“A palentir is a dangerous tool, Saruman,” Gandalf said. “We do not know who may be watching.”
Beware if you gaze into a palentir long…
March 23, 2026
Hacker finds he can control 7000 vacuum cleaners..
March 5, 2026
Incredible! What did he do with such power? As I said, he took his findings to the Verge. One of its reporters gave Azdoufal the serial number of a DJI Romo vacuum he’d just been testing for review; within minutes Azdoufal could see it cleaning the reporter’s living room, that it had 80% battery life remaining, and had it generate and transmit a floor plan of the house.
And the Internet of Things seemed like such a good idea…
Language = Power; Censorship = Fragile Ego
September 9, 2023
The short story accused of violating the national security law, “Our Time,” is set in a dystopian 2050. It tells of an authoritarian future in which vast swaths of Hong Kong history have been erased from both the city’s structures and the public consciousness, and all aspects of life are subsumed under the Chinese Communist Party.
https://qz.com/hong-kong-s-new-public-enemy-the-cantonese-language-1850780591
I’m not sure this is science fiction. Seems more like reality.
Every political entity wants power. When people resist being controlled, and they use a dialect or another form of the “official” language, those in charge try to eliminate the language of resistance.
When people write about a dystopian future in which they have no right to their own language, customs, ways of thinking and behaving, and political representation — and those in charge respond by banning the fiction — it really only shows the reality. And the reality is this:
Those in charge have small, frail, male egos that need constant stroking. Poor frail eggshell minds.
Language is power, because language is identity. Those in charge are always afraid of losing control over all three. And whenever they respond this way, they always get exactly the opposite of what they want.
fMRI, GPT-1, and your brain
May 3, 2023
Scientists have found a way to decode a stream of words in the brain using MRI scans and artificial intelligence.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/05/01/1173045261/a-decoder-that-uses-brain-scans-to-know-what-you-mean-mostly
While not perfect, this is some seriously scary stuff.
FWIW the researchers themselves did recognize this…
Although it’s nowhere near being able to decode spontaneous thoughts in the real world, the advance raises concerns that, with improvement, the technology might mimic some type of mind reading. “Our thought when we actually had this working was, ‘Oh my God, this is kind of terrifying,’” Huth recalls.
https://www.science.org/content/article/scientists-use-ai-decipher-words-and-sentences-brain-scans
Participants have to consent to being “read,” and there are ways to prevent the software from figuring out even the “gist” of what they were thinking.
Still, imagine if some nefarious criminal group (or governmental agency, if there is a difference) decided to force someone to consent to have their thoughts read.
Long distance.
Permanently.
It’s getting harder and harder to distinguish scifi from reality.
Researchers can now “see” you using WiFi
March 29, 2023
Interestingly, they position this advancement as progress in privacy rights; “In addition, they protect individuals’ privacy and the required equipment can be bought at a reasonable price,” they wrote.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3p7xj/scientists-are-getting-eerily-good-at-using-wifi-to-see-people-through-walls-in-detail
If you’re not scared of tech yet, you should be.
The real danger of unregulated AI
February 27, 2023
“I’m less frightened by a Sydney that’s playing into my desire to cosplay a sci-fi story than a Bing that has access to reams of my personal data and is coolly trying to manipulate me on behalf of whichever advertiser has paid the parent company the most money.
“Nor is it just advertising worth worrying about. What about when these systems are deployed on behalf of the scams that have always populated the internet? How about on behalf of political campaigns? Foreign governments? “I think we wind up very fast in a world where we just don’t know what to trust anymore,” Gary Marcus, the A.I. researcher and critic, told me. “I think that’s already been a problem for society over the last, let’s say, decade. And I think it’s just going to get worse and worse.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/26/opinion/microsoft-bing-sydney-artificial-intelligence.html
Chatbots — Still not AI but still dangerous
December 13, 2022
[ChatGPT] could teach his daughter math, science and English, not to mention a few other important lessons. Chief among them: Do not believe everything you are told.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/10/technology/ai-chat-bot-chatgpt.html
They’re all the rage online. Type in a request for a description how two historical people who never actually met would respond to each other had they actually met, and the program will oblige.
They’ll cause all sorts of rage online, too, once the peddlers of incessant false news and innuendo realize what a bonanza they’ve stumbled upon.
You want an image of an event that never really happened?
No problem. A program can generate one for you. We can even call it “art,” for what that’s worth.
No, BIG problem, especially when it convinces the gullible that it DID happen.
2023 will tell 2020 and 2022 to hold its coffee.
Just what we all wanted, right?
Still, chatbots are not (repeat, NOT) true AI. Sorry, Google engineer who watched too much Ghost in the Shell. Chatbots repeat our very human bias. Repeatedly.
As in, there are way too many racist, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic, and transphobic comments online. Full stop.
At a minor level, as a writing instructor, a student telling a chatbot to write a 600-word comparison-contrast essay is the least of my worries.
For starters, the damn things are probably scouring the Internet right now and “learning” from text on web pages like…uh…this one…
😱
mRNA and nanotech? Stay skeptical and use the Baloney Detection Kit!
June 25, 2021
It’s becoming increasingly common to see social media posts claiming that the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, which include those made by Pfizer and Moderna, could alter a person’s DNA. Some posts even suggest that nano-machines are being injected into the body.
https://cosmosmagazine.com/health/covid/technically-no-longer-human-can-mrna-covid-19-vaccines-meld-with-your-dna/
Yeah, I’ve seen some of these posts. Talked to a neighbor who was convinced Bill Gates was trying to inject us all with a chip to control our minds.
Is there any truth to these rumours? Could an mRNA vaccine be modifying your DNA?
No.
(Read the linked Cosmos article for more details!)
Actually, all you need to do is use logic and reasoning, apply some critical thinking, and demand lots of science-based evidence.
It’s called the Baloney Detection Kit and was introduced in a Cornell University undergraduate course about critical thinking and the scientific method by astrophysicist Carl Sagan.
In his book The Demon-haunted World, he lays out nine steps to bust BS and call out unscientific baloney. I use it with my second year undergrad students in a current news and global issues course.
The link above to the kit also outlines some of the most important logical fallacies to avoid, with number 8 and 9 being the most difficult to explain and convince people about (because they involve education about basic statistics).
So will this convince anti-vaxxers who make outlandish claims online?
Probably not. Unless it goes viral 😉.
SpooQy-1 action at a distance!
June 30, 2020
“In the future, our system could be part of a global quantum network transmitting quantum signals to receivers on Earth or on other spacecraft,” says Aitor Villar, lead author of the study. “These signals could be used to implement any type of quantum communications application, from quantum key distribution for extremely secure data transmission to quantum teleportation, where information is transferred by replicating the state of a quantum system from a distance.”
OK, OK, so it’s not the first time quantum entanglement has been demonstrated. But it sure is the smallest. Only 20 cm by 10 cm!
Now we only need a few thousand of these things and a way of somehow making tangled photons actually carry encrypted messages…
(Sorry, thinking of the SF novel I should have published by now…still figuring out the last two chapters!)
See more at New Atlas (note: I seriously doubt the CubeSat actually looks like that picture when it’s doing its thing).
Artificial intelligence-created medicine to be used on humans for first time
January 31, 2020
“This year was the first to have an AI-designed drug, but by the end of the decade all new drugs could potentially be designed by AI.”
Philip K Dick would have had a field day with this. Imagine what will happen once we start ingesting nanobots…
I, for one, welcome our AI drug overlords.
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