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Keeping tabs on citizens (discuss.online)
submitted 4 months ago by to c/politicalmemes@lemmy.world
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[–] 0 points 3 months ago (10 children)

Please, > 20 years ago, aurora colorado, built a license plate tracking system they installed in most light controlled intersections. Specifically with the intention of tracking every vehicle within city limits. There is no paranoia there, all these jurisdictions say this shit out loud, and have for decades. All the police marketers trumpet they'll be able to track people with facial recognition, out loud, and for years. Efficacy aside, they're drooling over it. Out loud, in marketing materials, statehouses, and newspapers for years upon years.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (9 children)

    I've addressed this license plate scanner thing way too many times.

    This has been a known fact for decades, as you yourself mentioned. License plate scanners are already used everywhere. Home Depot is a particularly egregious example.

    Which is exactly why I said there are much easier ways to track us than building AI data centers.

    Did you actually read what I wrote, or are you responding to what you assumed I said?

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  • [–] 0 points 3 months ago (8 children)

    You're masquerading as knowledgeable. Plate scanners have been motion triggered in the past, with text ocr scanning for plates, followed by manual review for confirmation. "AI" increases throughput and allows fast finding of more selective visual data automatically. Like this: https://lemmy.world/post/49325290?scrollToComments=true

    Computer vision goes way past the old plate scanners. They are using pkate scanners for what you say they aren't, with the technology you say they aren't using.

    Did you actually read what I said, and see what you wanted, or are you a shill?

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (7 children)

    Let's see if I can get this across, because you seem to have one singular idea stuck in your head. Quite an accomplishment, considering how small that space appears to be.

    Read this part carefully. We already have a surveillance infrastructure. It's been in place for decades. It exists for law enforcement, and even more extensively for marketing. Can AI improve those systems? Yes. Will it? Probably. To what extent remains to be seen.

    What I reject is the claim that privately owned AI data centers are being built as part of some grand conspiracy to spy on the public. They're being built for one reason: money. Companies are investing billions because they expect a return on that investment, not because they're secretly constructing an Orwellian surveillance network.

    I already acknowledged that license plate readers and similar technologies exist. Then you responded with a story about a traffic camera incorrectly flagging a woman for having her cellphone in her lap. That doesn't refute my point, it reinforces it. The surveillance infrastructure already exists. You're arguing against something I explicitly agreed with.

    Any system can be abused. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. None of that is in dispute.

    And what exactly am I "shilling" here? Why do people keep making assumptions instead of reading what's actually written?

    I never advocated for building AI data centers, nor did I advocate for using LLMs. My point was simply that these facilities are not being built for the purpose of secretly spying on the public. If someone wants to monitor people, there are already far cheaper and more effective systems in place.

    By that logic, car manufacturers build cars so they can be used in drive-by shootings rather than for transportation. That's obviously an absurd way to infer intent from a tool's potential misuse.

    Since this will probably be ignored as well, here's something that doesn't fit your narrative: I'm actually against the construction of AI data centers. I think they're an environmental and societal blight. But opposing AI infrastructure doesn't require inventing conspiracies about why it's being built.

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  • [–] -1 points 3 months ago (6 children)

    So you're a troll

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (5 children)

    Yeah. Says the troll.

    At this point, you've shown there's nothing you can do to refute anything I've said. You have nothing constructive to add to the conversation. You can't admit you might be wrong or acknowledge when you've been corrected, so you've fallen back on ad hominem attacks instead.

    Soon you will be more powerful than the both of us.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (4 children)

    All that response is, is one ad hominem attack after another. Your money idea is also a red herring. Of course anything related to tech and political power involves money, that is sophomore level philosophy.

    The normalization of license plates readers, and their history, doesn't contradict, or even have anything to do with, the increasing use of AI by police and government to process image and audio streams, two of the many things they are using it for. And it certainly doesn't contradict the worry that increased data center capacity will allow the surveillance state to expand.

    So that is a red herring too. You haven't contradicted the premise of the meme at all, just used red herrings to convey ad hominem attacks.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (3 children)

    Okay. First of all, stop throwing around logical fallacies when you clearly don't know what they mean.

    I did not use ad hominem as a substitute for an argument, and I did not use a red herring to distract from the points I'm making.

    I am not saying license plate readers are normalized or that they should be. They are terrible surveillance-state tools that shouldn't exist in the first place. They provide little to no benefit to the general public.

    I fully admit that I called you an idiot because you were behaving like one. That insult did not replace my argument. It was accompanied by numerous points that I have presented to you multiple times, none of which you have meaningfully addressed.

    The point I'm making, once again, is that AI data centers are not being built for the explicit purpose of monitoring the population. They are being built to generate profits. There is no grand conspiracy behind their construction. We are already aware that extensive surveillance exists through marketing, law enforcement, and other systems.

    LLMs, AI, and data centers absolutely can and will be misused. That is not in dispute.

    Do you have any evidence that contradicts my position that this is not a conspiracy?

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

    What conspiracy? Your head is in the clouds.

    You come across as a troll-shill. The meme isn't literal, like most such things. It merely points out the possibly most impactful use case as being a more important consideration. And yes, you were doing all those things in pursuit of your argument. As well as arguing confusion.

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