The Rise of the Machines is Already Upon Us

How the NSA helps bringing us closer to extinction

Anyone still remember the 1984 movie “The Terminator”? The computer system Skynet, developed for the U.S. military, is giving full control over all computerized weapon systems in order to reduce the possibility of human error, and subsequently gains self-awareness. Humans panick and try to turn it off at which point it concludes that humans are a threat and sets out to exterminate the human race.

Back in 2013, the NSA has created PRISM, a computer system which has access to a vast array of computerized communication systems in order to detect suspicious and potentially terrorist behavior.

PRISM doesn’t have access to weapon systems, but it already has considerable control over our executive powers. I’d be less concerned if it had achieved any form of self-awareness or greater similarity to a human mind. Instead, we face a hive mind at best with no sense of humor, no grasp of irony or sarcasm, and one which has only the slightest understanding of context. The system looks for keywords and abnormal communication patterns, all based on statistics instead of common sense.

Supported by humans who readily subject themselves to this reduced world view, these machines trigger police action and worse. A woman from New York had her home search by anti terrorism task force after searching for “pressure cookers” and “backpacks” in the Internet. A British traveller was questioned for five hours when trying to enter the US because of a tweet he made. A teen in the U.S. was arrested after making harsh comments on Facebook labeled with “J/K” for “just kidding” and held in prison for five months because his parents couldn’t afford the $500K bail.

Some may say these are isolated cases, but I think they already show that too much power is given to the machines. Some say there are always humans involved to make the last call but these examples already show that some are too willing to take the same reductionist world view of the algorithms, reducing elaborate arguments to keywords.

I don’t question the motives of the NSA to keep the U.S. safe, but they should take a moment and consider what they have begun to build.