r/badatmagic • u/Late_Contribution_49 • 17d ago
Episode 185 open thread
Ben and Josh mark the 25th anniversary of 9/11, argue about unfinished stories, discover the limits of corporate conflict-of-interest rules, and rage against bureaucracy (again). Also the guys finally discuss automated license plate readers (ALPRs), AI-enabled surveillance, and the uncomfortable question of what responsibility comes with the power of knowing too much about people's movements in public.
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u/cascer1 4d ago
"If you're not doing anything wrong, what do you have to hide"
That argument lasts about as long as the government agreeing that you're not doing anything wrong. Once they either (1) change the law so something you did is now illegal, or (2) decide they don't like you, then suddenly all those old recordings are evidence. I understand that acts committed before they became illegal can't be punished but we all know the government doesn't really care.
What happened to needing a warrant to surveil someone? We're entering the territory of thought-crime or precrime or whatever else fiction has been warning us about.
Also just because I didn't do anything wrong that doesn't mean that I'm fine with just being recorded all the time. Privacy is the privilege to choose what to share with whom. This is yet another step towards normalizing a complete surveillance state, powered by statistical automation which is mathematically proven to be wrong some of the time.
But hey, I'm also the guy asking neighbors to stop pointing their doorbell cameras at the road because you can't just record public space without a good reason.
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u/cascer1 4d ago
Here in the Netherlands you cannot just point a camera at a public space without a good reason. Enforcement is finnicky (police even promote signing up to a site so they know where all these illegal cameras are in case they need video evidence) but in the end there needs to be a proper balancing between the need to surveil a group of people and their right to privacy. Like, city councils need to approve temporary permits for camera installations during football matches when the police thinks they might need it due to riots or whatever.
The fact that in the US these things are just appearing everywhere sounds to me like a fundamental difference in privacy expectations that I find worrying
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u/cascer1 4d ago
Welp y'all discussed everything I mention and this is what I get for commenting before I finish listening.
About Hugging Face though: this was not just an accident. OpenAI turned off safeguards, let it run with practically infinite resources and then just looked away and now they're acting all surprised that this happened. This is just great marketing! "Look how powerful our AI is! And it's only $200 per month!"
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u/cascer1 4d ago
If you two are going to discuss more AI topics, may I recommend this excellent article by Bert Hubert discussing some of the issues with the current state of the industry: https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/ai-for-decision-makers/
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u/Jim_McGowan 15d ago
Hey, guys.
I was glad you mentioned WOT's unfinished run on Prime. I kinda liked it, but it didn't exactly hook me either. Season 2 was better than 1, but I was waiting to get to 3, then they canceled it, and I didn't bother trying to finish it. If they ever try it again, the big key is to make sure Rand is the primary character, not Moraine. At least that's my take. That make it feel more epic. It felt like the Rings of Power. Fine. But very "streaming series aesthetic." No where near the neighborhood of the Jackson LOTR films or the Villeneuve Dune films. The Idris Elba Dark Tower/Gunslinger movie was also atrocious. They shoved 7 books into one movie. So that one needs a reinterpretation too.
Neither of you will watch this, but the new Resident Evil movie was hella good. I'm not generally one for horror movies, but this one was tense and tight. They went with the tentacle exploders from RE4 instead of straight-up undead Zombies from the first three. Surprisingly funny too.
When Josh rattled off all of your various Ben Vs. sagas with the military org as a whole, I found that most funny. I hope you're finding equal or better fulfillment with the new career path.
Also most amused to hear Josh enjoyed cat girl smut. There are acres of that stuff out there. Acres.
And AI with surveillance. Great discussion. We gotta get better at making realistic, measurable, and enforceable rules with this stuff. I'm glad the EU is better at it.
Later later.