
Soon Google May Free You from Having to Think at All - smacktoward
https://hmmdaily.com/2019/04/02/soon-google-may-free-you-from-having-to-think-at-all/
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netsharc
I want to write a short story (I know, I know, I'll get to it... someday!)
that begins with the protagonist saying "OK Google, get me a girlfriend" and
follows as Google's suggestions "prods" him to go to bars and events where he
ends up meeting a girl, etc, etc.

Like this ad
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnsSUqgkDwU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnsSUqgkDwU)
but with the people not realizing that Google's suggestions lead them to their
life situation.

When I'm at a client's site we to go to an Italian restaurant across the
street regularly. My Google Maps started suggesting other Italian places
"because you like Italian.".

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derekp7
This sounds a lot like a Black Mirror episode, except in that episode the
characters were actually simulated AIs I believe.

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jeromebaek
Cool gag. Predictably, the links are nonsensical. It further shows how no one
algorithm will outpace all algorithms, i.e. no one thought to rule all
thoughts.

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Zarath
So the point is that if you take stuff out of context, Google search won't be
able to properly understand the nonexistent context?

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jdsully
The solution is rather obvious, we should just ban sarcasm.

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olivermarks
'The Machine Stops' by E. M. Forster
[https://youtu.be/aNRXeourusk](https://youtu.be/aNRXeourusk)

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devoply
The article amounts to little more than subversion in normal speech under
surveillance, it's not as if Google can't read and make at least some limited
sense of most of things you do or say during your interactions with it. You
can point gaping holes in that behavior but the fact is that Google has you by
the balls in terms of the data it's collecting on you and as time passes it
will get better at making sense of lots of it, even if you can subvert it
easily enough. Maybe it's hinting that going forward the cognoscenti should
exercise this sort of subversive speech to confuse the AI.

Machines thinking for humans was one of the hypotheses in Yuval Noah Harari's
book Homo Deus, he calls it dataism. To me it seems to be a recipe for how can
corporations can wrestle control of thinking from human beings to render them
into mere drones. This seems to be on the agenda of the Silicon Valley elites
as they have seemingly adopted him as their pet historian/philosopher. May you
live in interesting times.

I have been thinking about this and it seems that it could work but I don't
see how it could work considering that there is always a conflict of interest
between what corporations want and what an individual or a business wants. So
in a world where you have agents that belong to you and are required by law as
through fiduciary duty to follow your interests it's possible for such agents
to exist. But it will never work if Google or Facebook owns these agents or
the data on which the agents make their decisions without transparency.

Also see Autofac episode of Electric Dreams on Amazon Prime Video:
[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6902176/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6902176/)

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andrekandre
> This seems to be on the agenda of the Silicon Valley elites as they have
> seemingly adopted him as their pet historian/philosopher. May you live in
> interesting times.

not sure it’s explicitly an “agenda”, but does seem like a likely outcome if
current trends continue i suppose...

as an aside, the whole “think for you” is quite different than the “original”
ideal of what got the whole thing started, that is: the augmentation of human
intellect [1], not the replacement of...

[1]
[http://groups.csail.mit.edu/medg/people/psz/Licklider.html](http://groups.csail.mit.edu/medg/people/psz/Licklider.html)

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OrgNet
Soon, you won't even have to push the "I'm feeling lucky" button, they will
just show you whatever they want (a bit like TV).

