Safety versus privacy

9

October

2016

5/5 (2)

Narcos is currently one of the most popular series of Netflix. The series tells the story of notorious drug kingpin Pablo Escobar, and how he tries to avoid getting arrested by the drug police. On the contrary, the drugs police do everything in their power to catch Escobar. However, back in those days it was not that easy. Escobar and his men used satellite phones that could be taped. However, the taped conversation only had value when the reception was good and when the police was able to recognize someone’s voice. I couldn’t stop thinking how different the same situation would be nowadays.

Tracking only the metadata of someone’s phone for one week can tell you someone’s life story. The Correspondent, a Dutch online newspaper, tracked the phone of Ton, and you will be surprised what they knew about him after a week. The name of his girlfriend is Merel and they send each other 100 Whatsapp messages per day on average. Ton also has a sister, Annemiek, who is still studying. Ton likes to read about sports on several news apps and is particularly interested in cycling. Furthermore, he likes to read Scandinavian thrillers, is interested in philosophy and religion, and most likely a Christian based on his search results on Google and Yahoo. He knows a lot about technology, uses three e-mail addresses, works at Bits of Freedom, and often works till late. He normally goes to bed around midnight and so forth! It is frightening to see that so much information can come from meta-data collected in one week.

Where the Correspondent got permission from Ton to track his data, the National Communications Security Agency (NCSC) of the Netherlands is entitled to track all people’s meta-data. And of course, for the sake of safety they have collected data from everyone and over a long period of time, also called data mining. Their intention is to build data-warehouses where they can store the data forever. Next to collecting data, the NCSC also has advanced tools to analyze the data. In special cases, they are allowed to go further than only analyzing meta-data and may also look into the content of the data.

However, collecting data of everyone and saving this forever is in conflict with the privacy rights. The public opinion about this matter is not clear. When Snowden reveals data collection secrets of national security agencies, everyone believes that they are collecting too much data and are violating the privacy rights of the citizens. However, when there is a terrorist attack everyone claims that we should give up our privacy rights for the sake of safety. But there is no clear debate going on. Would you have given up your privacy rights to get the notorious drug kingpin Pablo Escobar?

Sources

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Is Artificial Intelligence a Threat For Humanity?

7

October

2016

5/5 (4)

The movie “Her” is a beautiful example of how Artificial Intelligence (AI) may interfere in our future lives. For the people who haven’t seen the movie, the film follows Theodore, a man who develops a relationship with an intelligent computer operating system called Samantha. Just as in the movie, I believe AI can really add something to our lives. Everyone knows the examples of self-driving cars or robot vacuums that can make life for people easier. In the future, many more convenient applications will be developed to enhance our lives and the popularity of AI will only grow and grow.

However, many technologies have both good and bad aspects that they can be used for, and so does AI. There was a lot of commotion when people heard about so-called “killer robots”, fully autonomous weapons that are able to select and engage targets without human intervention. According to the Human Rights Watch “it is questionable that fully autonomous weapons would be capable of meeting international humanitarian law standards, including the rules of distinction, proportionality, and military necessity, while they would threaten the fundamental right to life and principle of human dignity”. Some 36% of people think the rise of AI poses a threat to the long term survival of humanity. Among those 36% are Stephen Hawking, Bill Gates, and Elon Musk. They all warn about a time when humans will lose control of AI and be enslaved or exterminated by them. Particularly the development of self-learning machines freighting these people.

Irving John Good developed in 1960 the idea of the intelligence explosion. He anticipated that self-improving machines would become as intelligent, then exponentially more intelligent, than humans. Initially, Good had a romantic view about AI, as he believed that they would save mankind by solving intractable problems, including famine, disease and war. Later on, he feared global competition would drive nations to develop superintelligence without safeguards. Eventually, he believed that this would lead to the extermination of the human race.

The crux of the problem is that we have no idea how we control super intelligent machines. Many people don’t see the threat and assume AI will be harmless. A.I. scientist Steve Omohundro did research on the nature of AI and indicated that they will develop basic drives, regardless of their job. They’ll become self-protective and seek resources to better achieve their goals. If necessary, they’ll fight us to survive, as they won’t want to be turned off. Omohundro therefore emphasizes that we have to design AI very carefully. You should expect that ethics are therefore paramount for experts in developing superintelligence. Unfortunately this is not the case, most experts are developing products instead of exploring safety and ethics. The budgets for AI are rising and are projected to a rising budget going to generate trillions of euros in economic value. Shouldn’t we spend a fraction of that budget on exploring the ethics of autonomous machines, in order to ensure the survival of the human species?

Sources:

  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Her_(film)
  • https://www.hrw.org/topic/arms/killer-robots
  • https://www.hrw.org/topic/arms/killer-robots
  • http://newsvideo.su/video/3768547
  • http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-barrat/hawking-gates-artificial-intelligence_b_7008706.html
  • http://io9.gizmodo.com/why-a-superintelligent-machine-may-be-the-last-thing-we-1440091472

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