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The 21st century is a good time to be around. We have electric vehicles, deseases are being treat with CRISPR, and before long, we’ll be heading back to the moon in rockets more reusable than the Space Shuttle ever was.
But we can’t say it’s all silicon and sunshine – thanks to a host of terrifying technologies, our future has a healthy dose of the series “Black Mirror.” a handful of these technologies seem promising but can be easily manipulated in shocking ways. Some Of the technology seem to do nothing but to creep us all.
1. Artificial Superintelligence
As Stephen Hawking announced earlier this year, artificial intelligence could be the world’s biggest mistake in history. In fact, as we have noted several times before here on our website, the arrival of a superhuman intelligence can be catastrophic.
The introduction of systems is a lot quicker and smarter than us would force us to take a back seat. We’d be at the mercy of any thing artificial intelligence choose to do – and it is not instantly confirm that we’ll be capable of make a friendly AI to stop this. We need to fix this matter, or else creating a ASI would be a problem.
2. Voiceprint recognition systems
Voiceprint recognition came out of the sci-fi movie scene and became a commercial reality, with some credit unions and banks improving customer service by using voiceprints. Since voiceprint is a different way of identifying a customer, voiceprints can prevent answering security questions or remembering passcodes.
But that introduces something new to worry about: criminals copying people voices. It is not a proposal 10 years from now. The origin of the AI Lyrebird has already revealed the ability to clone voices in a convincing way.
A futurist named Laura Mingail is worried about the danger that because of the artificial intelligence, cloning someone voice can be done by recording a small part of your voice secretly.
“When you have your credit card stolen, it’s easy to spot that crime,” as Laura Mingil spoke to Business Insider. “But if your voice is used and stolen, it is impossible to track its usage, or all the consequences of its theft – whether it is used to obtain personal banking information, to talk to family members, employers, or the media. The abilities of AI cloning voices in mere minutes present a whole new meaning to people losing their voices.”
3. Brain-computer interfaces
Once known to be a part of science fiction, sophisticated brain-computer interfaces (BCI) has now stepped into the real world. And like many other high-tech media outlets, these devices are being advanced with the help of real world Tony Stark, Elon Musk.
Neuralink is in the process of developing high-bandwidth implantable computer interfaces that will enable doctors to bring back sensory and motor function to people with severe disabilities due to stroke and other neurological disorders. However, that won’t be the end of it. If BCI technology is advanced enough, Musk hopes it can be used to improve normal function of the human brain with greater memory and cognitive skills, as it combines the human brain with artificial intelligence.
“It opens up our bodies to number of threats that are unkown. Ultimately, these technologies may give hackers a change to hack people, and that control could be all-encompassing – physically, mentally, and emotionally,” has Hypergiant CEO Ben Lamm told Business Inside.
4. Sophisticated robots
Some tropes of science fiction are iconic. The robotic apocalypse, for instance, has advanced six “Terminator” films and TV series to date, relying on man-hunting robots.
As that image is heated into a collective awareness, you may start believing that robot companies could stop building robots that seems like they’re a couple of iterations killbot, but that is not the way Boston Dynamics rolls.
For at least 20 years, the company has been developing terryfing robots that are much more advanced and more powerful and that can be able to outrun and overpower humans. And now Boston Dynamics own’s a robot that has the ability to open open doors to search rooms to see where we are hiding from them.
5. 3D body scanning
As a society, we are becoming accustomed to the use of 3D body scanners at a slow pace, mainly for airport security. But body scanners are being tentatively experimenting by retailers as well. Technology companies like Amazon, for example, are experimenting with it to custom fit apparel you purchase online as arevolutionary way.
Living in times when social media companies are blamed for violating buyer’s privacy and banks are not immune to cyberbullying, it is not surprising that futurists like Harsha Reddy are concerned about the obvious ways your body could be exploited online.
“If your personal information is made available online, including your body scan, this could be another level of fear,” according to Reddy.
6. Smart Baby Monitors
Smart baby monitors are in the list of the emerging Internet of Things, and many parents are taking an interest in it because they enable you to hear, see and talk to your baby from any place around the house.
But “smart” sometimes seems like “hackable,” and we’ve already seen criminals using smart monitors, as one horrific crime where a stranger threatened to kidnap a family baby. And it can be very bad.
“Someone talking to your child asking them to open the window or the door or go somewhere is probably the worst thing that can happen with this kind of technology,” according to Donata Kalnenaite, who is a futurist and president of Termageddon.
7. Smart Speakers
What could be more shocking than a smart speaker? Products such as Google Home and Amazon Echo (powered by Alexa personal assistant) are the most admired household companions that answers to voice commands. But some experts are quite worried with the device, mentioning the shocking behavior hidden in the corner – such as cases where Amazon has already mistreated sensitive privacy recordings.
“I doubt that our conversations are being heard by these devices,” said Heather Vescent, a futurist at The Purple Tornado, citing that reports of employees at Amazon are responsible for playing back Alexa recordings. Think about that when you put Alexa in your room.
8. Deepfakes
Deepfakes is an infamous technology that uses deep learning and artificial intelligence seamlessly swap faces in a video – might include some applications that are superficially beneficial. But in all, it is not just causing an unpleasant feeling of fear, but it is also really terrifying. Imagine being able to change one person’s face completely into another person’s body, a video with high resolution.
Deepfake videos are already available, and they are no harder than traditional video editing software. It is already being used to take revenge on pornography and political propaganda. What happens if it is not possible to tell the official video from a video made using deepfake technology?
A scientist known as Aaron Lawson at SRI International’s Speech Technology and Research Laboratory, mentioned that this could lead to chaos and political instability and as society lose confidence in the media. “It will lead to confusion about basic facts and promote the feeling that the truth is just your opinion, based on the assumption that everything is not genuine,” accoarding to Lawson.
9. Self-driving cars
We were told about flying cars, but it looks progressively that self-driving cars is what we’re really getting. Some vehicles on the road are already using drive-assist modes or autopilot that can manage normal driving conditions. On average, can these cars drive more safely than humans? Undoubtedly, yes – mostly over time, as people who makes cars, have learned from mistakes they have made in the past and the vast amount of real-world driving data.
But what may have not crossed your mind is that self-driving cars will, by their role of “taking the wheel,” ultimately have to make decisions such as life and death. What happens if your car encounters a real-world Trolley Problem, in which case the only options available are to run into this person or that person? Will the car give priority to the life of the driver, or the life of a pedestrian? These are decisions that people have never left to machines in the past.
Certainly there will be unintended consequences that we did not expect to imagine.
10. De-pixelating pixelated images
We are accustomed to seeing pixelation used for masking, license plates, and the protection of undisclosed locations, so that we know with understanding that an image with pixels is intended to protect the identity of someone or something. Pixelation works for the cause that the “sharpen and enhance” trope on TV does – when something is pixed, there is not enough information to filter it into a sharp, identifiable image.
At least, that was true. But back in 2016, Texas University researchers at Austin and Cornell Tech, developed software that could “deliberately” detect “pixelated images to understand what is causing the masking. It naturally works with neural networks – which is artificial intelligence in other words – and has been very successful in overcoming YouTube’s privacy blur tool.
“This means that people who are at high risk for their face to be protected in public cannot be protected at all,” Kovarik told Business Insider.
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