Why does it seem that my cellphone is spying on me?
In his seminal book, “The Singularity is Near – When Humans Transcend Biology,” Ray Kurzweil laments the fate of Artificial Intelligence (AI): “An underlying problem with artificial intelligence that I have personally experienced in my forty years of in the area is that as soon as an AI technique works, it is no longer considered AI and is spun off in its own field …” Kurzweil then goes on to give the example of speech recognition – although if you both listen and watch the closed captions to the nightly news, you might wonder how intelligent this recognition is. Still that point has stuck with me since I first read The Singularity is Near, when it first came out in 2005.
Well, friends there is no longer any denying the existence of AI in our lives. We have moved beyond what has been referred to as the “Dark Age of AI.”We’ve got everything from intelligent toaster ovens to self-driving automobiles. Recently, I saw, with a shutter, a news clip about self-driving eighteen wheelers. Yikes, I thought. But then I considered how many people have been wiped out by drowsy truck drivers. Which is better, which is worse?
Now, I am a great proponent of futurism. More importantly, I recognize that there is no denying technology, any more than there is denying climate change. There are good reasons to fear it, especially if your job is in jeopardy. Ultimately all our jobs are in jeopardy. But there is no stopping it. Technology always outruns its own ethical basis.  It has no morality. It just is. And the Luddites, who in the early nineteenth century rose up and destroyed textile machinery because they feared it would take away their means of employment are now reduced merely to a fancy word and a footnote. As I type this AI programs “spellcheck” me and “autocorrect” my grammar. Both of those words exist in the language only because of the AI revolution.  So, they are taking over our language as well.
There is also the nostalgia factor. My IPad and my Kindle do not feel or smell like a book. I so love these tactile and olfactory experiences. But the fact is that my whole library, which is voluminous, could easily fit in digital form on my computer devices, and I read at least three times faster electronically than on paper. Although one might ask, what the rush is? Ultimately, where this nostalgia is concerned we become like Edward Arlington Robinson’s “Minever Cheevy.”
“Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn,
Grew lean while he assailed the seasons;
He wept that he was ever born,
And he had reasons.
 Miniver loved the days of old
When swords were bright and steeds were prancing;
The vision of a warrior bold
Would set him dancing.
 Miniver sighed for what was not,
And dreamed, and rested from his labors;
He dreamed of Thebes and Camelot,
And Priam’s neighbors.
 Miniver mourned the ripe renown
That made so many a name so fragrant;
He mourned Romance, now on the town,
And Art, a vagrant.
 Miniver loved the Medici,
Albeit he had never seen one;
He would have sinned incessantly
Could he have been one.
 Miniver cursed the commonplace
And eyed a khaki suit with loathing;
He missed the mediæval grace
Of iron clothing.
 Miniver scorned the gold he sought,
But sore annoyed was he without it;
Miniver thought, and thought, and thought,
And thought about it.
 Miniver Cheevy, born too late,
Scratched his head and kept on thinking;
Miniver coughed, and called it fate,
And kept on drinking.”
 Isn’t it wonderful how all I needed to do was to type “Minever Cheevy” into my search engine, a form of AI and the whole text, which I first read on paper in high school pops up? This is but the first stage in the development of Kurzweil’s bionic man-machine.
And as I was typing the last, my cellphone dinged with the message from Bloomberg News that:
“Medical apps have made it easier than ever for doctors to treat people without ever seeing them in person.”
Is this getting just a bit spooky?
Which brings me to what I really wanted to discuss. I recently read Michael Chertoff’s “Exploding Data: Reclaiming Our Cyber Security in the Digital Age.” This book describes the megadata on each of us, which seems merely a collection of useless facts. Where we were every minute of the day, what we bought, what we ate, what we spent, and on and on. It is not the individual facts that are significant, but the Gestalt, that ultimately presents the threat, not just to individual privacy an liberty, but to national and world security.
Allow me to quote the ninth amendment to the United States Constitution. Yes, Republican friends there is more than the second amendment, which protects the right of madmen to buy assault rifles. But the little ninth amendment says merely:
“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”
This is your right to privacy, people! The government does not belong in your workplace, in your home, or in your bedroom, for instance. And when we allow ourselves to be monitored 24-7, we give up that right, in part or in total.
And on the security side. Connect your home to the internet with devices such as smart electric meters for instance, where “the bad guys” have implanted administrative codes in the chips they made for us and we bought because they are cheap, and they can shut down our power grids.
In 2004, yes fifteen years ago, the Israeli military assassinated Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader and founder of the militant Palestinian group Hamas, by landing a smart missile in the lap of the wheelchair-bound Sheik Yassin. I am not suggesting that you have anything to fear from the fact that your own iPhone is tracking your whereabouts in real-time.
What has freaked me out was an IM session that I was having with a friend on my IPhone to set up a time to meet for coffee. When we had settled as to time and place, I went to add it to my calendar, hit the add button, and there it was Name of Person, Name of place, and time all neatly pre-entered for me. Starting with OS 10.0, we are now up to OS 12.2, the operating system has AI algorithms that search your texts and emails in this way. For convenience, right? I’m sorry it seems not so much as helpful as creepy and an invasion of privacy.
I am reminded of a second poem. This by W. H. Auden and called “To the Unknown Citizen.” Perhaps we might modernize the title to “To the Unknown Citizen and his Megadata.”
(To JS/07 M 378 This Marble Monument Is Erected by the State)
He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a
saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired,
But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn’t a scab or odd in his views,
For his Union reports that he paid his dues,
(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)
And our Social Psychology workers found
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,
And his Health-card shows he was A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace: Â when there was war, he went.
He was married and once in hospital but left it cured.
Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Instalment Plan
And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
added five children to the population,
Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his
generation.
And our teachers report that he never interfered with their
education.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd: e heard.
I feel a need to return photographically to a simpler time, to turn back the clock to the Willoughby of Twilight Zone fame, to a more mechanical time. The time of carburetors, now replaced by AI chips called injection systems.
(c) DE Wolf 2019.
