data focused approach - that was the time that everyone should have sat up and realized what was about to happen. Many in AI did exactly that and that’s why we’re in the state of tech we are in.

Kurzweil predicted it, everyone in the singularity and transhuman communities saw it and the rest of the world has not changed their behavior and have accelerated this process.

Unless society as a whole gets her act together and organizes this planet for the benefit of humans and ecology, this is not going to the way anybody wants it.

Everything that removes the last vestiges of human directed action and control is accelerating rapidly.

We need to look at this from an inevitability perspective sprinkled with Murphy’s law.

Adding money to politics corrupts the will of the people, it will with 100% certainty, and the people who corrupt it will eventually end up in power. Super PACs have destroyed this country, allowing technigarchs to buy elections. You can’t prove or disprove control anymore, it’s pure capital infusion.

Lobbying is a scourge. I went on a trip to the heart of DC and got toured around by a lobbyist. They make you feel so relaxed and are very convincing how they’re helping as they guide you through how they work. Many others with me were very convinced and even defending the practice as necessary after my skeptical commentary. These are professional salespeople, wining and dining our politicians using corporate money. This is entirely disconnected from what is actually good for our society, is pure pay to gain. It has just seeped out and overflowed to the digital realm now.

A government having a dossier on every citizen would have been a headline 50 years ago. Today it’s open and free to corporations also. We’ve crossed the line and lost it miles away.

Now we have literally made up monetary systems that big banks can play with at will to extract as much wealth from solo investors, and effectively legalized insider trading and crypto scams.

If prices don’t drop (which I assume the opposite), we’re heading for another world war. China will invade Taiwan in a few years, Russia will keep the land and rearm for parts 5 and 6 into Poland and Europe, the US will be forced to dig into Venezuelan oil, and god knows what else.

This doesn’t feel like a bump on the road, this feels like an end to an era. I hope I’m wrong.

It feels like it has always been moving towards an oligarchy. For decades companies have been lining politicians pockets so why not save that money, effort and time and simply cut out the middle man?

Probably the fact that the politicians hold actual power of force, control of ownership, etc. Nobody alive today in a first world country has lived to see what happens when their own government's blood is up. Prigozhin had a personal army and he still got blown out of the air.

If the MI6 chief believed what she was saying, she wouldn't be conducting a press conference.

trade a i for an n,....closer to ruining the world, they trade off so it looks like two teams and yell at each other to make it look good, but it's amazing how many of them stay on the same island, at the same time.

I can confirm that at the congressional working level the difference in public statements have zero reflection on how the parties work together.

Namely, neither the Republicans nor Democrats have done anything whatsoever to reduce or curtail the powers of the federal or state government.

In every possible case where senators and Congress broadly are voting for more powers to spy, kill and otherwise dominate, they vote together the overwhelming majority of the time.

Is that to say that AOC and Crockett are “the same” as Tommy Tuberville?

No but those are the extreme outliers you see in public because they put on a show, and you only hear about a few.

Ultimately the U.S. citizens who vote are ignorant, spiteful, petty, and narcissistic. No different than any other country.

So unless that changes (it biologically can’t) then any effort to proactively solve it are futile in the long term

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