Re:Microsoft's Recall AI feature is now indefinitely delayed
by godelski on Friday June 14, 2024 @04:15PM
(#40684648)
> I've not seen anything to make me think this feature is intended for surveillance
I think you may have forgotten about Chat Control[0]. Regardless of its intent for surveillance or not, Relay would be an essential technology for making things such as Chat Control even possible.
I must stress that this can come with all good intentions. That the developers and even Nadella see this purely from the utility perspective and have zero intentions to use it for increased surveillance. But like they say "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions." So I'm trying to distinguish between the potential harm of the technology itself and the conspiracies that are arising. Because we need to recognize that evil often arises with no malintent, and to be careful attributing malicious intentions to those who never had none. It can be incredibly hard to know.
But regardless of the intent, I think we can now look at this and see how ripe the technology is for abuse. And I think we can ask the questions about how likely it is to be abused. And don't just ask how likely __you__ are to be subjected to the abuse, but include others. Because even if others are subjected to that abuse, it is not unlikely to affect you in some form (if you need that specific motivation). I think we can all agree that the likelihood of the technology being abused in authoritarian countries like Iran, North Korea, and many others, is quite high. Maybe this isn't on your radar or maybe it isn't a concern for you because those powers will already abuse their citizens. But certainly this gives them the ability to be more abusive and more invasive.
I think you may have forgotten about Chat Control[0]. Regardless of its intent for surveillance or not, Relay would be an essential technology for making things such as Chat Control even possible.
I must stress that this can come with all good intentions. That the developers and even Nadella see this purely from the utility perspective and have zero intentions to use it for increased surveillance. But like they say "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions." So I'm trying to distinguish between the potential harm of the technology itself and the conspiracies that are arising. Because we need to recognize that evil often arises with no malintent, and to be careful attributing malicious intentions to those who never had none. It can be incredibly hard to know.
But regardless of the intent, I think we can now look at this and see how ripe the technology is for abuse. And I think we can ask the questions about how likely it is to be abused. And don't just ask how likely __you__ are to be subjected to the abuse, but include others. Because even if others are subjected to that abuse, it is not unlikely to affect you in some form (if you need that specific motivation). I think we can all agree that the likelihood of the technology being abused in authoritarian countries like Iran, North Korea, and many others, is quite high. Maybe this isn't on your radar or maybe it isn't a concern for you because those powers will already abuse their citizens. But certainly this gives them the ability to be more abusive and more invasive.
[0] https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/chat-control/