A totalitarian police state in the making there. Yes, with ChatGPT (and its successors) they will be targeting politically subversive conversations that threaten state power, in 20+ years time.
It's happened before and we are already showing all the signs of early stage fascism[1], and there is no reason that it won't happen again.
1. Yes I am using the word fascism, instead of authoritarianism, because that is what I think it is, it is that severe, when you consider what is happening already (mass Internet surveillance, protesters being criminalized).
I used to feel sad that I wouldn't be able to see what our society will be like in a few hundred years. The past few years that feeling has instead shifted to feeling glad that I won't have to endure most of it.
It might actually get better over hundreds of years, the current problems are decline over a couple of decades, which will likely result in a backlash eventually.
We abolished slavery, torture, blasphemy, heresy, witch hunting, etc. over the centuries. And made huge roads into tackling racism and the persecution of homosexuals, etc. So no reason to think it will get worse over the very long term, I think?
Unrelatedly one pressing issue we haven't yet fixed is the systematic cruelty and mistreatment of children by parents, which probably has religious origins in prior generations. And instead the government focuses on sexual abuse, which is a drop in the ocean by comparison.
We are also in the midst of a revolution - AI might shift power back to the individual - because it can be run locally, and the government has a much harder time monitoring that. And it can reduce our dependence on online services which are the primary means for state control over our lives?
But I think it's the primary way the state finds out what we are doing, so it then can exercise it's violence, if it finds us doing something that it doesn't like.
The first thing police do nowadays is check social media accounts when there's a crime, whether it's a thought crime or not? So by reducing our reliance on online services, we can diminish the ability of the state to police our lives?
Or maybe I'm wrong here (tired, and need a rest, so I don't end up spamming HN)?
There's no reason to think those things will get better either, in fact maybe the opposite. The gains we've made against racism, misogyny, homophobia, etc were hard-won, localized, limited, and recent. At least in my country right now we're seeing a serious and so far somewhat successful revanchist backlash against many of them.
Whether the positive changes will stay as they are or continue to improve is unclear, they certainly aren't well established or uncontested.
Yes, but you see you must make allowances for the fact that the guy is an idiot. As is pretty much everybody else responsible for that particular debacle.
Is this guy really that idiotic? I mean he must realize chatGPT and encryption have nothing to do with one another. That's one thing.
Plus child sexual abuse goes mostly undetected, when repeatedly reported, to multiple authorities (police, CPS, school, council, ...). Why? Such centers to detect child abuse, and "help" of various kinds, very much already exist ... that's CPS ... and they have a reputation for their "help" hurting children far more than abuse does. What has been done to solve that problem? Nothing, of course.
And, obviously, without solving that problem, that help hurts children and their futures much more than the problem they're trying to solve ... without solving that problem first this center the EU is creating is somewhere between useless and outright malevolent. They will face opposition in any concrete case, by EVERYONE. By the abuser, obviously, but also by the child, the parents, and anyone around them. What exactly do they hope to accomplish in such circumstances?
The child knows, or will rapidly learn, CPS "help" will destroy their lives and futures.
Parents know CPS will take away their child JUST to "not miss anything".
Schools/sports clubs/... will know that if this comes out and it turns out to happen at/near/... school or involving their people, it will really hurt them.
This center, like CPS, will be a weapon against children, not against CSAM.
This guy, this law, is really going to hurt people, and hurt children. Can't he see that? This effectively sets a trap. A trap that, criminals will be aware of and not fall into. Why? If you fall into this trap, you will not be heavily punished, because if the trap works, it will prevent a crime from occurring, hence no serious punishment can be applied. This means predators can easily make repeated attempts, making this easy to bypass.
But kids/minors will fall into this trap. And, of course, people like doctors, parents, schools, sports clubs, youth clubs, ... they will all fall into his trap, and at minimum see the police show up on their doorstep. But ... this can't really be used to go after predators, that's just not practical.
How much do you want to bet that the police will rapidly switch enforcement of this to placing the children involved out of their home (and thereby destroying their future). Because going after the predator won't work: they haven't done anything serious, and they can pay for a lawyer. "Protecting" the child, meaning locking the child up, which obviously will not be with cooperation from the child in question, they can do without even having to see a judge in most places. This will do enormous damage, traumatize the child, preventing them from going to school, disrupting their entire lives ... including INCREASING the odds of child sexual abuse.
The cynic in me now goes "of course police/authorities/CPS/... want exactly such a trap to catch innocents". Much easier to go after children who can't defend themselves for imagined problems, and it pays the same as going after criminals that hide, lie, are competent and defend themselves in court. So of course they go after children with laws like this.
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[ 5.4 ms ] story [ 39.1 ms ] threadIt's happened before and we are already showing all the signs of early stage fascism[1], and there is no reason that it won't happen again.
1. Yes I am using the word fascism, instead of authoritarianism, because that is what I think it is, it is that severe, when you consider what is happening already (mass Internet surveillance, protesters being criminalized).
We abolished slavery, torture, blasphemy, heresy, witch hunting, etc. over the centuries. And made huge roads into tackling racism and the persecution of homosexuals, etc. So no reason to think it will get worse over the very long term, I think?
Unrelatedly one pressing issue we haven't yet fixed is the systematic cruelty and mistreatment of children by parents, which probably has religious origins in prior generations. And instead the government focuses on sexual abuse, which is a drop in the ocean by comparison.
We are also in the midst of a revolution - AI might shift power back to the individual - because it can be run locally, and the government has a much harder time monitoring that. And it can reduce our dependence on online services which are the primary means for state control over our lives?
The first thing police do nowadays is check social media accounts when there's a crime, whether it's a thought crime or not? So by reducing our reliance on online services, we can diminish the ability of the state to police our lives?
Or maybe I'm wrong here (tired, and need a rest, so I don't end up spamming HN)?
Whether the positive changes will stay as they are or continue to improve is unclear, they certainly aren't well established or uncontested.
It will become AI as a service in the cloud with rent seeking, like everything else.
But ChatGPT is known for being horribly inaccurate, and more importantly, it doesn't know when it is inaccurate.
Plus child sexual abuse goes mostly undetected, when repeatedly reported, to multiple authorities (police, CPS, school, council, ...). Why? Such centers to detect child abuse, and "help" of various kinds, very much already exist ... that's CPS ... and they have a reputation for their "help" hurting children far more than abuse does. What has been done to solve that problem? Nothing, of course.
And, obviously, without solving that problem, that help hurts children and their futures much more than the problem they're trying to solve ... without solving that problem first this center the EU is creating is somewhere between useless and outright malevolent. They will face opposition in any concrete case, by EVERYONE. By the abuser, obviously, but also by the child, the parents, and anyone around them. What exactly do they hope to accomplish in such circumstances?
The child knows, or will rapidly learn, CPS "help" will destroy their lives and futures.
Parents know CPS will take away their child JUST to "not miss anything".
Schools/sports clubs/... will know that if this comes out and it turns out to happen at/near/... school or involving their people, it will really hurt them.
This center, like CPS, will be a weapon against children, not against CSAM.
This guy, this law, is really going to hurt people, and hurt children. Can't he see that? This effectively sets a trap. A trap that, criminals will be aware of and not fall into. Why? If you fall into this trap, you will not be heavily punished, because if the trap works, it will prevent a crime from occurring, hence no serious punishment can be applied. This means predators can easily make repeated attempts, making this easy to bypass.
But kids/minors will fall into this trap. And, of course, people like doctors, parents, schools, sports clubs, youth clubs, ... they will all fall into his trap, and at minimum see the police show up on their doorstep. But ... this can't really be used to go after predators, that's just not practical.
How much do you want to bet that the police will rapidly switch enforcement of this to placing the children involved out of their home (and thereby destroying their future). Because going after the predator won't work: they haven't done anything serious, and they can pay for a lawyer. "Protecting" the child, meaning locking the child up, which obviously will not be with cooperation from the child in question, they can do without even having to see a judge in most places. This will do enormous damage, traumatize the child, preventing them from going to school, disrupting their entire lives ... including INCREASING the odds of child sexual abuse.
The cynic in me now goes "of course police/authorities/CPS/... want exactly such a trap to catch innocents". Much easier to go after children who can't defend themselves for imagined problems, and it pays the same as going after criminals that hide, lie, are competent and defend themselves in court. So of course they go after children with laws like this.