Synthetic Super Intelligence and the Transmutation of Humankind

Synthetic Super Intelligence and the Transmutation of Humankind
[…]
Furthermore, many of the supporters and proponents of smart initiatives
are multinational corporations and notorious foundations, including IBM,
Siemens, Cisco and the Rockefeller Foundation. The notion of corporate
giants managing a smarter planet becomes even more troubling when you
consider the history of companies such as IBM, which played a pivotal role
in the holocaust and worked closely with Nazi Germany. Given IBM’s dark
history, should we trust it with the power to regulate and manage numerous
cities around the world? 182
Something that will supposedly be obsolete, once the Singularity
becomes a reality, is crime. By crime, I mean individually instigated crime
and crimes committed by any individual or group of regular Posthumans.
The only crime that will exist are the crimes that the Warlords instigate
and use Posthumans to execute. In order to have all their ducks in a row,
it’s important to the ones in power to be capable of predicting crimes before
they happen, and this is exactly what is in the process of being done. In
Australia, the federal crime commission has now set up gigantic data
systems that can predict criminal activities before they occur. 183 It seems as
if the movie, The Minority Report, starring Tom Cruise, was a preview of
this control system.
Australia is not the only place where such a system is set up, or is
being set up. The Activist Post continues,
…the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) has a division called the Real-
Time Analysis and Critical Response Division (RACR). The RACR uses
cutting-edge algorithmic systems and analytics in an attempt to predict
future crime. British police in Kent have also been using a pre-crime
software program called Predpol for two years, which analyses crimes based
on date, place and category of offence, in order to assist police in making
decisions on patrol routes.
The ethical and moral questions of the move towards predictive policing are
obvious, leading many to fear a potential ‘tyranny of the algorithm’ in the
future. With big data being used in the field of law enforcement to surveil
and attempt to predict criminal behaviour, you can be assured that
182
Activist Post, June 15, 2015, “‘Smart Cities’ Are The Next Phase In The 21st Century Surveillance Grid”, op. cit.
More on Singapore and smart cities here: http://www.wsj.com/articles/singapore-is-taking-the-smart-city-to-awhole-new-level-1461550026?
183
Ibid.
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