Hacker News Reader

Comment by tavavex | Hacker News Reader

I wonder how long it's going to take until we have universal communication monitoring, including in real life. It's not an impossible technical challenge, it's just a question of time. Every spoken word recorded forever and scrutinized. After all forms of distant private communication fall, the spoken word will be the last one remaining. And all these arguments they're making apply to it, too.

View on HN

That went live about a decade ago. Heck, a lot of the people who built it and maintain it are here on HN, each getting paid so well and contributing only so little that if they can even admit it to themselves, they would never do it publicly.

What went live a decade ago? I feel like the monitoring technology we have now (let alone what we had in 2016) is still just scratching the surface, it can (will) get so much worse.

My post was talking about things like discreet microphones in public spaces that can automatically separate and recognize multiple voices, smartphones recording and sending every word (or, even better - 24/7 camera footage) to the relevant authorities. But it's not just recording - we still lack the deep level of organization to automatically and fully correlate and organize ALL these types of data from countless sources for everyone. All of these are things that we already have to limited extents, but they're still not taking full advantage of, yet.

I’ve heard mixed things about the efficacy of Palantir’s software but it’s certainly something that they’re working very hard on doing.

Doesn't the NSA technology already do all of this?

We already have that, except for half of real life.

They used to call it gawd and s4nta

> I wonder how long it's going to take until we have universal communication monitoring, including in real life. It's not an impossible technical challenge, it's just a question of time. Every spoken word recorded forever and scrutinized. After all forms of distant private communication fall, the spoken word will be the last one remaining. And all these arguments they're making apply to it, too.

There's a lot that scary about AI, but this is one of the scariest. Even if new good jobs pop up to employ all the people who work on things LLMs can do, governments and other powerful organizations now have this ability to analyze surveillance at scale that was unimaginable even by the East German Stasi.

It's conceivable we'll soon have a machine that can listen in on every phone call, read every text message and email, understand them, and flag dissident concepts and content. The manpower limit on oppressive surveillance will be gone. It'll be like having a spy following you around all the time, taking notes. All the guys who's job it is to listen can be redeployed as thugs to beat out the wrong-think.

It so great these smart kids invented all this. Truly for the benefit of mankind. /s

A scenario explored in the prescient and excellent TV show Person of Interest (2011). We're comfortably able to build The Machine and/or Samaritan by now.

I think you should blame the existence of authoritarian governments and not the technology. Seems odd to give them a pass. It's like blaming the gun instead of the shooter, and nobody does that. Right?

> I think you should blame the existence of authoritarian governments and not the technology. Seems odd to give them a pass.

I think you're confused. Those things aren't mutually exclusive, and it's a significant cognitive error on your part to think I'm giving "authoritarian governments" a pass.

And I'm not blaming the technology itself, but the people who are choosing to build it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com