Looming Dystopia

Jordan Peterson's Congressional Testimony on Looming Dystopia

John Sexton

Have you ever had this experience? You're sitting somewhere, maybe at home or maybe out somewhere, and you're talking to a friend about some particular topic. Then moments later you open your phone and there are new ads which are directly influenced by the thing you'd just been talking about.

If you do a Google search on this topic you'll find innumerable articles all basically saying that this doesn't happen. But if you look hard enough you'll also find this story from last December:

It’s been a long-held suspicion by many people: that smartphones and smart speakers are listening in on their private conversations for various reasons.

Now one company — Atlanta-based Cox Media Group — has revealed that yes, your devices are listening to you. Indeed, CMG touted its ability to identify “relevant conversations via smartphones, smart TVs and other devices” using AI to let local businesses target ads to those people.

“It’s True. Your Devices Are Listening to You,” said a page on the CMG Local Solutions site, which has since been pulled down. “With Active Listening, CMG can now use voice data to target your advertising to the EXACT people you are looking for.”

In a Nov. 28 blog post (which also has been deleted), CMG Local Solutions said its “Active Listening” technology can pick up conversations to provide local advertisers a weekly list of consumers who are in the market for a given product or service. Example it cited of what Active Listening can detect included “Do we need a bigger vehicle?”; “I feel like my lawyer is screwing me”; and “It’s time for us to get serious about buying a house.”

Whether this has actually happened in a widespread way or not, it should be obvious that it could happen and that there is a clear financial motivation to make it happen. But even in a worst case scenario there are probably ways you could fight back. For instance, you could limit apps that want access to your phone's microphone. Or if you were really concerned you could even turn the phone off or keep it in a drawer. You have options.

But what if you didn't have options. What if the government was monitoring the phone and anything you posted on social media. And what if every time you left your house there were an endless number of cameras tracking your movements. That's basically the situation in China right now. And that was the subject of Dr. Jordan Peterson's testimony before Congress last week. 

There are now 700 million CCTV cameras in Communist China. Those electronic eyes are attached to the most complete state apparatus of surveillance yet imagined. It has the ability not only to recognise faces at a distance, but gait itself when facial features are hidden or obscured...

This system is integrated with the so-called Chinese Social Credit System which awards its involuntary participants with a score indicating their compliance with the dictates of the Party, allowing for full control over access to everything they possess electronically – most ominously their savings and access to travel, including, as more electronic gates appear, walking.

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