While I was tempted to headline this post with “Smart Beds, Stupid People”, there’s a much bigger issue at stake here.
You see, as much as we might laugh at the idiocy of people who would depend on something as fragile as the Internet to operate their frigging beds (FFS), just stop and think about how much else is dependent on SkyNet: communications, banking, traffic systems, logistics, security systems, even mapping services and cars (don’t get me started)… the list goes on and on, ad nauseam.
And yet people like me, who rail against the vulnerability of this encroachment on basic daily functions are patronized (“There there, Gramps, just take your pill and go to bed”) and called Luddites.
What about this much-lauded artificial intelligence thing?
An artificial intelligence system (AI) apparently mistook a high school student’s bag of Doritos for a firearm and called local police to tell them the pupil was armed.
Taki Allen was sitting with friends on Monday night outside Kenwood high school in Baltimore and eating a snack when police officers with guns approached him.
“At first, I didn’t know where they were going until they started walking toward me with guns, talking about, ‘Get on the ground,’ and I was like, ‘What?’” Allen told the WBAL-TV 11 News television station.
Allen said they made him get on his knees, handcuffed and searched him – finding nothing. They then showed him a copy of the picture that had triggered the alert.
close up of hands using a laptop keyboard
“I was just holding a Doritos bag – it was two hands and one finger out, and they said it looked like a gun,” Allen said.
Yeah, it’s all funny and stuff — until one day we discover that A.I.-generated police ROE training allows for lethal shooting at suspects “to eliminate the threat”. Oh wait… you think robot cops are just a figment of Hollywood imagination? Given that cops are facing staff shortages (#ThankYouBLM) and falling recruitment numbers (#ThankYouWokeCityGovernments), does anyone care to bet against me about this scenario?
Here’s the thing. Try to write a story that has an unbelievable premise about the baleful effects of technology on a distant-future society, and I’ll show you: tomorrow. Bloody hell, the most prophetic form of hostile future technology that you can imagine is probably being beta-tested somewhere as we speak.
Even Blade Runner is starting to look like a near-future dystopia rather than some far-off eventuality.
Having your bed controlled by SkyNet is the least of our problems.
I’ve been pricing potential replacements for my aging side by side fridge/freezer. Who the fuck needs a “smart” fridge, enabling me to see what’s inside 24/7 from anywhere in the world? I already know about the dead hooker. I’m the one who put her there, FFS.
I have a smaller chest freezer I’m not using, holds 3 dead hookers, 4 if you fold them right, 16 if thinly sliced.
Allegedly.
Think I’m going to build another house farther back on our acreage, deeper into the forest.
Then I’ll rent the current house to a mess of college gurlz.
They can pay their rent by mowing the yard, painting the siding, picking the corn, and fondling my nutsak….
Does you wife approve of this plan?
Good luck getting college kids, male OR female, but especially female, to do any kind of icky “work” stuff, unless it can be done remotely. Sadly, geriatric scrotal fondling might be an easier sell than any of the other activities you mention, especially if linked to reduced or free accommodation.
Just wanted to say, WTF? “police officers with guns”??
Are there police officers without guns? Who wrote the fucking story? I’m going guess they meant “police officers with guns drawn” or “police officers with guns out” or something similar.
Also, after the AI tagged the fucking picture, and the fucking cops had the fucking picture, did they actually look at the fucking picture and see the bag of fucking chips? Every cop there should have been fired. Fuck the police shortage. I’d rather have no cops and just hire clean-up crews for all the dead criminals laying about.
Sorry, haven’t finished my first cup of coffee yet. Thus all the foul fucking language.
What foul language?
I was gonna ask the same question.
Encouraging stupid people to make stupid decisions seems an excellent way of improving the breed. Just keep your distance.
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The least of our problems indeed.
https://rumble.com/v4m36r5-episode-13-self-assembly-nanotechnology-live-blood-darkfield-microscopy-a-r.html
I wonder what an EMP would do.
Good luck trying to argue anyone OUT of the above position. Executives, whether Fed/State/Local/Business/etc. are fundamentally cowards and knaves all. Because they rarely have measurables to meet, they all jump on the fuckery train, of Cloud/AI/whatever runs Super Bowl ads, so it can look like they are forward-thinking and keeping the business competitive. The reality is they are just as ad-captured as some teenager, buying something off of tik-tok because Dylan Mulvaney said so.
But because of the above they are completely sold-out on any buzzword initiative, and the more you try to reason with/show data against, the more entrenched they become. In spite of all that’s said about open-doors and bottom-up ideas, Executives rarely appreciate being challenged, it interferes with their golf-games and stock options. I read this about Gen. Sossibosky opposing Market-Garden, “One of the worst things a subordinate can do is oppose a superior and be proven right.”
Just yesterday I said no to Wi-Fi enabled light bulbs. Sold solely to reduce choice of wattage and color. Makes Home Depot more “efficient”, I suppose.
The head teacher has, of course, tendered their resignation, right? Right?
we just recently replaced our refrigerator. We had plain jane and we replaced it with something close. We didn’t want a water and ice dispensing fridge because they require filters that are hard to replace and they can easily be discontinued because a new model fridge has come out.
I saw the remote controlled light bulbs in the store as mentioned by JJ. I don’t want that either. remote controlling lights, thermostats and locks is a bad idea because they can be hacked and reprogrammed. That’s all I need is some remote person playing a prank on me by manipulating my house or a busybody deciding that my house is too comfortable and against the greater good.
I don’t want anything in my life overly complicated. IN the area around me, traffic cameras are being installed. Now you get a ticket by remote control. At some point these meth addicts must learn that there is lots of copper in these cameras.
I have this weird dichotomy of being a bit of a techy, wanting a ‘smart house’, yet also kind of luddite-esque in many ways. Having been bit by too many of these companies selling smart, IoT items and then going bust or just deciding to not support it anymore, I’m just about done with smart stuff, unless I can use it without registering it or without an email address/account attached to it. Just yesterday, email from Neato about their robot vac that I’ve owned for 5 years saying their servers will no longer host the backend, so it defaults to dumb random bumping around, no mapping or excluding areas on the map. Had a Mellow sous-vide, company went tits up and it wouldn’t do anything it was supposed to do sans intarwebz. Have Sensi thermostats that I can control with the phone – but if internet is down, have to stand up, walk to the thermostat and push on it manually like I’m Amish or something. Have a few other interconnected things that I don’t really use the internet features of (esp. door locks, they do not have my wifi password, but I do like the garage door opener phone function), but what if they just do a forced update and brick the whole thing like so many companies have done?
I’m tinkering with software for raspberry pi that controls/reads things and it is all kept local, but still, it just pisses me off, and because of the DMCA, when companies *do* wanna screw you, bypassing protection devices with functions we bought and paid for is a federal felony with fines and a pound-me-in-the-ass prison.
Maybe going Amish is the best alternative. Bet the inevitable coming Carrington Event level CME won’t bother them much.
Frustrating.