Topic: Why Google Is the New Evil Empire - page 4. (Read 11347 times)

Evil Corp for sure.. The question is tho.  when will they be accepting Bitcoin?  Microsoft did it ... its time they moved.

Take a computer with a fresh OS installation. Start using it for regular web browsing and see just how long it takes before Google starts completing your sentences like a friend who has known you since the age of 5. Tell me that isn't creepy.

Google wants to monitor your mental health. You should welcome it into your mind

The use of technology to track and treat mental illness is deeply worrying but sadly necessary


Next week, Dr Tom Insel leaves his post as head of the US National Institute of Mental Health, a job that made him America’s top mental health doctor. Dr Insel is a neuroscientist and a psychiatrist and a leading authority on both the medicine and public policies needed to deal with problems of the mind. He’s 64 but he’s not retiring. He’s going to work for Google.

More precisely, he’s going to work for Google Life Sciences, one of the more exotic provinces of the online empire. He’s going to investigate how technology can help diagnose and treat mental health conditions. Google doesn’t just want to read your mind, it wants to fix it too.

It’s not alone. Apple, IBM and Intel are among technology companies exploring the same field. IBM this year carried out research with Columbia University that suggested computer analysis of speech patterns can more accurately predict the onset of psychosis than conventional tests involving blood samples or brain scans. Other researchers theorise that a person’s internet search history or even shopping habits (so handily recorded by your innocuous loyalty card) can identify the first signs of mental illness. Computers can now tell when something is about to go terribly wrong in someone’s mind.

That development is striking enough in itself, but the way in which researchers like Dr Insel want to use this new technological power raises even more questions.

Wearable technology has been a hot topic in medical innovation for several years now. A growing number of people choose to track their own physical condition using FitBits, Jawbones and other activity trackers, tiny wearable devices that monitor your movements, pulse rate, sleep patterns and more. Once the preserve of obsessive fitness fanatics, “self-monitoring” has the scope to transform healthcare. The ever-increasing number of people with chronic conditions can track and electronically report their symptoms, reducing the number of routine (and expensive) consultations they need with medical staff and ensuring a quicker response to changes that do require direct professional attention.

Self-monitoring will also surely play a bigger role in preventive public health. Wearing a pedometer that counts the number of steps you take in a day has been shown to spur people to walk more. What would happen to your consumption of alcohol and sugar if a device strapped to your wrist displayed a continuous count of your calorie and unit intake for the week?

Dr Insel is part of a school of thought that suggests this technology is even better suited to mental health. The symptoms of depression, for instance, are inconstant, ebbing and rising without obvious pattern. A short consultation with a doctor once every few weeks is thus a poor means of diagnosis. But wearable technology allows continuous monitoring. A small portable device might monitor your tone of voice, speech patterns and physical movements, picking up the early signs of trouble. A device such as a mobile telephone.

Yes, we now live in a world where your phone might observe you to help assess your mental health. If you don’t find that prospect disturbing, you’re either fantastically trusting of companies and governments or you haven’t thought about it enough.

But that feeling of unease should not determine our response to technology in mental health. In fact, we should embrace and encourage the tech giants as they seek to chart the mind and its frailties, albeit on the condition that we can overcome the enormous challenge of devising rules and regulations protecting privacy and consent.

Because, simply, existing healthcare systems are failing and will continue to fail on mental health. Even if the current model of funding the NHS was sustainable, the stigma that prevents us discussing mental health problems would ensure their prevention and treatment got a disproportionately small slice of the pie.

We pour ever more billions into dealing with the worst problems of physical health, and with considerable success. Death rates from cancer and heart disease have fallen markedly over the last 40 years. Over the same period, suicide rates have gone up.

Even as the NHS budget grows, NHS trusts’ spending on mental health is falling. If someone with cancer went untreated, we’d say it was a scandal. Some estimates suggest one in five people who need “talking therapies” don’t get them. In a rare bit of enlightened thinking, some NHS trusts are supporting Big White Wall, an online service where people can anonymously report stress, anxiety and depression, take simple clinical tests and talk to therapists.

Technology will never be a panacea for mental illnesses, or our social failure to face up to them. But anything that makes them cheaper and easier and more mundane to deal with should be encouraged.

If you think the idea of Google assessing your state of mind and your phone monitoring you for depression is worrying, you’re right. But what’s more worrying is that allowing these things is the least bad option on mental health.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/11961415/Google-wants-to-monitor-your-mental-health.-You-should-welcome-it-into-your-mind.html

All Hail Neo Socrates, you are making me raise both of my eyebrows. Our debate remains the same, but it's scary to learn these new facts. You really made me question some things about Google, I'm still not completely sold on them being ruled by Darth Vader, but I definitely see the company with new eyes now. There's really no justification for some things they are doing, it just seems too much. However I'm still shouting "Resistance is futile". I'll applaud your John Connor efforts from the distance and raise a fist in support  

‘Your Genome Isn’t Really Secret,’ Says Google Ventures’s Bill Maris



The venture capitalist wants to extend human life expectancy, and he says fears over privacy and the security of DNA data shouldn’t stand in the way.

Bill Maris has a simple proposition for those who are a little freaked out by his efforts to digitize human DNA: “If we each keep our genetic information secret, then we’re all going to die.” OK then.

The Google Ventures managing partner has shifted the firm’s focus this year to investing in companies that aim to slow aging, reverse disease, and extend life. Many of those life-sciences companies do this by collecting customers’ genetic information and looking for trends.

Hoarding this kind of personal data introduces risks, particularly as hacking becomes an everyday occurrence. But Maris dismissed privacy concerns surrounding the prospect of genomic data becoming public. “What are you worried about?” he said at a Wall Street Journal technology conference in Laguna Beach, Calif., on Tuesday. “Your genome isn’t really secret.”

That’s because people constantly leave traces of their genomic material lying around in public. If someone really wanted the information, they don’t need to hack a server. They could just pull a cup with your saliva out of the trash and test it, said Maris, who studied neuroscience and helped form Calico, a company within Google parent company Alphabet that focuses on age-related diseases. Google Ventures is an investor in 23andMe, which sells a $99 DNA spit kit to provide customers with ancestry information.

DNA technology has come a long way. Maris said the technical problems around editing the genome are practically solved. As for his line about how we’re all going to die: He didn’t mean immediately. Maris is a fierce advocate for life extension, racing his own mortality to invest in companies that might keep him and the rest of humanity alive longer—or, perhaps, indefinitely.

In the interview, Maris spoke alongside Peter Diamandis, the chief executive officer of the XPrize foundation, which organizes complex technology competitions. They’re both preoccupied with doubling human life expectancy. Analyzing a large database of genomic data is important to achieving that goal.

If people started living drastically longer, we might find ourselves with some new problems, such as how to feed everyone. Diamandis said that as people get happier and healthier, they have fewer kids. If people would eat less meat, Maris said there would be more room to grow food for them all. Maris, who doesn’t eat meat and can’t stand the taste, touted one of his investments, Impossible Foods, as a company that’s creating meat substitutes capable of satisfying beef lovers. “It was so much like meat that it disgusted me,” Maris said. “I couldn’t finish it.”


http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-20/-your-genome-isn-t-really-secret-says-google-ventures-s-bill-maris



--------------------------------------------
Create a problem no one knew was a problem: to live longer
Create another problem for people living longer: not enough meat.
Create a solution to solve the lack of meat, with an artificial meat product, headed by a meat hater CEO...

SOLD!

The stealthy, Eric Schmidt-backed startup that’s working to put Hillary Clinton in the White House


An under-the-radar startup funded by billionaire Eric Schmidt has become a major technology vendor for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, underscoring the bonds between Silicon Valley and Democratic politics.

The Groundwork, according to Democratic campaign operatives and technologists, is part of efforts by Schmidt—the executive chairman of Google parent-company Alphabet—to ensure that Clinton has the engineering talent needed to win the election. And it is one of a series of quiet investments by Schmidt that recognize how modern political campaigns are run, with data analytics and digital outreach as vital ingredients that allow candidates to find, court, and turn out critical voter blocs.

But campaigns—lacking stock options and long-term job security—find it hard to attract the elite engineering talent that Facebook, Google, and countless startups rely on. That’s also part of the problem that Schmidt and the Groundwork are helping Clinton’s team to solve.
The Groundwork is one of the Clinton campaign’s biggest vendors, billing it for more than $177,000 in the second quarter of 2015, according to federal filings. Yet many political operatives know little about it. Its website consists entirely of a grey-on-black triangle logo that suggests “the digital roots of change” while also looking vaguely like the Illuminati symbol:





“We’re not trying to obfuscate anything, we’re just trying to keep our heads down and do stuff,” says Michael Slaby, who runs the Groundwork. He was the chief technology officer for president Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, a top digital executive for Obama 2012, and the former chief technology strategist for TomorrowVentures, Schmidt’s angel investment fund.

He explained that the Groundwork and its parent company, Chicago-based Timshel—named for a Hebrew word meaning “you may” and devoted to “helping humanity solve our most difficult social, civic, and humanitarian challenges”—are “all one project, with the same backers,” whom he declined to name.

Schmidt did not respond to several requests for comment. But several Democratic political operatives and technologists, who would only speak anonymously to avoid offending Schmidt and the Clinton campaign, confirmed that the Groundwork is funded at least in part by the Alphabet chairman.

The Groundwork was initially based in an office in downtown Brooklyn just blocks from the headquarters of its biggest client: the Clinton campaign. There, a staff made up mostly of senior software engineers began building the tools and infrastructure that could give her a decisive advantage.

Slaby has a reputation for being able to bridge the cultural divide between politicos and techies. And sources say the Groundwork was created to minimize the technological gap that occurs between presidential campaign cycles while pushing forward the Big Data infrastructure that lies at the heart of modern presidential politics.

There is also another gap in play: The shrinking distance between Google and the Democratic Party. Former Google executive Stephanie Hannon is the Clinton campaign’s chief technology officer, and a host of ex-Googlers are currently employed as high-ranking technical staff at the Obama White House. Schmidt, for his part, is one of the most powerful donors in the Democratic Party—and his influence does not stem only from his wealth, estimated by Forbes at more than $10 billion.

At a time when private-sector money is flowing largely unchecked into US politics, Schmidt’s funding of the Groundwork suggests that 2016’s most valuable resource may not be donors capable of making eight-figure donations to Super PACs, but rather supporters who know how to convince talented engineers to forsake (at least for awhile) the riches of Silicon Valley for the rough-and-tumble pressure cooker of a presidential campaign.

“There are a lot of people who can write big checks,” Slaby says. “Eric recognizes how the technology he’s been building his whole career can be applied to different spaces. The idea of tech as a force multiplier is something he deeply understands.”
The technology that helped re-elect Obama

Although Obama’s technology staff downplays credit for his election victories, there’s no doubt they played a crucial role. One former Obama staffer, Elan Kriegel, who now leads analytics for the Clinton campaign, suggested the technology accounted for perhaps two percentage points of the campaign’s four percent margin of victory in 2012.

The 2012 campaign’s analytics team constructed a complex model of the electorate to identify 15 million undecided voters that could be swayed to Obama’s side. They drew on databases which compiled a comprehensive record of voters’ interactions with the campaign—Facebook pages liked, volunteer contacts, events attended, money donated—and assigned them a score based on how strongly they supported Obama.
Those carefully constructed models and databases paid dividends for everything from advertising and campaign fundraising emails—which were rigorously A/B tested to determine the optimum wording and design (subject lines that said “Hey!” were found to be annoying but effective)—to voter polling and get-out-the-vote efforts on election day

Perhaps the standout innovation from the Obama campaign was known as “Optimizer,” a tool that allowed the campaign to deploy carefully targeted television ads. Rather than rely on broad demographic data about programs and time slots, the Obama tech team accessed detailed information from TV set-top boxes to identify the most cost-efficient ways to reach hard-to-reach voters. The campaign’s top media consultant, Jim Margolis—now Clinton’s top media consultant—estimates Optimizer saved the campaign perhaps $40 million.
After the campaign, Optimizer became the cornerstone of a new startup called Civis that spun out of the Obama campaign—and it had its genesis in an election day visit by Schmidt to Chicago.


http://qz.com/520652/groundwork-eric-schmidt-startup-working-for-hillary-clinton-campaign/


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We The People...

In the digital age, information is power. They have every little piece of information about almost everything. Thankfully, much of the web isn't searchable by Google now, but the problem rolls over to sites like Facebook which also have too much information about us.

Google's new holding company drops 'Don't Be Evil'
Technically Incorrect: Alphabet decides to lose Google's most famous line, perhaps finding it a touch outdated.



When you were little, your mom told you not to be a bad boy.

But when you grew up, you knew you were going to be bad sometimes. What you had to hope is that when it mattered you'd at least do the right thing. Or at least know what that was.

This seems to have been the logic involved when writing the code of conduct for Google's new holding company, Alphabet.

Alphabet had its official launch yesterday and with it came a new code of behavior. It reads: "Employees of Alphabet and its subsidiaries and controlled affiliates should do the right thing -- follow the law, act honorably, and treat each other with respect."

One person's honor is another person's sneaky path to profit. Who will define what is honorable? Google didn't respond to a request for comment.

The code goes on to say that if someone accuses you (or someone else) of wrong or dishonorable behavior, you must still follow the code of conduct: "Never retaliate against anyone who reports or participates in an investigation of a possible violation of the Code."

This language of course omits the most famous line in Google's diabolically famous code of conduct, the opener "Don't Be Evil."

The sentences that come after that opener, however, are very similar to Alphabet's. They read: "But 'Don't be evil' is much more than that. Yes, it's about providing our users unbiased access to information, focusing on their needs and giving them the best products and services that we can. But it's also about doing the right thing more generally -- following the law, acting honorably and treating each other with respect."

So there we have it. Honorable behavior has been part of Google's rules for a long time.

Over the years, though, as the company has been caught in one slightly evil-looking act or another -- for example, the scraping of Wi-Fi data from unsuspecting citizens by its Street View cars -- the "Don't Be Evil" mantra has felt at best naive and at worst downright cynical.

Steve Jobs was once said to have observed: "This 'don't be evil' mantra: It's bull****."

Even Google seems to have become uncomfortable with it over the years. In 2014, Larry Page mused that the company's whole mission statement needs something of a polish.

Still, even in removing "Don't Be Evil," Alphabet -- which incorporates some of the most far-reaching Google projects, such as self-driving cars -- has a mission that isn't merely technological. It's socio-political. The company doesn't want simply to change how people behave. It wants to change how human brains operate.

Witness Google's director of engineering, Ray Kurzweil, declaring that once you have a little robot in your brain, you'll be "godlike."

Ultimately, whether it's "Do the Right Thing" or "Don't Be Evil," there's a fundamental belief at Google that the company is the moral arbiter of what a just future should look like.

Making people happy just isn't enough.


http://www.cnet.com/news/googles-new-holding-company-drops-dont-be-evil/

Yes. That is 100% true. But as far as an impact for a thread title, its level of attractiveness would be low.

I wonder whether the title of the thread needs to be change from Google to Alphabet !!!

Neo Socrates says: "I feel uncomfortable being compared to Socrates, as I am uncomfortable in togas..."

I disagree with nothing you've said. A few years back you could sign up without providing a real phone number to google. Now, google knows who you are, thanks to your phone bill, and has your fingerprints, the ones you use to unlock your Nexus 5X or 6P.

Some love for microsoft. Microsoft's Hololens could be the killer app for snowboarders having sex on the virtual moon...

Not knowing the detailed mapping of the veins inside your index finger does not preclude someone looking at it to walk toward the path your are pointing to. In google's case, that path could be evil...

 

Until now Google never forced me to anything. I hope it will continue this way. they are p2p search engine, email, open source map software and what not. you are free to not use anything from Google.

It's not that I don't see your point, we can put this debate to rest, I definitely agree that my future brain (or self? we don't even know!) should be open source and not owned or managed by Google or Apple if that's an option. I'm arguing that to think there would be an option is rather pointless or wishful thinking. Wilikon (aka Neo Socrates) is definitely right to think that knowledge should be shared and not sold as merchandise or used for profit. But we live in a world where we are discussing water to no longer be an human right? What's next? Air of course.

These companies are monopolies, they cast you out of business or cast you out of life altogether. We do have alternatives to e-mail if you don't want to use Gmail, but you don't have real alternatives to many other products that are industry standards (like the Adobe analogy I mentioned a while back). You can't be on Facebook, Skype or Whatsapp by signing up with an alternative because the rest just don't use it. You can argue that you don't need it in order to live, but soon you end up only communicating with your old land line phone.

So I can definitely envision 55% of the people using Google artificial brain, 35% using Apple's and then 5-10% some inferior command-based linux-powered get-your-own-server ones that can't even keep up or are incompatible with the latest "brain apps" like virtual sex or snowboarding on the moon. You'll be missing out!

I'm kidding of course but it will always be like that to me and that's the only part we disagree.

Or:
https://startpage.com/

Based on the number of times it has been found guilty of Privacy Violations in the European Court you should only use Google if, you know how to properly configure it.

They are doing what every company in the world wants to do. Dominate in every field possible and make the most money they just are succeeding better then most companies out there

I didn't mean we are at war with nature per se, we are nature! Our bodies and brain are made of it. However our sense of self doesn't let us find comfort in it, we are definitely not in harmony. We are just not "perfect" the way we are or the way we were created. We always need something else, no matter how humble or wise you are, even comfort in the spiritual world and after death. We'll be enlightened if that wasn't the case if you are familiar with eastern philosophies.

We both are always discussing the same elements but from different point of views, that's ok haha. You are worried about the "should". Should be like this or like that. If we were greeks 3000 years ago and had a time machine, we won't be very happy to see that, while technology advanced, the rest of the problems affecting the human spirit remained the same today. Corruption, fear, chauvinism, bigotry, prejudice and so on. Actually you seem to think very much like Socrates, who nowadays would definitely be a strong supporter of open source, decentralization, creative commons.

How Socrates died? Like many others like him. These were very important people that challenged the establishment or status quo. They were unique and that's the problem, being different is what also set them apart. People, like Google itself (a company or a government is a group of individuals after all) will always choose to expand and defend their property or wealth. I understand your point, one should keep pushing, driving the hammer down, one day it will be clear as water for the rest. But back then, religion eased a lot of our questions, it was God's will, there were different castes and fate had power. Nowadays we are more alone each passing day, with the same or worse existential questions, depression and anxiety are a plague. Institutions like marriage is at an all time low, people in developing countries doesn't have any children and so many other issues. One can see this as growing pains as we change the old norms, but we are actually losing our "humanity" in the process, children are born in broken homes, people objectifying others, lack of empathy, nihilism, hedonism, promiscuity.

We can't seem to understand we are all in this together, that technological advances should be for the benefit of us all and not be ruled by only a few. However, in my opinion, only when we transcend (by becoming sentient machines perhaps?) the problems inherent in our very own nature (greed for wealth, wrath, loneliness, fear of death, vanity, etc) we will be able to discuss a different world.

I see your point, but we can't help ourselves, we are driven by this force to reproduce, for our children to be "better" than us, more intelligent, more beatiful, wiser, etc. That's how we actually choose our partners. Self awareness is also what gives us ego and the illusion we are separated from nature and reality and that somehow we have the power to influence absolutely everything. In my opinion we do have power but to a certain extent, your body is the one doing the digestion, cures your ailments, knows when it needs to feed, etc. We are now discussing concepts extremely metaphysic here but there's no other way really.

As we can't all agree on what the human race should be, either for religious, moral, politics or different points of view, our own instincts will be the ones that take over. To me there's no other future where we eventually become machines or bio engineered gods. There will be plenty of opposition like in the past, but if you know, there are already serious scientists working on creating an artificial brain (not AI), imagine how that can be used, you can actually upload yourself if your brain dies. We already have the capacity for human cloning, but that was stopped on its tracks because of ethics. It's just a matter of time really and I'm talking of technology that really could be available in 20 years if we want to. Imagine what would happen in 200-300 or more.

Like in medicine, blood transfusions, surgeries, pacemakers, implants, transplants, were all taboos a while ago. In a century letting your body and brain degenerate will be like letting yourself die today because of a simple infection or procedure.

As human race we are (since millions of years) at war with nature, trying to transcend it via technology, prolonging our lifespan from 20 to 80 years, improving our quality of life in every aspect. Maybe our destiny is to become living gods eventually, perhaps even transcend the physical altogether. I don't think we have a choice, we may have a rational one depending on the era you live, but that doesn't last and it's subject to change.