This morning, against my better judgment, I read an article in Slate about how AI is going to make spying easier and supercharge surveillance. The basics are that we already live in a society that is heavily under surveillance. There are cameras everywhere always recording and the data is being kept and queried. We’ve seen this in crime shows plenty of times (show me every red truck that was on that block in the last month). In addition to cameras everywhere, we have audio everywhere (phones, alexa, etc.). I know a lot of people who have had the experience of having said something and then saw an ad on social media related to the thing they said. In addition to microphones and cameras, GPS knows where we go, and our credit card companies and online stores know our shopping habits. All of this stuff already exists. What AI is doing is changing the way this stuff is being used. It, at least according to the article in Slate, is being used to summarize anything and everything. It can quickly rip through someone’s online profiles and know who they interact with, when, and in what context. One goal, naturally, is to sell us more shit. But I suspect the end goal is to consolidate and gain power. Control of information (and the ability to control what we see, hear, and read) in the information age is power.
I say I read the article against my better judgment because I neither need nor want to be riled up about something like this first thing in the morning. It makes me question my place in the world and how (or if) I want to participate. Ironically, I’m pretty sure it was an AI supported algorithm that knew to recommend that article.
To begin, we don’t need to buy more shit. The world is on fire, near extinct turtles are being killed by fishing debris (another article I read this morning), and this whole life on earth thing is looking pretty untenable. We need to consume less – full stop. Beyond that, we have extreme disparities in wealth, health, and overall well-being. The people who control these tools designed to profile us and market to us are becoming, and will continue to become, extremely wealthy by spying on us. But the thing that bothers me most about all of this is that we have no choice. There is little consent. When there are options for consent, it’s usually buried in pages of legal mumbo-jumbo in the form of a user agreement. If you want to use the product, you have to consent to being surveilled and having your data stored somewhere to be scoured later. Seldom do these consent forms explain what one might be consenting to. As an example, I’ve applied to several jobs where I’ve been asked to allow AI to be used in the screening process. What I don’t recall seeing on those applications was an explanation of how AI will be used. And without an explanation on how, I have no idea what I’m consenting to. And of course, I assume that not consenting takes me out of the candidate pool entirely. In some of the legalese, companies have tried to stuff language along the lines of “to be used now or by technologies yet to be developed…” WTF is that?
In these moments of existential frustration (the world is moving in this direction and I don’t want to go along with it), I feel powerless. In these moments, I try to turn inward and say, “that’s just my distrust of corporations talking, and it’s feeding my fears.” But time and time again, that distrust is proven to be valid. Corporations, especially some of the really really big ones, lie and cheat all the time. Google the keywords banking scandal and you’ll have no shortage of fodder for the anti-greed grist mill (fake accounts being opened, hidden fees, usurious practices). The fines they face are such minor slaps on the writs compared to the profits they reap that they write them off as “the cost of doing business.” Or read up on how corporations routinely fail to live up to their very publicly stated climate promises and how our most trusted media sources have been complicit in greenwashing corporate reputations. Time and time again, tech and corporate entities create massive problems for people and communities and earth, and do far too little to rectify the problems they’ve created. Just this week it was reported that Jeff Bezos donated $120 million to help solve homelessness while also backing a startup designed to buy up single family homes and turn them into rentals (which will almost certainly exacerbate the housing crisis by reducing housing stock and putting it in the hands of market-driven landlords). Fortunately, there is a growing chorus of voices making the argument that housing is a basic human right and not a commodity to be added to the investment portfolio. Fortunately, although perhaps a little too late, there are bills being proposed to stop private equity from getting into the real estate game.
But perhaps the most dangerous things about all of this (surveillance, spying, and market/consumer manipulation) is that it has the ability to change our behaviors and give more power and control to those who are watching, surveilling, storing, and marketing. Tell a person they’re being watched, and they begin to behave differently. Tie their livelihood or happiness or access to health and well being to a consent form and we begin to enter some pretty dangerous territory. The threat of 1984‘s Big Brother has loomed in the American psyche for decades. The advantage of living in a Democracy is that we have the ability to vote in or vote out our elected officials. But in this case, it’s the corporations who are watching, profiting, and gaining control. They are Big Brother. And the last time I checked, none of them were elected. At best, they answer to their board, their shareholders, and whatever drives profits. At worst, they don’t even answer to them. In the worst cases, they answer only to their own egos and their own vision of how society should work. Only in our twisted system could a billionaire buy a company, have said company lose half it’s value, very publicly (in a video taped interview with the New York Times) tell said company’s advertisers to go fuck themselves, and still get investors, backers, and supporters.
I don’t know what to do about any of this. I vacillate between becoming a hermit and living a publicly outrageous life. I’m tempted to put so much information out there (and maybe even my own disinformation) that the picture of who I am to some AI machine is distorted and useless. I don’t think the answer is to go into hiding – mostly because until we have tighter regulations, we will continue to see fewer and fewer spaces where our data isn’t be harvested in an attempt to sell us something. What I’ll most likely do, is nothing. I’ll continue my with habits and maybe try to consume less (media, stuff, everything). I’ll continue to try to live an open and authentic life – you can’t steal from me what I willingly give away. I’ll continue to quietly rage against the ever grinding machine that is our overly-commoditized and segmented modern society.