#Engineer (Safety)

[unbfacts]

In South Korea, some highways utilize rolling barrier systems with plastic rotating barrels. These barriers absorb impact energy and guide vehicles safely during collisions, reducing the risk of flipping.

[viridianriver]

'Artificial Intelligence' Tech - Not Intelligent as in Smart - Intelligence as in 'Intelligence Agency'

I work in tech, hell my last email ended in '.ai' and I used to HATE the term Artificial Intelligence. It's computer vision, it's machine learning, I'd always argue.

Lately, I've changed my mind. Artificial Intelligence is a perfectly descriptive word for what has been created. As long as you take the word 'Intelligence' to refer to data that an intelligence agency or other interested party may collect.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Back when I was in 'AI' - the vibe was just odd. Investors were throwing money at it as fast as they could take out loans to do so. All the while, engineers were sounding the alarm that 'AI' is really just a fancy statistical tool and won't ever become truly smart let alone conscious. The investors, baffingly, did the equivalent of putting their fingers in their ears while screaming 'LALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU"

Meanwhile, CEOs were making all sorts of wild promises about what AI will end up doing, promises that mainly served to stress out the engineers. Who still couldn't figure out why the hell we were making this silly overhyped shit anyway.

SYSTEMS THINKING

As Stafford Beer said, 'The Purpose of A System is What It Does" - basically meaning that if a system is created, and maintained, and continues to serve a purpose? You can read the intended purpose from the function of a system. (This kind of thinking can be applied everywhere - for example the penal system. Perhaps, the purpose of that system is to do what it does - provide an institutional structure for enslavement / convict-leasing?)

So, let's ask ourselves, what does AI do? Since there are so many things out there calling themselves AI, I'm going to start with one example. Microsoft Copilot.

Microsoft is selling PCs with integrated AI which, among other things, frequently screenshots and saves images of your activity. It doesn't protect against copying passwords or sensitive data, and it comes enabled by default. Now, my old-ass-self has a word for that. Spyware. It's a word that's fallen out of fashion, but I think it ought to make a comeback.

To take a high-level view of the function of the system as implemented, I would say it surveils, and surveils without consent. And to apply our systems thinking? Perhaps its purpose is just that.

SOCIOLOGY

There's another principle I want to introduce - that an institution holds insitutional knowledge. But it also holds institutional ignorance. The shit that for the sake of its continued existence, it cannot know.

For a concrete example, my health insurance company didn't know that my birth control pills are classified as a contraceptive. After reading the insurance adjuster the Wikipedia articles on birth control, contraceptives, and on my particular medication, he still did not know whether my birth control was a contraceptive. (Clearly, he did know - as an individual - but in his role as a representative of an institution - he was incapable of knowing - no matter how clearly I explained)

So - I bring this up just to say we shouldn't take the stated purpose of AI at face value. Because sometimes, an institutional lack of knowledge is deliberate.

HISTORY OF INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES

The first formalized intelligence agency was the British Secret Service, founded in 1909. Spying and intelligence gathering had always been a part of warfare, but the structures became much more formalized into intelligence agencies as we know them today during WW1 and WW2.

Now, they're a staple of statecraft. America has one, Russia has one, China has one, this post would become very long if I continued like this...

I first came across the term 'Cyber War' in a dusty old aircraft hanger, looking at a cold-war spy plane. There was an old plaque hung up, making reference to the 'Upcoming Cyber War' that appeared to have been printed in the 80s or 90s. I thought it was silly at the time, it sounded like some shit out of sci-fi.

My mind has changed on that too - in time. Intelligence has become central to warfare; and you can see that in the technologies military powers invest in. Mapping and global positioning systems, signals-intelligence, of both analogue and digital communication.

Artificial intelligence, as implemented would be hugely useful to intelligence agencies. A large-scale statistical analysis tool that excels as image recognition, text-parsing and analysis, and classification of all sorts? In the hands of agencies which already reportedly have access to all of our digital data?

TIKTOK, CHINA, AND AMERICA

I was confused for some time about the reason Tiktok was getting threatened with a forced sale to an American company. They said it was surveiling us, but when I poked through DNS logs, I found that it was behaving near-identically to Facebook/Meta, Twitter, Google, and other companies that weren't getting the same heat.

And I think the reason is intelligence. It's not that the American government doesn't want me to be spied on, classified, and quantified by corporations. It's that they don't want China stepping on their cyber-turf.

The cyber-war is here y'all. Data, in my opinion, has become as geopolitically important as oil, as land, as air or sea dominance. Perhaps even more so.

A CASE STUDY : ELON MUSK

As much smack as I talk about this man - credit where it's due. He understands the role of artificial intelligence, the true role. Not as intelligence in its own right, but intelligence about us.

In buying Twitter, he gained access to a vast trove of intelligence. Intelligence which he used to segment the population of America - and manpulate us.

He used data analytics and targeted advertising to profile American voters ahead of this most recent election, and propogandize us with micro-targeted disinformation. Telling Israel's supporters that Harris was for Palestine, telling Palestine's supporters she was for Israel, and explicitly contradicting his own messaging in the process. And that's just one example out of a much vaster disinformation campaign.

He bought Trump the white house, not by illegally buying votes, but by exploiting the failure of our legal system to keep pace with new technology. He bought our source of communication, and turned it into a personal source of intelligence - for his own ends. (Or... Putin's?)

This, in my mind, is what AI was for all along.

CONCLUSION

AI is a tool that doesn't seem to be made for us. It seems more fit-for-purpose as a tool of intelligence agencies, oligarchs, and police forces. (my nightmare buddy-cop comedy cast) It is a tool to collect, quantify, and loop-back on intelligence about us.

A friend told me recently that he wondered sometimes if the movie 'The Matrix' was real and we were all in it. I laughed him off just like I did with the idea of a cyber war.

Well, I re watched that old movie, and I was again proven wrong. We're in the matrix, the cyber-war is here. And know it or not, you're a cog in the cyber-war machine.

(edit -- part 2 - with the 'how' - is here!)

[junglefurytrash]

Thank you Tumblr for blessing me with this completely unhinged thread that made me laugh so hard my lungs hurt, and it's associated reblogs and posts/extra funnies.

Today's Starlight Shitposts; Greaseball being introduced to the absolute insanity that is Greek Mythology and everybody else in the group has random chunks of knowledge surrounding this topic except him and he becomes increasingly exasperated.

[mist-the-wannabe-linguist]

The whole Star Wars universe is so insane actually it's making my head hurt

Putting aside the fact that the entire galaxy is interconnected via space travel with more cultures and societies than the human mind can comprehend, the history is so, so old. The spacefaring history of the galaxy goes 100,000 years into the past, that's twice as much as the time between today and the extinction of neanderthals. And look how long it took us to figure out space travel, the history of individual planets will be even older. Look how long ago before the movie timeline SWTOR takes place, and there's already so many ancient ruins. No matter how far back you go, there will always be something older. Lost cities, technology, cultures covering the surfaces of planets. Entire civilizations built on whalefalls they believe to be mountains. So many remains of space vessels scattered on planetary surfaces, and even more that were left to float through space forever, their crews long dead. The spaces between planets are vast and there is nothing that would allow corrosion and decay except the UV radiation from stars. Stray too far from regular hyperspace routes and you might encounter these ghosts.

The entire galaxy is a graveyard

[charles-leclerc-official]

We need to figure out how to steal the Imola and Monaco win I don't care

[political-us]

[carsthatnevermadeitetc]

Fiat ESV 1500, 1972. Fiat made 13 versions of the Experimental Safety Vehicle which was based on the rear-engined 500 and also used parts from the 126 for a competition created but the American NHBS (National Highway Safety Bureau, later the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, NHTSA).

[wikipediapictures]

High voltage

“Hydro One Power Tower” - via Wikimedia Commons

[bayetea]

sometimes you just open up the canvas and a steamy office worker au comes out

♡ my daily pjo art tag ♡

[marsplastic13]

Pros of writing your thesis on something only you and two more people are working on: it's cool to say that you work on something only you and two more people know about

Cons of writing your thesis on something only you and two more people are working on: only two people know what you're talking about so whenever someone asks you what you're working on it always gets awkward

[unbfacts]

Most airplanes are painted white to reflect sunlight, keeping the plane cooler and reducing the need for air conditioning, which helps save fuel.

[mortifying-macaroni]

Blood bukake

[queenwendy]

Here is a list of rules I have learned working in a lab and being in lab classes over the years. Most of them I or someone around me learned the hard way.

LAB RULES

1. Change your gloves

2. Do not eat any samples. Even if they are food.

3. LABEL! EVERYTHING!

4. Do not leave any liquids precariously over the edge of a counter

5. The heat glove cannot touch things that are 550 Celsius

6. Add acid to water, never water to acid

7. Always have a spare pair of jeans

[coulsonlives]

Pretty much.

[candymay]

This is my Challengers

[anonymusbosch]

got to go home early from work today bc of a small fire (no injuries, no damage, but the fire suppressor makes a haze and they weren't gonna reopen the building til it cleared - go in, get your stuff, but go home)

also got to be the person at work today to say "hey. hey so we couldn't find the fire alarm pull. and i checked and there just Isn't one in this part of the complex. and the nearest one isn't on the evac maps. so could we uh. have one? or at least have the one that does exist on the maps?"

and after the health&safety guy was wishy-washy on this i decided to be the person who wrote the location of the fire pull on the emergency contact sheet in sharpie. so the next time there's a fire people aren't rushing through the building looking for the alarm pull rather than leaving