Gimme Shelter

If AI companies are anything they are smart. And they are learning. They are learning a lot from what has recently happened to social media operations, including some of their very own. Once high-flying, they've had their wings clipped, and some jurisdictions have an outright ban on social media for minors. There have been quite a few, very large court awards that are costing enormous amounts of money and impacting their operations at additional cost. It is also a PR nightmare that may bleed over to AI operations.

They do not want to endure rinse and repeat with their AI operations. 

That's why they want to put on the brakes. Not because they really want to, but because they want to avoid a future where they will be crushed by fines and overbearing restrictions. So what they want to do is slow their roll until they can get regulations in place. Regulations they can live with, and while somewhat restrictive, the real goal is to offload any, perhaps all, future liability. They want regulations, crafted by their lobbyists, that they can easily follow, and if they do, any Bad Things are because of the politicians and regulators. After all, they were in compliance with all laws, rules and regulations. 

They also know that once these regulations are passed, politicians with have their name on them, politicians who are now politically motivated to defend the AI industry rather than attack it. How do the AI firms know this will work? Because that is exactly what Flock has done.

These actions will not prevent all future lawsuits but it will provide shelter from those enormous jury awards. 

Is It Misinformation?

Is it misinformation if it isn't intentional? If it is intentional is that disinformation? Can incompetence, say in reporting, be mere misinformation? 

Here's what we have.

There are a few things wrong with this. First, Dunwoody doesn't have a fire department, so those cannot be Dunwoody firefighters. They are (maybe?) DeKalb County firefighters, and thank god for that. Then, as it turns out, or so history tells us, 2977 people did not die in the twin towers on 1 Sept 2001. However 2977 did die in the terrorists' attack on the twin towers ten days after that date.

You have to wonder how much time must pass for events to become history, and historical facts that set the record straight when someone prevaricates. A week? A month? Years? Decades? Perhaps time is not the measure. Perhaps it is acceptance. Entry into the zeitgeist. Sometimes folks forget. Some never knew. Approximately 103 million people in America today were born after 9/11. It was never part of their existence. Over half of Americans were born after that last helicopter lifted off in Saigon. Is 9/11 headed to the same place as Vietnam? Some sepia stained story told by increasingly irrelevant old farts? Is it already there?

Nothing More Conservative...

...than a liberal.

Resist!

The very essence of "resist" is fight the change. Sounds like the conservative affection for preservation. Yet now this is coming from the self-professed radical left. Or, nearby, those that refuse to disclose openly, pretending it isn't the most open secret in daVille. Everyone sees the true colors. 

Ironically these are the folks trying their dead level best to create an overarching surveillance state. That seems like something you'd expect from the law-and-order camp. You know, the folks the lefties call nut-jobs. But it is the "abolish cash bail" folks who want everyone continuously surveilled by AI. 

And then, these same proponents of AI surveillance are sending their army of cultivated protestors out to condemn any and all data centers. The same data centers used by AI systems. What is their long game? Let China completely dominate the data center market? So, their plan is to use AI for heavy surveillance of all of us, but to also have all that data hosted in China. Or would they hide that behind "unintended consequences" which is the most common outcome for any government activity. Ooops.

That's not the real problem. The real problem is these fools were elected, and they probably will be again.

Let AI Do It

It is time for a start.Well past time, in fact. Since before this city was formed there was a sincere dedication to opacity. Did you ever see the officially published Task Force reports? No? Well, there's a reason for that. They, many of whom fancied themselves the powers-to-be, had no intention of anything resembling full disclosure. So no surprise that this city keeps all the juicy bits of information behind an enormously expensive pay wall. Might as well be locked up in Fort Knox. 

We can do better.

And it is easy to do because we can let AI do it for us. And we can start with the easy button, addressing opacity with a "service" that is a self-proclaimed leader in the use of AI. That's right. Let's use Flock on Flock. Start simple. Post a daily report of all the license plate numbers, with state, captured inside the city limits. Stretch goal: list the number of times that day the plate was surveilled. Then any of us, we the little people, would have automatic access to public data. It would be fun just to sift thru the grift looking for out of state plates, your own plate, your spouse's plate, your neighbors...this could replace death scrolling. 

So how will the city say no?

They may pay-wall it or just claim it is too expensive. Really? This truly would be trivial for damn near any half-assed IT geek, and frankly requires no AI. There are other fun things that AI could be used for, but this is no heavy lift. But, it is critically important not to strain the brains of the city bureaucrats. Keep it stupid. Simple? There is one thing they will probably bring up as an excuse for not doing this: privacy. Kinda sucks the air out of the room, doesn't it? They've justified their overarching surveillance because this is all in public, tracking plates that are required to operate vehicles in public, so there is no privacy. How could there possibly be a privacy issue posting this info? There isn't. They just think you are that stupid.

They have some proof on their side. After all, you did vote them in.

Becoming George

Not THAT George. This isn't about George Sand, even though that book is on the TOD Book Club reading list. This is about the other George, George Orwell, and his prophetic work, Nineteen Eighty-Four, though off the mark by 42 years. But we made it.

The BBR editorialist has been sucked into the doublethink by way of newspeak. Case in point is his use of the word safety and a rather bold statement regarding police officers preventing crime. By and large, and as previously observed, police do not actually prevent crime, they respond once a crime has been [allegedly] committed. Even when "keeping the peace" at protests and rallies, the police are restricted from action unless and until someone actually crosses a line. 

Some might argue that a police presence discourages, perhaps prevents, criminal behavior. But no one really believes that, especially the police, or the department would deploy officers in ways dramatically different to their clearly preferred protocol. Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon may be a thing, but the separation between police and actually preventing crime is far, far greater.

That's why use of the word safety in this context is clearly newspeak attempting to create and enforce a perception unassociated with reality. But, one might further argue that these new surveillance systems, being enhanced with AI, can now predict with some level of accuracy, that some one might be, or might soon be, engaged in unacceptable activities, allowing the police to apprehend the individual prior to the actual commission of a crime. That might qualify as safety, unless of course you're apprehended when that AI mischaracterizes your behavior.

If you have ever wondered, as so very few of you have, how it came to be that so many sensible Germans were seduced to the dark side in the 1930's, now you know.