Could the development of a smarter than human artificial intelligence arise to facilitate the information processing demands of the total surveillance state? That's the provocative question I would ask after reading about a new NSA effort reviewed by the PBS television series Nova. According to their report:
The National Security Agency (NSA) is developing a tool that George Orwell's Thought Police might have found useful: an artificial intelligence system designed to gain insight into what people are thinking.
With the entire Internet and thousands of databases for a brain, the device will be able to respond almost instantaneously to complex questions posed by intelligence analysts. As more and more data is collected—through phone calls, credit card receipts, social networks like Facebook and MySpace, GPS tracks, cell phone geolocation, Internet searches, Amazon book purchases, even E-Z Pass toll records—it may one day be possible to know not just where people are and what they are doing, but what and how they think.
The system is so potentially intrusive that at least one researcher has quit, citing concerns over the dangers in placing such a powerful weapon in the hands of a top-secret agency with little accountability.
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"The technology behaves like a robot, understanding and answering complex questions," said a former Aquaint researcher. "Think of 2001: A Space Odyssey and the most memorable character, HAL 9000, having a conversation with David. We are essentially building this system. We are building HAL." A naturalized U.S. citizen who received her Ph.D. from Columbia, the researcher worked on the program for several years but eventually left due to moral concerns. "The system can answer the question, 'What does X think about Y?'" she said. "Working for the government is great, but I don't like looking into other people's secrets. I am interested in helping people and helping physicians and patients for the quality of people's lives." The researcher now focuses on developing similar search techniques for the medical community.
Are we prepared to let HAL track our movements, read our e-mail, and assess our threat potential? Like many, I would prefer to think of AI and the possible rise of the technological singularity as a good thing, something that will promote the traditional human goals of creating stable and prosperous societies, but what if our persuit of security (certainly an elusive goal for much of human history) leads to a much darker dystopian society in which the promise of the singularity is turned against human freedom?
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