Ask most people what they know about artificial intelligence and they’ll tell you — umm, nothing? But A.I. is everywhere — everywhere. And some of it’s downright scary.
Don’t know anything about it? Haven’t heard about some of these threats to privacies, personal liberties, constitutional concerns? Enter “Artificial God: How A.I. Creation Is Trampling Christ and the Constitution,” a book-in-works to explain what’s good, what’s bad and what’s downright frightening about this emerging technology.
Christians, conservatives, patriotic Americans who believe in the notion of limited government and individual liberties — you’ll all need to read this latest book, forthcoming.
This is an example of what we’re fighting — both this scientist’s secular views and the content of his speech.
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A sample, from EYE ON A.I. at The Washington Times:
Uber Wants to Know If Riders Are Drunk — But Why?
Uber has just applied for a patent for machine learning that will tell if the caller for a ride is drunk.
Why? Isn’t that why people use Uber in the first place — because they’re drunk? Uber ought to know that by now.
Anyhow, the patent, which may or may not be fully developed, describes an app that could determine “user state” (read: drunk or sober) by the way the potential passenger holds the phone, inputs data for a driver or even walks down the street to the appointed meeting place. That’s pretty intrusive. Think about it: It records a typing speed and gait, and passes all that information along to the driver.
There’s a safety aspect that shouldn’t be overlooked here. What of the more nefarious Uber drivers who want to use such knowledge to prey on passengers?
Uber, after all, is hardly squeaky clean.
This is the company that had to pay out $20,000 in 2016 for its secret tracking of its riders — for the viewing enjoyment of others, no less — by way of a little tool its designers liked to call “God View.”
This is also the company that revealed the personal information of, oh, roughly 20 million of its users — and then hid the data breach from passengers and regulators.
Oops.
But that particular security lapse went even deeper, a bit darker.
“Uber Paid Off Hackers to Hide Massive Data Breach,” MIT Technology wrote in a headline in November.
Or, as HuffPo put it during that same month: “Uber Paid Hackers $100,000 to Keep a Massive Data Breach Quiet.”
Even more startling is this, from CNN.
“A recent CNN investigation found at least 103 Uber drivers in the United States who have been accused of sexually assaulting or abusing their passengers in the past four years,” the news outlet reported in June.
And guess what? Many of these passengers had been under the influence of alcohol, according to police and court documents analyzed by CNN.
Now that’s a bit discomforting.
So to circle on back to the question about Uber’s latest quest to develop artificial intelligence that would tell when potential passengers are drunk — once again: Why?
Uber says it simply wants to help match passengers with the drivers who can best help them to their final destination. Uber drivers, meanwhile, say they think the app would help identify which passengers might be most problematic — a heads-up that could lead them to quote a higher transport rate, pre-ride, for the drunks of the bunch.
But those reasons don’t really justify the use of an app that records how many steps a person takes, and how fast those steps are taken – particularly if the person taking the steps isn’t really aware of the data-collection taking place. Do the inebriated read the fine print?
This app is intrusive and potentially a safety risk for passengers, and Uber just doesn’t have a clean enough image or clear enough past to make the dark shadows hovering over this patent disappear.
Great read Cheryl, you’ve given readers much to think about. A.I. is going to be a problem!
Yes Cheryl there is a sinister purpose built into the concept of building machines that do the thinking for us! Nefarious persons have always been around but now with this new tool in the criminally minded toolkit we are seeing the tip of the iceberg I believe with regard to misuse and abuse of these high-tech machines in all kinds of situations! And because humans are inherently flawed and in many instances out of control creatures that murder and cause mayhem inflicting misery upon one another; then how are we supposed to think that these same humans can produce machines that won’t do the same bad things their creator’s do and far worse because of these machines being quicker and more precise in their achieving an objective! They already have plans for such machines in battlefield scenarios and drones can be very effective unmanned killing machines with pinpoint precision! What if all these powerful precision machines are produced in vast multitudes and then they the machines become part of a hidden agenda of the most nefarious diabolical mind or basically its own designs to wipe-out the flawed creators thus turning all the interconnected networks of machines with AI guidance systems toward that end! Because I’m a Christian this brings me to my conceptualization that I’m working on at the moment of how this capability would dovetail perfectly with the antichrist and “End of Time Apocalypse,” which I’m very afraid is now on the horizon with the way the human race has done too much ripping itself apart while meanwhile allowing our modern predominately secular world to be ruled by Satan, bringing on that inevitable climax which will be implemented by AI tripping the switch of the “doomsday machine,” which it is!
Watch the Joe Rogan podcast with tech guru Naval Ravikant. Ravikant mirrored instincts that I have on AI- in his opinion, it’s not going to be here for 200 years, if ever. My view is that we will never achieve “general AI.” As it is creating life in a machine. The definition of AI has changed in recent years to include machine learning, which isn’t AI and isn’t even close, it’s still a specific program that a computer is running with no semblance of intelligence.