Jeff Bezos: Here’s My Immune Response

In relation to the mass surveillance tools Amazon is selling

For those unaware of what this is about, Amazon is selling facial recognition technology to police in the United States, when probed for an explanation:

Bezos suggested we wait for society’s “immune response.”

Not only is such software a step in the direction of an extremely Orwellian future, it’s incredibly flawed and full of false positives. You can read more here:

My immune response:

Jeff, you’re a smart guy. Which only makes me extra worried, because you likely have full knowledge of what things like Rekognition will do to society, so I won’t spend too much time on that.

So that leaves us with a few options of what’s happening in your mind(ordered by scariness):

(Kinda scary)You think society can handle it

The tech has changed, people have changed, so who knows? Maybe this time an all-knowing, all-seeing government will work to make a super safe world with no crime.

People haven’t really changed, we’re still bald apes that happen to be good at documenting what we do and cooperating in large numbers. Our modern Messiah/Deus ex machina is big tech, and salvation means going to Mars

My take on this: This one seems too unlikely, it’s extremely naïve, which isn’t really the word I’d use to describe the richest man on the planet. I don’t truly believe that you believe in your own Mars stories, and I’ve been forced to come up with insane stories to keep stakeholders happy, so I know what lengths one goes to make it happen.

(Scary)It’s calculated

Perhaps it’s a calculated decision. Alan Turing and his team, after figuring out how to automate the breaking of German ciphers, had to carefully decide which attacks not to intercept — allowing many to die — with the final goal of winning World War II.

Is what’s coming after worth the possibility of some number of deaths now?

What is the goal? Turing had World War II, what are you planning?

If you let your mind wander into darker places, it’s not too hard to reach conclusions similar to Ted Kaczynski’s. If you’re an environment kind of guy, maybe you’ve reached the same conclusions, but your methods are a lot more sophisticated and effective, and being called a “nutjob” and going to jail is less likely for you.

Perhaps you know it’s inevitable, and if you don’t do it, someone else will. At least you take control and try to do it your way.

My take on this: Perhaps the most likely

(A bit scarier)You don’t care

Maybe you’ve done what you wanted, and don’t really care where this leads. You’re likely to come out unscathed anyway, so why not let the free market do its thing? After all, it’s the best system we’ve had in place so far.(just like all the other systems were until they weren’t).

When you’re 80, would you regret doing it, or not doing it?

(Quite scary)You want a piece of the cake

You are very aware of what is most likely to happen, but you were promised a big part in the Orwellian government that is coming.

The average USA male lives to age 76, but you’re not average, so let’s add another 10 years. Let’s say you’ll live to be 86 years of age. Since you’re now 54, you have 32 more years, but who knows how many of those will actually be quality years? Might as well go out with a bang.

Or maybe you want the whole cake and plan to replace the government, I can see how that is an attractive possibility.

(Very scary)You don’t want it to happen, but other forces are stronger than you.

It’s too late to stop now. Very big people and organizations are involved and even if you wanted to stop(which you might), you simply cannot at this very moment.

You’re no longer allowed to decide. After all, the people who want an all-seeing, all-knowing government are not known to let people make their own decisions.

There’s also the possibility that you are not in direct control, but you are intelligent and sly enough to control those controlling you, after all, you have some incredible resources and very high intelligence to go with it.

My take on this: Given how Aaron Schwartz ended up just because of scientific papers, this wouldn’t surprise me. In this scenario, I’d say we’re all pretty fucked, but figuring out who might have the gun to your head isn’t extremely complex.

(Super scary)You want it to happen

Look at us people, dumb, lost, hurting the planet, hurting ourselves. We buy anything and everything whilst complaining about capitalism and being poor.

If you don’t donate to charities, we complain, if you donate to charities, we complain.

“Why can’t Bezos just end homelessness by buying everyone a house?”.

You raise the minimum wage at Amazon fulfilment centres to shut us up but we just get louder and want more(because everyone is an entitled little shit).

You literally make a microphone spy and people gladly buy it without even considering the ramifications of being listened to in private conversations.

So why not take a selected few to Mars and leave us “earthlings” to die off? Or turn earth into a big ball of humans resources and let the elites live on Mars without poor people devaluing their homes.

Mars won’t really happen, but as soon as most die off, Earth can have a new start.

(Extreme scary)You are doing it for the money

A combination of “You don’t care”, but with an insane capitalist core.

145 Billion dollars isn’t cool, you know what’s cool? 1 Trillion dollars. And you know what’s cooler than that? Controlling everything and everyone.

So why not see how far you can ride this wave?

(Extreme scary with scary filling)You have good intentions

The road to hell is paved with good intentions

There’s a reason such a phrase exists, more deaths have been for “good” than for pure bad, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, they all wanted peace and what was best in their point-of-view — or in the POV of those controlling them — which can easily be the people, we tend to want what’s bad for us.

This is the scariest of all because good intentions make everything you do feel right. It’s prone to ideology and delusion. A few million deaths is just a statistic anyway.

Perhaps you truly believe an all-seeing, all-knowing government will make for a safer world, and you might be right, but safe for whom?

This one is very similar to the first one, but with a different point of view that makes it scarier.

Final notes:

An internal letter has been signed by 450 employees requesting this to put to a stop, but the response so far has been “radio silence”.

Silence in a situation like this likely means that you feel that anything you say will sound wrong to those listening, or the explanation is simply so complex and nuanced that it cannot be easily explained. People in a position of extreme responsibility have to make hard choices. Perhaps you’ve thought of destroying amazon but the possible backlash to the economy would also be extreme and lead to something just as bad.

It’s just impossible to know what will happen and when.

You could also claim the project is cancelled and continue silently in the background and in the meantime distract us with a few smoke screens.

What do you think is most likely? What other possibilities would you add?