6.4 Profiling and Digital Double
109
6.4 Profiling and Digital Double
In order to offer us personalized products and services (and also personalized prices),
companies like to know who we are, what we think and what we do. For this purpose,
we are being “profiled”. In other words, a detailed file, a “profile”,
13 is being created
about each and every one of us. Of course, these profiles are a lot more detailed
than the files that secret services of totalitarian states used to have before the digital
revolution. This is quite concerning, because the mechanisms to prevent misuse are
currently pretty ineffective. In the worst case, a company would be closed down after
years of legal battles, but already the next day, there may be a new company doing
a similar kind of business with the same algorithms and data.
Today’s technology even goes a step further, by creating “digital twins” or “digital
doubles”.
14 These are personalized, kind of “living” computer agents, which bear
our own personal characteristics. You may imagine that there is a black box for
everyone, which is being fed with surveillance data about us.
15 If the black box is
not only a collection of data, but also capable of learning, it can even learn to show
our personality features. Cognitive computing
16 is capable of doing just this. As a
result, there are companies such as Crystal Knows
17 (which used slogans such as
“See anyone’s personality”). Apparently it offered to look up personality features
of neighbors, colleagues, friends and enemies—like it or not. Several times, I have
been confronted with my own profile, in order to figure out how I would respond to
the fact that my psychology and personality had been secretly determined without
my informed consent. But this is just another ingredient in an even bigger system.
6.5 World Simulation (and “Benevolent Dictator”)
The digital doubles may be actually quite sophisticated “cognitive agents”. Based
on surveillance data, they may learn to decide and act more or less realistically in a
virtual mirror world. This brings us to the “World Simulator”, which seems to exists
as well.
18 In this digital copy of the real world, it is possible to simulate various
alternative scenarios of the future. This can certainly be informative, but it does not
stay there.
13 See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profiling_(information_science).
14 See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_twin.
15 See also Pasquale [2].
16 See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_computing, https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernar
dmarr/2016/03/23/what-everyone-should-know-about-cognitive-computing/.
17 See https://www.crystalknows.com.
18 See
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_Environment_for_Analysis_and_Simulations,
https://emerj.com/ai-future-outlook/nsa-surveillance-and-sentient-world-simulation-exploitingprivacy-to-predict-the-future/,
https://cointelegraph.com/news/us-govt-develops-a-matrix-likeworld-simulating-the-virtual-you.
109
6.4 Profiling and Digital Double
In order to offer us personalized products and services (and also personalized prices),
companies like to know who we are, what we think and what we do. For this purpose,
we are being “profiled”. In other words, a detailed file, a “profile”,
13 is being created
about each and every one of us. Of course, these profiles are a lot more detailed
than the files that secret services of totalitarian states used to have before the digital
revolution. This is quite concerning, because the mechanisms to prevent misuse are
currently pretty ineffective. In the worst case, a company would be closed down after
years of legal battles, but already the next day, there may be a new company doing
a similar kind of business with the same algorithms and data.
Today’s technology even goes a step further, by creating “digital twins” or “digital
doubles”.
14 These are personalized, kind of “living” computer agents, which bear
our own personal characteristics. You may imagine that there is a black box for
everyone, which is being fed with surveillance data about us.
15 If the black box is
not only a collection of data, but also capable of learning, it can even learn to show
our personality features. Cognitive computing
16 is capable of doing just this. As a
result, there are companies such as Crystal Knows
17 (which used slogans such as
“See anyone’s personality”). Apparently it offered to look up personality features
of neighbors, colleagues, friends and enemies—like it or not. Several times, I have
been confronted with my own profile, in order to figure out how I would respond to
the fact that my psychology and personality had been secretly determined without
my informed consent. But this is just another ingredient in an even bigger system.
6.5 World Simulation (and “Benevolent Dictator”)
The digital doubles may be actually quite sophisticated “cognitive agents”. Based
on surveillance data, they may learn to decide and act more or less realistically in a
virtual mirror world. This brings us to the “World Simulator”, which seems to exists
as well.
18 In this digital copy of the real world, it is possible to simulate various
alternative scenarios of the future. This can certainly be informative, but it does not
stay there.
13 See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profiling_(information_science).
14 See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_twin.
15 See also Pasquale [2].
16 See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_computing, https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernar
dmarr/2016/03/23/what-everyone-should-know-about-cognitive-computing/.
17 See https://www.crystalknows.com.
18 See
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_Environment_for_Analysis_and_Simulations,
https://emerj.com/ai-future-outlook/nsa-surveillance-and-sentient-world-simulation-exploitingprivacy-to-predict-the-future/,
https://cointelegraph.com/news/us-govt-develops-a-matrix-likeworld-simulating-the-virtual-you.