End game

One of the biggest complaints from law enforcement is the lack of control over information. There are any number of videos of police beating up people taking video of them on the job. Law enforcement gathers mountains of information every day on so many people that sifting through the information has become all but impossible. If they didn't gather so much information in the first place, this would not be a problem. But, then they wouldn't have all that information to be so upset over.

Cloud computing was supposed to be a god send to law enforcement. They love the idea of having a search engine attached to all the private data of everyone so they can just kick off a search and nab the bad people. Define bad. The U. S. already has a quarter of the prisoners in the world. What happens when the only people walking the streets are cops? I suppose they will want prisoners to have access to mobile phones so they can be more easily tracked.

Recently a big to-do was in the news about a computer program called Watson from IBM. It played a game of Jeopardy against humans. Now, I've hearing that the whole thing was publicity stunt in order to sell Watson to companies trying to do direct marketing to consumers. Watson can call you and send the sales pitch. If you interrupt, Watson can answer your questions and hopefully interact in a way that seems like a human on the other end.

The next step is the front line call center. Beware when you don't hear a bunch of hub-bub in the background when talking to tech support. You might be on the phone with a robot.

The next step after this is to put Watson at drive through windows. Then to replace cashiers at the grocery store. Then taxi, truck and bus drivers. Next goes all forms of reception on the phone or in person. Then accounting and book keeping. By this time you will notice the police and fire dispatch are run by Watson. Watson will get several talk shows because by this point, many personalities will have been programmed in. Individual instances of Watson will have been programmed to react in specific ways to specific attitudes and accents. All in the interest of diversity and political correctness of course.

Watson will learn to use a child's voice for some requests and a demanding dominant male voice for others. Some people will respond better to a female voice. Watson will learn to say things is a certain way to achieve the goal set to it/him by its/his human owners.

The whole point of communication is to change the behavior of individuals. The only purpose of creating a computer that can communicate to humans is to manipulate their behavior. From signs that says no left turn to an ad for grapefruit juice to attending a graduate level course on particle physics, it is all to modify the behavior of the person who is being communicated to.