from the totally-just-a-thought-experiment dept.
Google's Selfish Ledger is an unsettling vision of Silicon Valley social engineering
Google has built a multibillion-dollar business out of knowing everything about its users. Now, a video produced within Google and obtained by The Verge offers a stunningly ambitious and unsettling look at how some at the company envision using that information in the future.
The video was made in late 2016 by Nick Foster, the head of design at X (formerly Google X) and a co-founder of the Near Future Laboratory. The video, shared internally within Google, imagines a future of total data collection, where Google helps nudge users into alignment with their goals, custom-prints personalized devices to collect more data, and even guides the behavior of entire populations to solve global problems like poverty and disease.
When reached for comment on the video, an X spokesperson provided the following statement to The Verge:
"We understand if this is disturbing -- it is designed to be. This is a thought-experiment by the Design team from years ago that uses a technique known as 'speculative design' to explore uncomfortable ideas and concepts in order to provoke discussion and debate. It's not related to any current or future products."
7m53s explainer video. The Selfish Ledger is embedded on The Verge or can be found elsewhere. Also at Business Insider.
See also: Philip Bloom is Angry at Google for Using His Work in an Internal Video
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Captival on Saturday May 19 2018, @04:37AM (1 child)
Pure. Fucking. Bull. Shit.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday May 19 2018, @05:51AM
Indeed, they call it speculative design and then they implement it.
Google's new motto: "We are not evil and we never lie"
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2, Troll) by realDonaldTrump on Saturday May 19 2018, @04:54AM (2 children)
So many leaks! Somebody leaked the beautiful video by Philip Bloom & Google -- great production values. Somebody leaked the Facebook cyber. And somebody leaked the Securus cyber. VERY SMART of the editor (Fnord666) to put the stories together!
And, you know, WikiLeaks. With all these leaks, they have a wonderful future!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 19 2018, @05:50AM (1 child)
Bet an incel leaked it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 20 2018, @04:06AM
Do you know what a bet is?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 19 2018, @05:29AM (3 children)
Is a good motto for a company that "guides the behavior of entire populations". I wonder if they can get bad turned to good and good to bad without anyone noticing.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 19 2018, @05:41AM (1 child)
We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 19 2018, @05:57AM
Fake Borg! Real Borg would never say this! Run away! Run away!
(Score: 5, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday May 19 2018, @10:32AM
They got rid of the "Don't Be Evil" bit in their CoC recently.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Touché) by SanityCheck on Saturday May 19 2018, @08:22AM (1 child)
Color me surprised guys, I did not see this coming! Nope, totally out of the blue. No fucking way could this have ever been anticipated.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by richtopia on Saturday May 19 2018, @09:15AM
I know you are being sarcastic, but the generational aspect of data is surprising to me. Your parent Googled for a lot of freaky porn? Well guess what we know you are going to love!
(Score: 5, Interesting) by stormwyrm on Saturday May 19 2018, @09:24AM
I recently read a short story by David Marusek: "Getting to Know You" [wikipedia.org] and it seems that someone at Google must have been reading it. It was published in 1998, interestingly enough, the very year Google was founded. The protagonist has been given an artificially intelligent gadget by her employer for testing. It’s not very intelligent at first, until she finally consents to let it get to know all about her and read all of her otherwise private records, and then it turns into a terrifying entity that seems to know her better than she knows herself. Google seems to have ambitions to make Bug/Nicholas a reality with this.
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 19 2018, @12:40PM (2 children)
If you can get past the creepy, this is a great idea! IRL I stink at achieving any of my goals because the world tends to dictate my days.
Me: I'm going to work on the time machine today.
World: Nah, wife got a flat tire.
Me: Ok, fix tire today, work on time machine tomorrow.
My selfish ledger would get me back to work on the time machine.
Profit?
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 19 2018, @08:25PM (1 child)
Profit, yes... for Google and its advertisers. But no time machine for you because they will have manipulated you into thinking your main goal in life is to buy a new set of tires for your wife instead of fixing the flat. New tire shopping is good. You love tire shopping.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 20 2018, @01:03AM
(Score: 3, Interesting) by crafoo on Saturday May 19 2018, @01:34PM (1 child)
I guess we are going to find out just how well people passively accept slow, gentle. unnoticed guidance to their behaviours and beliefs. People seem to conform to their environment and peers over time, despite their claims otherwise. It takes years. I think power to control populations like this is certainly possible but it will require long-term effort and an uninterrupted system that also provides the population with the majority of their news, information, and contact with others. Simply joining a book club or something that facilitates free and open exchange of ideas not controlled by "the system" would seem to disrupt the entire effort.
Maybe that's we are seeing an internet-wide crackdown on "wrong thinking".
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday May 20 2018, @01:13AM
As if we didn't already have thousands of years of evidence to support this. I think one can't eliminate it, but one can widely greatly the field of parties who can participate.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Monday May 21 2018, @01:02AM
As expected, the public outrage providers have twisted this into a headline guaranteed to maximize outrage and attention. I decided to actually go watch this video after hearing so much shouting about it, and lo, it has nothing to do with the reporting.
It's basically a thought experiment comparing a person's digital data with their genes.
Key points:
1. Digital data is modified during a person's lifetime, e.g. epigenetics and Lamarckian evolution.
2. Digital data can be passed down through generations to improve the species, like genes.
3. Genes evolve toward what is best for its own survival, not for the good of the organism itself (e.g. praying mantis males get eaten by the female, the genes are not in the best interest of the survival of the male, but of the praying mantis genes).
4. Maybe the ledger (a person's digital data) can also be selfish (e.g. it is used to encourage or trick the user into providing more of their own data, through devices like Google Home or smartphones, not for the benefit of the individual, but for the benefit of the ledger of data itself and perhaps for the species as a whole.
5. Like how we can use genetic data to help cure or potentially modify ourselves for the better, maybe we can also use these ledge to help improve ourselves.
The chapter titles are also thought provoking. Il Grillo Parlante is the cricket in Pinocchio who tells Pinocchio to behave and go to school and Pinocchio kills the cricket rather than listen. Cornelius Fudge is a character from the Harry Potter series who is in denial about the truth and with traditional values. Unus pro omnibus is part of a quote: One for all and all for one.
The fact that the titles is The Selfish Ledger really drives home the though experiment part of it. Should the ledger prioritize its own survivial over the individual, and what would that look like?
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