Signtist

That's the issue - 1 billion sounds like a big enough number. Most people hear it and think "Hah! Just desserts!" but it's not. They make so much money that even 1 billion is something they can easily ignore. The average person has such a poor grasp on just how much money is being accumulated that its easy to fool them into thinking a fine is far more damaging to the company than it is.

This is perfect - my wife and I have both been limping along on old falling-apart phones, and have been looking for something new that doesn't make us feel gross for supporting a major company, and isn't overloaded with so many nearly-useless features. Decided to take the de-google plunge at the same time, and grabbed the eos ones!

I've got a dispenser that basically works like a gumball machine. Goes every day and only needs to be refilled maybe once every month or two. Even has a battery backup in case the power goes out while we're on vacation or something. No need for smart home integration, just listen to your pet when they complain that they don't have any food, and make sure you're full up before leaving for an extended amount of time.

Anything worth doing is worth reviewing.

Well, elections and the second amendment, yeah. Hopefully we can build a world where a policy can be made for good that actually does good, but we'll see.

People are dumb and often do things that harm themselves and the world as a whole. That's the reason AI is bad - not because we don't like it, but because we shouldn't like it, it makes us dumber, and is terrible for the planet on top of it all.

It's like if I lit a bunch of tires on fire, bottled the smoke to smell as perfume, and justified it all by saying I found someone who liked the smell. It's irrelevant, and doesn't justify my actions at all.

Science is great; it's the people who ignore it throughout school but still think they know enough to understand complex topics like medicine and climatology that are the problem.

...our president is a criminal who deserves to be in jail, but isn't. Lawmakers themselves obviously can't be trusted with this, either. I'd trust a random person off the street more than anyone in the government.

What I'm describing is our current reality where policies are enacted for "safety" when really they're to be abused. The news calls them "bad actors" or "rogue officers" but anyone who doesn't see them as the expected results they are is fooling themselves. Stories like this are to normalize a system specifically being designed to vilify normal people instead of our actual enemies.

We can't have a discussion about what a moral government would do with surveillance until we have a moral government. It's so far from happening that the idea that it will ever be used to provide more good than bad is concernedly naive.

I'm not saying we shouldn't take threats of violence seriously, I'm saying that a person's private communications should never be publicly available, regardless of what dangers might go undiscovered, because the real danger of such a policy being misused overshadows that risk by orders of magnitude.

The issue with surveillance is that it relies on the assumption that the people with the privilege to access the information are honorable enough to only use it when necessary and only use it truthfully. I don't trust our country or corporations not to have an AI "hallucinate" a death threat so that they have reasonable cause to detain anyone they want whenever they want.

Plus, I didn't really think it's all that different between my sister and I and a teacher and their students. My wife was a teacher, and while she never said she wanted to shoot a student, she's certainly said she wanted to strangle one. Most of the other teachers I know have said similarly violent things. I also used to work with doctors, and they often say similar things as well.

People with tough jobs often release stress with violent candid statements about things that frustrate them, then go on to obviously never actually do anything violent. Again, it's called hyperbole, and is a very common thing across all language. Even if this AI was completely infallible and couldn't be used dishonestly, it would still have so many false positives that it would be nothing more than a boy who cried wolf.

The amount of times I said I was going to kill my sister in my life would have gotten me arrested if the government were listening to me. Anyone who knows me knows I love my sister, and would obviously never kill her. Hyperbole is frequently used in all aspects of human communication, and anyone who says it should be grounds for investigation is either lying, or stupidly believes that those in power could ever be trusted with such privileges.

Damn, that sucks. But yeah, legal battles are so exhausting that even when you win you just feel tired.