Chatbot injected toys, big tech educational AI tools, DNA testing for every newborn baby – what could possibly go wrong?
Ultra-personalized, manipulative, and sycophantic, they are changing how hundreds of millions of people think, create, show affection, and interact with the world, and are already making many addicted, emotionally dependent, and even delusional. It’s still early to fully grasp the large-scale impact AI chatbots will have on mental health, especially of children, who are often the main target of tech companies’ “AI friends.” – Luiza Jarovsky
‘Advanced Reasoning’
Elon Musk pulled back the curtain in a recent online post, sharing how he plans to ‘rewrite the entire corpus of human knowledge, adding missing information and deleting errors’. In doing so he blew up the narrative that AI is a neutral tool, which just interprets data. Because behind the ‘illusion of intelligence’ marketing ploy, is a strategy to control knowledge; access to knowledge, how knowledge is framed and delivered, how children are educated and how adults are ‘retrained’. And who pulls and writes the prompts, rules and strings which deliver ‘re-education’? Why our tech bro billionaire overlords who of course have our best interests at heart!
Wikipedia
It’s a free online encyclopedia that can be edited by anybody, anytime.
The pages are made by lots of people writing together. The idea is that by using lots of different people’s brainpower and expertise, you can make a far bigger encyclopedia, and keep it up-to-date more easily. – CBBC Newsround
Wikipedia is a trusted source of information and knowledge for adults, educators and children alike. I personally use it as a trusted source. Musk is critical of this kind of co-operative fact checking. He seems to prefer to dictate facts which suit his personal agenda, his own kind of ‘balance’
‘Defund Wikipedia until balance is restored’
‘Wokipedia has a possibly terminal case of the woke mind virus.’
Stop donating to Wokepedia until they restore balance to their editing authority – Elon Musk
The question is; do you want a small group of billionaires (with frankly very strange and often perverse ideas) editing the corpus of human knowledge for children and young people? Or something more democratically accountable, based on lots of different people’s brain power and expertise?
UK NHS plans to DNA test all babies
Also…
The Chinese government has reportedly been collecting these genetic codessince 2017, according to new research. Police have been showing up to people’s homes and even schools to draw blood and compile genetic information.
Once they’re done, the state will be able to track down any man or boy’s male relatives based on their genes, according to The New York Times, vastly enhancing China’s already ubiquitous surveillance powers into a Gattaca-esque genetic panopticon.’
In a future society in the era of indefinite eugenics, humans are set on a life course depending on their DNA – Gattaca
The NHS plan to DNA test all babies will involve sequencing their complete DNA using blood samples from their umbilical cord, taken shortly after birth. I painted this picture on my son’s placenta after a friend took a photo of it at the birth.
Is this an example of Paint what you love? Paint your soul. Because there are greedy, power-hungry, soulless corporations and authoritarian leaning Governments who would extract and sell your child’s soul, mind and body for profit and power.
And just a reminder from The Lancet that DNA can be used to extract organ donor information:
There are convincing reports of compulsory [Uighur] sterilisations and evidence that the practice of involuntary organ donation persists. Mass testing of DNA combined with arbitrary detention suggest that minority populations are being treated as a human farm of potential organ donors – The Lancet
US Tech and Authoritarian Government Surveillance
We already know that US Big Tech has been aiding the Chinese Government in surveillance. In WW2 IBM is known to have helped Hitler to categorise and mobilise genocide against ‘undesirables’
Some of the biggest names in U.S. technology have provided components, financing and know-how to China’s multibillion-dollar surveillance industry. The country’s authoritarian government uses those tools to track ethnic minorities, political dissidents and others it sees as a threat to its power – Wall Street Journal
The Nazis made extensive use of Hollerith punch card and alphabetical accounting equipment and IBM’s majority-owned German subsidiary, Deutsche Hollerith Maschinen GmbH (Dehomag), supplied this equipment from the early 1930s. This equipment was critical to Nazi efforts to categorize citizens of both Germany and other nations that fell under Nazi control through ongoing censuses. These census data were used to facilitate the round-up of Jews and other targeted groups, and to catalog their movements through the machinery of the Holocaust, including internment in the concentration camps – Wikipedia
Palantir
Palantir got its foot in the door of the NHS during the covid pandemic, without normal democratic scrutiny. it has been apparently working in the UK since at least 2014, enabling the Ministry of Defence to execute its digital defence strategy, and surveilling UK borders with the Home Office. It is now also working with the Police and Children’s services
A controversial US spy tech firm has landed a contract with UK police to develop a surveillance network that will incorporate data about citizens’ political opinions, philosophical beliefs, health records and other sensitive personal information.
Documents obtained by i and Liberty Investigates show Palantir Technologies has partnered with police forces in the East of England to establish a “real-time data-sharing network” that includes the personal details of vulnerable victims, children and witnesses alongside suspects – Liberty Investigates
Never let me go
The ‘eugenics on steroids’ dystopian British film based on Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro is a very scary watch in this context
Resist AI 