Smyrna has appointed a Public Safety Technology Task Force, something we could use here in Dunwoody. Job one seems to be keeping an eye on the eyes on us, to protect the public's privacy and civil liberties. What a novel idea.
Do you suppose Dunwoody will follow suit, sort of like they did when engaging in the sign wars? Yeah....no.
Apparently AI is now in control. Social media is all ablaze with suggestions that on the one day where it is traditional for everyone to wear a disguise this might be an opportune time to convey humankind's disdain for AI powered, pervasive surveillance. That AI is having none of it.
Cornell is in a spot of trouble. There are accusations of rape being leveled at members of a fraternity, exacerbated by claimed mishandling of the case by Cornell University, the school's police and the real police and district attorney in Ithaca. No arrests were made and there seems to have been a failure to communicate. Cornell's internal investigation resulted in minimal punishment with the initiator and the guy who solicited more participants both expelled (permanently) but the other five writing essays or sensitivity training. If you've seen the solicitation texts (check European media) it is clear that neither the guy sending, nor any guy responding deserves a place in civilized society.
So maybe we're not civilized.
But we're not the only ones. France has had the Pelicot rape case that occurred in the southeast of the country, where a man drugged his wife and solicited, over the internet, men to come to their home and rape her. This spanned several years and he was only found out when he was caught upskirting women and videos of his wife's repeated rapes were found in the ensuing search of his computer. He and fifty, that's right fifty, other men were found guilty on charges ranging from sexual assault, attempted rape and rape. Pelicot was also found guilty of raping a co-defendant's wife, when the co-defendant decided to adopt the Pelicot paradigm and began drugging his wife to have other men rape her. Something virtually identical occurred in the UK, a husband drugging his wife, then inviting men to rape her.
Something is profoundly wrong with men.
These cases have much in common. They both make a pretty powerful case for capital punishment, though one must wonder if even this would be an effective deterrent, but at least it would address recidivism. There is a clear undercurrent of men seeing women as something sub-human or just some thing. Anything but another human being to be respected as such. The texts, the solicitations, are convincing proof.
There are also differences. Given the unlimited supply of vitriol spewing from the internet it is no wonder the woman in the Cornell case has remained anonymous. Nonetheless there has been victim shaming and blaming and some suggestions this is just another Duke LaCrosse hoax. This woman is young and the thought of public harassment haunting her for the rest of her, hopefully long, life is terrifying. The wife in Pelicot case, Gisèle, being quite a bit older, chose the opposite path, appearing in court every day of the trial. She has become a symbol of the abuse and oppression that women endure, and have since time began.
This will continue until men treat women like people.
Dunwoody has a data center in it. Has had for some time. In the perimeter area. Great place for one, with both power and data infrastructure. And it has gone without notice for some years. Now, for who knows what reason, data centers are the mark of the devil and must be stopped. Rouse the rabble. Get the pro protesters on the job. The owners of the data center are prepping for renovations and "neighbors are concerned" as if they don't know these renovations are a temporary issue. But today's virtue signaling is "I'm Against Data Centers." "I Stand With Ukraine" is so yesterday.
Let's be clear: there are going to be data centers. You may prefer they not be located near you. Not in your backyard. When did that become acceptable? Apparently when war was declared against data centers. Maybe you'd like data centers far, far removed from your driveway. Maybe on the other side of the globe. Perhaps in a competing nation. Perhaps an adversarial nation. Sure. Why not? Let's give all kinds of sensitive data to those countries. Isn't that what we ended up doing with TikTok?
The point of the spear for the anti-data center protesters is electricity, in the hopes that they can convince the gen-pop that their power bills will balloon. They've given up on water as it doesn't resonate and won't play well in Atlanta, which is notorious for abusing regional water supplies. So electricity it is. The anti-s scored a recent victory getting the town of Lovejoy to rescind a commitment to support a data center in their town and so it will go somewhere else. What the folks beating the power bill drum seem to have never seen or heard of is one of these:
You've had a job, haven't you? Of course you have. And to get that job you probably had to make that little Yellow Oath of Loyalty. Not required by the government, but subsidized by them, so as to skirt any Fourth Amendment issues. It is worth noting that the Whiz Quiz is a suspicionless drug test, and that it is pre-employment. This is very much like the governments' suspicionless, warrantless AI powered pervasive surveillance of the public.
Maybe there is something to this suspicionless monitoring.
How about this: unless and until government stops their surveillance of us, we have government bureaucrats and elected officials subjected to post-employment, random, suspicionless drug tests. You know, just in case. After all, drug abuse might explain some of the silly shit coming out of city hall. Drugs in. Stupid out.
Let's see how they like being treated like a bad actor until proven otherwise.
The city is fixin' to git ready to adopt some rules around the use of AI. Well, some AI, but not all AI. Notably missing is any mention of Agentic AI. You know, the kind of AI that improves efficacy of operations, reduces headcount and associated cost of operation. Heaven forbid agentic AI should be THE assistant city manager, an assistant that works 7x24 at a much, much lower cost than an organic, 40 hour, assistant. This city could optimize operations while reducing costs.
They won't.
Heaven forbid that payroll should right-size. This is government, no competition, nothing but expansion. Optimization is not an issue. In fact, optimization is kryptonite to government bureaucrats. They intend to use GenAI to make their jobs easier without any reduction in staff and certainly not forgoing their guaranteed annual raise.
Another reason they will never use Agentic AI is because an important use would be auditing city operations. That means surveillance of city employees as they are doing their jobs. As long as they are in control, AI is for surveilling you, not them.
And the rules are pretty wishy-washy. They are going to offer training on AI but not require it. No indication that annual training for proper (and improper) use of this (or any other) technology will be in place. Hell, they didn't require it for cops, so why would they do this with desk jockeys?
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