
AI could be “a fascist's dream” - malloryerik
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/mar/13/artificial-intelligence-ai-abuses-fascism-donald-trump
======
digitalsushi
I'm not in the field of machine learning, or AI or even know how to use these
terms with any expertise. It has, however become a lingering thought that
there will come a day where everything we have clicked, liked, linked, saved
in email, posted on walls, left in caches, and perhaps even said in audio or
mouthed in video, will eventually be distilled and converted into some
hashcode that instantly exposes our true selves. Our private biases, our
religious, sexual preferences, our kinks, our racisms, all our private inner
thoughts are possibly one powerful calculation away from being public. And I
dont know if an open person can appreciate the type of hell that would be for
a shy person.

~~~
jasonkostempski
For the existing generation it would be an obvious issue, but I wonder if shy
people would even form in such an environment.

~~~
mercer
Mind elaborating on that? It strikes me as an interesting thought.

------
denzil_correa
We do really need accountability and explainability for ANY algorithm - AI or
not. I see a lot of organizations wash their hand off the results by pointing
fingers : "Hey, we didn't do it - the machine did it". It's a potential
disaster in the making - not just for people but also for technology itself.
The potential impacts of an algorithm should be studied and a decent attempt
has to be made towards this aspect before you permeate them in every minute of
your lives. It's a disaster waiting to happen and once it does, people will
mistrust technology.

~~~
dragonwriter
There's an old saying (well, old as such things go in computing, at least)
that seems relevant here: “every error blamed on a computer involves at least
two human errors, including the error of blaming the computer.”

But that seems to be the point of the article; it's not blaming the
technology, just noting that the technology can be misused that there
areexisting social trends that are visible at the same time the technology is
becoming more widespread that many people would have reason to be concerned
about leveraging the technology.

AI has no inherent ideology, but it makes it possible for the user's ideology
to be applied more effectively and with less opportunity for dissenters whose
cooperation would otherwise be necessary for implementation to undermine it.

------
mtgx
Another relevant story from today:

[https://www.wired.com/2017/04/courts-using-ai-sentence-
crimi...](https://www.wired.com/2017/04/courts-using-ai-sentence-criminals-
must-stop-now/)

------
clort
I don't know about _AI_ but the deep learning algorithms the article mentions
can certainly be used for evil purposes. In truth, the people being governed
by algorithms need to learn that _computer says_ does not imply correctness
and that the power is in the people governing whatever the tools they use.
Actually, I think that genuine AI which is smarter than the current set of
politicians could be a benefit since it should not have the same limitations
and actually be able to think things through to a generally better outcome,
rather than pandering to its own biases and prejudices (see: The Culture)

~~~
vorotato
AI trained from human's reading material are prone to the same biases that
humans are. Just a forewarning to anyone going down this path.

------
padobson
Is there some mad outbreak of fascism I don't know about? Anyone who regularly
reads the Guardian and takes it seriously is probably locked up in a seed
bunker somewhere.

I certainly agree there's been a slow erosion of civil liberties in the US
since 9/11, but I've yet to see an epidemic of doors kicked in for outspoken
opinions against the state.

Maybe calm down on the fascism talk.

------
eli_gottlieb
Oh for fuck's sake. AI could also be a liberal's dream, or a socialist's
dream, et cetera. Stop trying to treat technology as having some innate
political orientation, and _take responsibility_ for the degradation _by
humans_ of our politics.

------
malloryerik
May I just ask, on what grounds was this flagged?

~~~
Mz
Without looking at the article, I will suggest one possibility is that people
are reacting to the inflammatory, click bait title.

I have had perfectly good articles flagged to death due to poor titling. In
one case, I deleted it, asked for a title suggestion from the mods and
resubmitted it with their permission and things went significantly differently
the second time around. The HN crowd is pretty sensitive to bad titles.

~~~
malloryerik
Right, I think I hadn't imagined how sensitive some, apparently on the
political right, would be to the word "fascist." The article is about a
Principal Researcher at Microsoft's SXSW presentation, "Dark Days: AI and the
Rise of Fascism." The title on HN was merely a condensed version of the
article in The Guardian. (I was going to link to the Financial Times' article
but there is a paywall. The Guardian is a top global newspaper though, and was
being attacked here as a mere hippy rag, whose readers must reside in "seed
bunkers," so, wacky believers in climate change, much the way the New York
Times is attacked as fake news.)

Seems to me that those who were offended had their amygdalas tripped by the
word "fascist" because these days when they see that word, they feel as if
it's being used as an attack against them, and the larger conversation is
thereby hijacked.

Meanwhile a highly-related article about AI being leveraged in China to adjust
credit scores according the way that people charge their phone batteries
wasn't flagged. So it seems that you're right.

------
beaconstudios
Yet another article equating nationalism and conservatism with white supremacy
and fascism? Pathetic.

