Distributed Exiled Tech

While I don’t think it will ever go far enough, many countries forbid certain kinds of technology, science, and experiments. For example, I cannot imagine any country allowing an experiment where an ape is mated with a human.

But scientists often find it impossible to resist at least trying something, regardless of ethical or moral qualms.

Soon we might see restrictions on AI implementation, especially if it is enforced by chipmakers, who can build safeguards into the chip itself, like auto-off-switches, speed-limits or other governors.

Then what is an AI researcher meant to do if that ends their particular angle they have spent a decade working on? Enter the rogue entity with a lot of cash. It could simply be Elon Musk, or China, but it will be masked behind nested shell companies.

Here’s how it works… experts in various fields like AI, weapons tech, disease research, and genetics are approached while their research is still allowed. They are given a few details, except that there will be a place for them if they ever want to go rogue, and the funding will be immense.

When the time comes, each of them is approached. They are offered a relocation to a foreign land – typically not the same physical location as their research counterparts – although existing teams could be kept together. They know nothing about who funds them, but they will be very well looked after, and normal spycraft will be utilised, like blackmail potential.

They work remotely from their handler, who they only communicate with online and anonymously. That handler looks after the sharing of data and ideas between disparate groups.

It could already exist… If they are good, we will never know.

Robots and Drones to Protect Native Animals

In New Zealand, a land that until a few hundred years ago had no mammals, there is a bold plan to remove every predator that threatens native species, via eradication. They are doing it via small areas at a time, with concerted efforts from locals.

Except, not unsurprisingly, feral cats. People don’t feel okay with killing those mammals. And there are way too many to catch, neuter and realise, even if it was affordable.

There might be a solution. Small, autonomous robots, flying or not, and solar powered, might be about to wander about the wilderness with very simplistic, repeated tasks.

It needs to:

  • be small enough to be cost efficient and energy efficient
  • be rechargeable by returning to a solar-powered dock
  • know roughly where it is, I think GPS is inevitable
  • be a bit randomised in where it goes
  • make sound or light sufficient to scare off a nearby cat
  • not get stuck!

I think it is all doable, and potentially not too expensive. Studies can find out what scares cats best.

Use groups of drones to herd the feral cats away from birds and towards a place where you have installed some serious fencing. Lock them away. Tell the public they can feed them if they wish, or let them starve from over-crowding.

Off Season Boycott Club

An online community spends 3 months discussing and eventually voting on which nasty corporation (or country?) is worthy of a boycott.

Members then, individually, by choice, pledge to not use their products or services for the 3 months of the next season of Winter, Spring, Summer or Fall. You go off them for a season 😉

If you cannot bear to be without them beyond the 3 months, that is sad, but OK.

The idea is to use the timeliness for publicity – who will be boycotted next? At scale.

To incentivise the boycott, direct competitors can be canvassed, seeing what they might offer to any member who switches allegiance. Such offers need to be above and beyond anything else they otherwise offer others.

Canvassing members first on whether they use particular brands is critical – it means the boycott can be meaningful and measurable.

Imagine the dread faced by corporations who are in the shortlist each quarter!

Purposefully Raceless Given Names

The pop star YoungBoy has the real name of Kentrell DeSean Gaulden. That would make it harder to get equal opportunities in the US, because it is almost impossible that he could be white, asian or latino.

If we wanted to end this, it won’t happen from black people giving their kids white names, or vice versa. Few people care about equality to go that far.

But we could come up with totally new names – not so unusual these days anyway – that are deliberately not favoured by any race or social status.

DeSean is a good start, because white folk already have Shaun/Sean/Shawn with different spellings. So a new spelling could be adopted by all, equally. Shaurn. It can be used to name the kids of progressive types of all colors. As a statement that has fewer downsides. And once it got publicity – a name with purpose – watch it take off!

Alternatively, because of how many latinos are in the US, and they are kinda/sorta a less polarised (black and white) race, blacks and whites could start giving their kids latino names, like Rosa.

AKA ethnically ambiguous names

Obvious Fakes

puma

I predict a backlash against major fashion brands…

The most famous brands have fake equivalents, buy them in Asia.

Apparently they are made in the same factory, after hours, with inferior materials.

When you come back with designer goods. from Asia, everyone knows it is a fake, and you will admit as much.

So why not make it a blanket statement?

The fakers deliberately misspell the brand name, or incorporate the word “fake” into the design.

The consumers deliberately use those goods, that are clearly fake, A statement.

We can own brands by belittling them.

https://www.businessinsider.com.au/hilariously-bad-chinese-knock-offs-of-famous-american-and-european-brands-2012-8

Ending Fast Fashion

Single use plastic bags are now a thing of the past in many countries.

Next is plastic straws.

Fast fashion is incredibly wasteful, and unnecessary, and bad for the environment (landfills).

Clothing that is made to last could promote their point of difference by doing one simple thing – writing the year of manufacture visibly on the garment.

 

Personhood Beyond the Human

As the general public become better read (or better Youtubed…), and religion declines, you can expect a greater number of people to start accepting that humans do not have any divine rights over non-humans. In the last 50 years we have, as a species, learned to love nonhumans more and more – some examples:

  • free range chickens
  • save the whale
  • save old-growth forests
  • concern over extinctions
  • dogs migrating from the kennel to the bedroom
  • paganism
  • assigning “love” to devices like iPhones and corporate branding

There’s a definite trend – and it will become quite interesting when nonhumans become more prolific, because we will need to decide just how much we care about their well-being and the their “rights”.

So this December Yale will be hosting a conference – Personhood Beyond the Human.

The conference will be co-sponsored by the Nonhuman Rights Project and the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies in collaboration with the Yale Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics.

Looking at the list of speakers, it seems most of the focus will be on animal rights (regular welfare and intelligent animals gaining extra rights), but also there will be discussions regarding the rights of androids and other forms of artificial intelligence – plus transhumans.

Now would be a good time to get started on legal definitions and ethical treatment. If a person in a permanent vegetative state has rights, what about the mouse that is injected in the brain with human stem cells?