Advice to the less paranoid

[degringolade]

I have been thinking about the advent and meaning of the current "sissy-boy-slap-fest" that constitutes the AI competition.

More and more, what this means to me is that I need to distance myself from the actors driving this phenomenon and watch where I go on the web.

One of my favorite authors (Modesitt) in his fiction makes use of the idea of a scrivener. Those days are quite in the past and the physical printing press is becoming increasingly obsolete. Electronic communication is the present and the future, as much as folks don't like the idea. This harsh fact is needs to be dealt with on a personal basis and the responsibility to shield myself from the intrusions of the purveyors of control that are peddling their wares as "Artificial Intelligence" is a responsibility of the individual.

I certainly am not suggesting that you abandon the use of the internet. I am suggesting that you start to realize that anything you write/read can be monitored. Most of the time, these are just greedy bastards who are trying to get at your money. That being said, most of the time this simplistic type of intrusion can be minimized by taking reasonable precautions (encrypted email, firewalls, VPN, etc.) But if some panoptic motherfucker federal AI? Fuck only knows.

And if those kind of folks in the panopticon are interested in you and what you are reading, I would definitely hope that you will stop visiting here and go the fuck away.

Comments

if only

[chefxh]

I laugh at the idea of ever being interesting enough to attract any evil attention.

Me Too

[degringolade]

But if, on the off chance that I start getting overly frisky, I still think that being aware is half the battle.

Just be a little careful.