Source: How Russia’s New Facial Recognition App Could End Anonymity – The Atlantic
FindFace’s technology may one day allow anyone to identify you with their phone.
Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt referred to facial recognition as “the only technology Google has built and, after looking at it, we decided to stop.”
You can’t simply delete your profile from the Internet; … you might have to concede that you no longer have anonymity in public.
Source: Automation Should Be Like Iron Man, Not Ultron – ACM Queue
Q: Dear Tom: A few years ago we automated a major process in our system administration team. Now the system is impossible to debug. Nobody remembers the old manual process and the automation is beyond what any of us can understand. We feel like we’ve painted ourselves into a corner. Is all operations automation doomed to be this way?
A: The problem seems to be that this automation was written to be like Ultron, not Iron Man.
In the long run this creates a very serious problem. The work left over for people to do becomes, by definition, more difficult. At the start of the process, people were doing a mixture of simple and complex tasks. After a while the mix shifts more and more towards the complex. … Taken to its logical conclusion, this paradigm results in a need to employ impossibly smart people to do impossibly difficult work.
Source: How Technology is Hijacking Your Mind — from a Former Insider
Where does technology exploit our minds’ weaknesses?
When using technology, we often focus optimistically on all the things it does for us. But I want you to show you where it might do the opposite.
Are you upset that technology hijacks your agency? I am too. … The ultimate freedom is a free mind, and we need technology that’s on our team to help us live, feel, think and act freely.
Hijack #1: If You Control the Menu, You Control the Choices
Hijack #2: Put a Slot Machine In a Billion Pockets
Hijack #3: Fear of Missing Something Important (FOMSI)
Hijack #4: Social Approval
Hijack #5: Social Reciprocity (Tit-for-tat)
Hijack #6: Bottomless bowls, Infinite Feeds, and Autoplay
Hijack #7: Instant Interruption vs. “Respectful” Delivery
Hijack #8: Bundling Your Reasons with Their Reasons
Hijack #9: Inconvenient Choices
Hijack #10: Forecasting Errors, “Foot in the Door” strategies
How many people could define the term?
When it is possible to speak of genetically engineered crops as a broad category, it’s of about as much use as reporting that cars are safe, or that pets are safe. Both of those things are generally true, but the statements are so expansive as to be meaningless. (And there are enormous caveats.)
The National Academy of Sciences is urging people to focus less on the process and more on the product.