Our Future Full Surveillance Society

 

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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.