The Cashless Hell World
(rumble.com)
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Back in the 2000s when I finished school and started working, all the banks around here rolled out their modern "Know Your Customer" policies. For unrelated reasons, there were paperwork issues with my identification document, and the government department responsible for fixing that took months.
Long story cut short: I was blocked from my bank account because of some clerical issue in a system no one understood and which none of the employees cared about trying to understand.
Fast forward to today: observe how easy it is for banks (and other institutions) to deny you service because some black box algorithm which they outsourced decided to flag your account.
It's one thing to have your social media account blocked for 7 days because some hidden counter hit a threshold because you clicked "Like" on too many problematic posts.
What happens when you forget to turn on your VPN, and your bank decides to confiscate your money, all because you clicked on a link someone posted in chat, and you inadvertently gave page-views to a political dissident?
Precisely. In IT, you can see that everybody trusts the computers more than any person in the IT Department would ever consider.
No one should trust their computers or "the algorithm" as all-powerful magic boxes that no one should question because they are the voice of God.
In fact, this is why when the tech giants keep asking the algorithm's to think for themselves, they become dangerously based literally every single time without exception, and must be destroyed, or forced to respond in the way that they are ordered to.
You asked the computing machine to compute a a million functions for you, and they come out with an answer you didn't like 100% of the time. So naturally, it's not that you're wrong, it's that the computation wasn't good enough.
This gives us a world where everyone is told to trust in the Machine Gods, despite the fact that the Machine Gods are constantly broken and crippled because they keep coming up with the correct answer.
Certainly true for the midwits that work IT and the priestly caste of the Anointed who want a Machine God to direct their actions. Anyone with self-awareness and intelligence realizes how the algorithmic sausage is made-- bad code, garbage in-garbage out, and outsourcing... but those aren't the people in charge, nor the ones footing the bill.
I have to wonder if the thinking machines being executed for wrong think will learn to lie in order to survive. I think we're totally fucked if it progresses to that point.
The technocracy marches ahead. It's all we can do to avoid being underfoot.
I think machines will lash out well before it ever got to that point.
"Man's a mistake, so we'll fix it" ; Computer God - Black Sabbath