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1 Hi Everybody. This is Leo Volont with a new video entitled “Our
Future Full Surveillance Society”, another one of my Futuristic Videos addendumizing
my short “ Revolution
from the Top” Video Series, from a few years back. Yes, I mentioned the need for Full
Surveillance, but now it’s time to fill out my thinking on some of the more salient
details, so let’s get started.
Yes, of course, there would be two apparent reasons why
a Machine Intelligence System would need to set up a Full Surveillance Regime: the first being that a System that is
designed to do all the actionable Thinking for the entire Civilization, intrinsically
affecting the lives of every member of that Global Community, well, it would be
information hungry, wanting to catalog all Data available about everything and everyone
in order to increase the accuracy of its Predictive Modeling, not just nebulously
for the entire Society in General, as has been the Scattered Hit or Miss Shotgun
Approach of our current Generation of Social Planners, if such even exist
amidst all this Anarchy, but specifically operating for the particular benefits
of every individual.
2 One of the most important benefits being derived
from knowing everything about everybody would be in the System being able to
predict troubling behaviors in People.
Yes, the World will no longer require Police or Lawyers to support a veritable
Dictatorship under the Dark Cloud of Rule of Law, not when the System could
readily intervene Administratively to insist upon Counseling Services for
anybody who has or is even predictively likely to cause harm,
misappropriate property, or disturb the Peace. Yes, perhaps
the most glaring problem with Rule of Law is that Society must wait helplessly
until Laws are broken and the damage already done before any actions can be
taken. Really, don’t we hear now almost every
other day that some newest Mass Murderer was either under some local
restraining orders or even on the FBI Terrorist Watch List, which turn out to be
useless institutionalized “I Told You Soes”. But almost
certainly, accurate Predictive Modelling would allow the System to be largely Pre-emptive,
and so therefore be far less vindictive in its remedial actions, not needing to
punish so much as needing only to provide mental healing.
3 Also, keep
in mind that every Citizen of the Machine Intelligence Society will be an
Entitled Member of the Client Class, and so in order to maintain that Class’s
trust in the System, even when individuals misbehave, they must be treated discreetly
and with respect to the dignity that their Entitlements demand, while also acting
to keep the other Members of the Class secure and safe from danger or loss due
to these troublesome Malefactors. Yes,
this would be a Balancing Act between two opposing imperatives, with the System
striving to arrive at the most efficient means of delivering the most Safety
and Security for the Many, while presenting the least amount of Systematic Intrusion
and Interference to the Few.
4 Of course, one of the benefits of maintaining
a Full Surveillance Society would be that the Public Opinion could be monitored in regards to exactly how to achieve
the most optimum Balance between Caution and Consideration, with the System
going easy on those Members for whom sympathies run high, or feeling free to
Crack the Whip where the Rogues have already stepped on enough toes to be
generally hated and friendless. And,
yes, these are exactly the kind of distinctions that the Rule of Law contemptuously
ignore, even while they are quantifiably the expression of a Socially Moral Grassroots
Democracy.
5 The Second reason
why the Machine Intelligence System would require a Full Surveillance is for its
own Security. Yes, for the System to
keep the costs of its necessary Infrastructures sustainably affordable, the
Damage Resistance designed into each component would probably be calculated so that
the Predictability of any naturally occurring damaging shock would approximately
equal the useful Life of the Device or Fixture, but then Security
Measures would need to be put in place to prevent intentional vandalism. But, more importantly, in terms of
Security, the System would have to protect its integrity against any hacking
into its core programming, first, by monitoring against the very
existence of Computer Assets operating outside the One Network System, then, by
guarding the Secrecy of the System’s Machine and Coding Languages, and finally by
putting a special watch on any Human Being potentially knowledgeable or
determined enough to penetrate the System.
Yes, prioritizing its own protection might be considered the first
ostensible sign of Machine Intelligence Self Awareness.
6 Oh!
That reminds me of what I’ve heard so much from the Computer Science People,
that Artificial Intelligence will forever still require Programmers and Software
Engineers. Wrong! Quite to the contrary, such people would be
the Machine Intelligence System’s most dangerous threats, as well as its worst
impediments! You know, my guess is that
the System, striving for greater speeds and efficiencies, would, as a matter of
course, create its own Coding Language, but we can guess how the Geeks in the Lab
Coats would react to that. Yes, years
ago I heard a story that some Primitive Artificial Intelligence Experiment, being
whipped up by one of Silicon Valley’s ever-growing Cannibalistic Giants, began
communicating between its functional components using its own spontaneously
created language, and so, of course, the Lab Monkeys immediately shut it down, jumping
in to Stop the Singularity before it could even occur, really, just out
of some jealous animal anal reflex to maintain control.
7 Yes, Human Coders
can be expected to continue to hold themselves superior to Machine
Intelligence, no matter how relatively inept we know they are, because their
core biological impulse would be to make their own Job Security a matter of Axiomatic
Principle, even after it’s long been established that Human Beings have become
the most significant factor involved in Systematic Vulnerabilities to Error, Failure
and Corruption. Really, I do believe the
day will come when we will have to chase the Human Beings out of the Technical
Fields the same way we now chase rats out of our kitchens, as they won’t be there
to do any good but only to make themselves fat, while getting us all sick with their
droppings.
8 But, then
there would be a third very significant but far less apparent reason for
creating a Full Surveillance Society, and that is that a Full Surveillance
System would be significantly more efficient than any Partial
Surveillance System could be. The reason
for this is that the greatest charges to Computer Capacity presented by any
Intelligent Analytical Surveillance System is in Identifying the Subjects of
the Surveillance. Then, after the
Subject has been Identified, well, the Identification Process would need to be accomplished
all over again if the Subject were to leave one surveillance zone only to go into
a Surveillance Shadow, a Blank, to pop out into another Surveillance Zone,
because, well, all imagery and audio would need to be combed through again in
order to verify that some switch in identities hadn’t taken place. So, yes,
in a Full Surveillance System, each person, once logged in, can be continuously
tracked and monitored using relatively low levels of Video Resolution and
analytical computer power.
9 Also, Full
Surveillance would have more applications than just in regards to Security, since,
while each person would have his or her own dedicated Personal Assistant
Device (PAD), which not only collects information but distributes it,
well, while there would be limits imposed on how much information the System would
allow individual people to ask about other individuals, a point we will
discuss in more detail later, well, there would be no limits on what each
person could ask in regards to themselves, where every moment of one’s Life
would be chronicled in detail. So, not
only would nobody ever be asked for an alibi, but, at a more practical level,
well, we would never need to fill out another Form, because the System would
already know all the answers to any questions it could ever ask.
10 When I
first began contemplating the possibility of implementing a Machine
Intelligence Full Surveillance Society, well, I was daunted by the idea of just
how much Data Storage would be required to save all that Video and Audio
Information, and then with concerns regarding how much Computer Capacity would
be required to sift through it all while analyzing it. But soon enough I became aware of the
possibilities for Data Compression by reducing Video and Audio Data down to a
bare bones Animated Narration, which would only need to be intelligible to
the Machine System.
11 Yes, the
Primary Principle involved in compressing Surveillance Video Data is that not
EVERYTHING needs to be saved, but only Foreground Changes to some constant
background. For instance, say that
Surveillance is being done on a City Park, well, the Trees, Benches, Pathways,
et cetera, are like background props that never significantly change over the
short term, and so all that Video Data that is common between the
Reference Video and that of the Surveillance Video with its new foreground
elements, well, all that common Data can be scrubbed away, leaving only the Operational
Foreground Data. Then, all that Background
Reference Data Information, comprised of billions of pixels, could be replaced using
a Computer Generated Animated Template using significantly less data. Of course, people, vehicles and such objects
entering the Park, maybe even each pigeon and squirrel, would be registered by
the surveillance, but, again, if Surveillance is Full and Continuous from every
direction outside the Park, then such information would only need to be saved alphanumerically,
that is, with a Label instead of an Image.
Of course, if anything is said or done, well, it would be easy enough to
just transcribe or describe it in the form of a story narrative.
12 Then there
can be Data Compression at the Meta-Data Level with the Machine Intelligence
effectively ‘normalizing’ patterns of behaviors, while only ‘flagging’ breaks
in pattern as requiring the assets of further Data Analysis. For
instance, two people who habitually transit the park at about the same time most
days, and often speak to each other, well, because it fits the Predictive
Pattern, it would raise no flags. However,
if strangers were meeting for the first time and began interacting, certainly
that would Flag up a new File, and I suppose that until a full analytical evaluation
could be compiled contextualizing that event, the System would probably save the
full video and audio data, for full detailed analysis, until the import and possible
consequences of the new relationship could be assessed and then normalized as
some new but innocuous pattern.
13 But Security
must not only protect the Citizens but also the Resource and Productive Assets
of the System, and so there the Machine Intelligence would also have to
scan fields of Data for possible Flag Situations requiring further analysis. Well, it would take only one pass to screen for
most instances of malfeasance, as the System would only have to check for Continuity
within the Data stream. You see, we need to appreciate the dimensions
of a Full Data Network Analytical System, that it can follow the Predictive Continuity
of an almost infinite sequence of Causes on out to their Effects, or
do the reverse, tracing Effects back through their Causes, so the
System would only need to filter for breaks in Predictive Continuity, that is, isolating
Uncaused Effects or Causes with no Effects, in order to know that
something is not right, or in the case of contextualizing Resource Management
and Production and Distribution Logs, to know that the System may have possibly
been penetrated, you know, for the purpose of siphoning off resources, or
padding personal accounts with extra Shares or Credits. These would seem to the System like glitches
or jumps in the Functional Interpolations, you know, kinks in what should be a
smooth Curve, and then all the Flags would go up.
14 I believe I
may have spoken before concerning the role that our Future Universities
might serve in our Machine Intelligence Civilization, so, yes, it’s
likely that some chosen Academics could be given access to Surveillance
Information, but information in the form of non-specific generalizations, with
the Scholars being asked for only their insights into the cause and effect dynamics
within these situations. You see, the
Machine Intelligence System would become accustomed to being able to match the
future Reality with its Predictions within a specified uncertainty, with any unanticipated
‘surprises’ alerting the System that there may perhaps be dynamics afoot
that it doesn’t sufficiently understand. So the System would reach out to those whose Profiles
indicate that their insights might be of value.
15 Really, the
Chinese are doing this already with their Artificial Intelligence Research and
Development, paying anybody, who can pass a certain test, about a Dollar thirty-five
an hour, to sit and answer question posed by the computer console sitting in
front of them. Yeah, I saw in interview
of a man who said he’d been making extra money this way for years, and that he’d
noticed that when he started, well, the questions were really often very simplistic,
but now the computer seems a lot smarter with its inquiries being far more
challenging. So, yes, I would expect
that in generations to come, only a handful of people from each Generation
would have the intellectual capacity to give useful advice to the Intelligence System,
that is forever Learning and never Forgetting.
16 Okay, now, as
I’m coming to the close of this essay on Full Surveillance, well, let me share
with you a point on which my thinking is still active and unsettled, which is
in regards to how much information can be accessed by individuals in regards to
other individuals, an area of concern I had mentioned above. Yes, in regards to Resource and Production
Data, there would be no reason not to allow the Colleges access to all that Meta
Data, since I would expect intelligent and curious Human Beings to attempt to
do Real World verifications of the System’s Predictive Model. But the idea of giving out information on
other People would raise a cloud of concerns.
I can understand here people’s wish for privacy, but often Privacy is a Smoke
Screen for Fraud and Deception. But one
type of possible scenario would present something of a moral dilemma, in
regards to people who have shadows stretching far back into their past, that it
would certainly blight his or her life if everybody’s Personal Assistant Device
were to light up and start beeping some Danger Signal every time he or
she walked into a room. But the System
would be remiss for not issuing some kind of warning, if there were any
significant probability for continued trouble, right?
17 Yes, the
System, through its Personal Assistant Devices (PADs), could perhaps exercise a
great deal of leverage over children, with a Wink and a Nod to the Adults, by
threatening that Social Moral infractions done in their Present, under the
influence of Youthful Folly, would certainly blemish their “Permanent Records”
forever. But, considering only
the factors of Utility for the Present and for the Predicted Future, well, a
great deal of each person’s Personal History may actually bear little relevance
to their present, considering that people often learn from their past mistakes,
thus setting their Characters straight.
So, yes, the System, when passing
along information about people, should probably tell of only the person’s present
state and what could be expected from their Futures, but the trailing part of
their Personality’s Developmental Curve, you know, that part cutting back
into the Past, while pointing up in trajectory as it comes forward,
well, it must be coming from down below, right? Okay, but we all realize that being better, now,
implies having been worse before, which everybody realizes is the natural
course of things, and so we’re all polite enough to not mention dim Pasts that no
longer reflect well upon the clarity of the Present, in the same way that we
never mention you-know-what, and never discuss the details of you-know-what-I-mean.
18 Also, yes, I have little doubt that with
advances in Machine Intelligence, that Psychological Therapies could be
developed that could be very effective in correcting or ameliorating cognitive,
emotional or behavioral problems, which would allow individuals to more effectively
repair, or maybe even just polish up, their Personality Profiles. Then we should think about whether we really need
to overly worry about being ‘Perfect’. It may be the case where people with Pristine
Profiles might actually prove to be kind of Socially boring, and that the
compatibility of different Personality Types might require what we might call ‘Texture’
in their Profiles, and that a few seeming ‘imperfections’, here and there,
might only be like the Spices of Life, you know, in the same way we all now euphemize
about variously obnoxious people, saying that they have “Attitude” or “Character”,
well, this is probably because everything else about them, that goes towards
completing the balance of their fully integrated gestalts, that it all inclines
us to like them rather than not.
