Phyllis Beveridge Nissila

“Emotient, Inc.’s (AI) technology analyzes facial expressions to measure emotions like joy, surprise, fear, anger, disgust and contempt”.–CNNMoney

Gray Rock (becoming as boring as possible by engaging as little as possible) is primarily a way of encouraging a psychopath, a stalker or other emotionally unbalanced person, to lose interest in you. —Skylar

THE STATE OF AI

Just for just-for’s, let’s assume that Artificial Intelligence (AI) has achieved its “fourth level” of artificial genius. According to George Anadiotis in a recent article for Big on Data at ZDNet the levels evolve thus:

1. Hindsight: where AI analyzes what happened–descriptive analysis,
2. Insight: why did it happen?–diagnostics, and
3. Foresight: what will happen and how can we make it happen?–predictive and prescriptive.

In his article written to enlighten and encourage “everyday…people” in the technical and business domains who were still languishing in the descriptive stage, Anadiotis highlighted some challenges in the high-tech world of Machine Learning (ML) still being worked out, at least by everyday people.

But that’s what was happening way back in 2016.

What with the potential for the development of bits and bytes, particularly at the quantum level, evolving, now, way past the Moore’s Law projection of every 1-2 years, who knows, really, WHAT is going on behind the doors of certain computer labs even just a few months after Anadiotis’ article…

…late at night…

…in undisclosed locations beneath the brick and mortar of nondescript buildings…

…funded by the bottomless bucket of a black budget  not available to just anybody, but only to those who desire global dominance via some kind of “high tech beast” or other.

The same cabal, some call it, perhaps funding the Sentient World Simulation (SWS) via computer technology that is, even as I type these words, gathering everybody’s number via social media, cell phone, computer, television, refrigerator, toaster (just kidding about the toaster…maybe) via “smart technology” sold as energy-saving technology and home security, but also mighty handy for tracking YOU and ME, aka “human nodes” on the “smart grid”–not a business domain, but a (insert sound of creepy music) “human domain“.

Tinfoil hat time?

Of course, applying analytics to the human domain comes in very handy for a lot of things: business inventories, medicine, environmental maintenance, migration patterns, weather, really just about every aspect of life and survival.

But, and this is a big but, when it comes to tracking humans for the purpose of control, things get dicey.

WHAT THE VETERAN TOLD ME

For example, say there’s this crowd. A peaceful crowd, to begin with anyway, gathering on the “free speech square” of some campus lawfully protesting something, something somebody doesn’t want them to protest. Somebody at the helm of some self-appointed governing body, I don’t know, like a shadow government?, who wants to stop the protest. So he or she gins up trouble by importing, say, a black bloc of vandals to rile things up.

Pretty soon, human beings, vulnerable to mob mentality as we tend to be, do get riled up and pretty soon the peaceful protest becomes a window-smashing, car-torching, cop-killing riot.

But, lo and behold (and maybe coming soon to a free speech square near you), the protesters, abandoned now by the black bloc who run for cover, suddenly get hot. REALLY hot. Literally.

Heat from somewhere above (satellite?) “pushes” them back, corrals them into a corner, the easier to round them up, and the law, the local PD and/or the military, then easily encircle them and haul them off. Zoom, zap–and zero resistance.

I’d heard about some Directed Energy Weaponry (DEW) like this a few years back, but I’m not tight with the tinfoil crowd, so I tend to file it under “Hmmm” and get on with life.

And then there was this day a couple of years ago I was chatting with a recent Army veteran with some savvy on these kinds of things. I asked what he thought of DEW. “You mean the kind that can beam some heat against an enemy to control them?” he responded.

“Yeah,” I said…

“Works really well in battle,” he said.

But that kind of weaponry is also old news. The control weapons of today, still high-tech, but not aloft rather within the hard drives of data collecting devices all over the place, don’t just respond, they also predict.

No longer is it really even necessary to wait to act until some visible and obvious threat, whether real, such as in boots on the ground, or an “enemy” deemed so only in the minds of some shadow state, makes itself or themselves known.

In upgraded enemy assessment, all “they” need is enough mined data on you, me, or some enemy crowd to predict, as noted above, what a rebel with a cause might be up to.

As implied in the CNNMoney report quote, above, the geeks behind the gadgets we use to communicate, connect, and compute pick up this predictive data even from our facial/verbal/written emotions, besides what we buy, where we go, and with whom we associate.

HUMAN EMOJIS?

In the brave new world of data mining (aka surveillance), you and me are human emojis. Not just our facial expressions, but virtually (no pun intended) everything about us capable of being tracked by not only hand-held gadgets but ubiquitous “smart devices” of every sort connected to the growing Internet of Things (IoT) that web us not only to each other but to the human intelligence behind artificial intelligence that can save a bundle of bucks, and time, getting the dirt (or presumed dirt) on the masses.

Or (insert more creepy music) by programming the beasty bots to predict the dirt…

As long as all these high tech nuts and bolts are dependable.

And not subject to GIGO errors.

And not subject to weasels that nibble on wires, such as the real weasel that actually delayed the works at the world’s biggest particle accelerator located in Geneva, Switzerland, last April,

And not threatened by old-fashioned solar flares that fry motherboards.

And (real) acts of God…

So if we are truly in the age of “nowhere to run, nowhere to hide,” as the old tune goes, what’s a human being to do?

RESIST! GRAY ROCK AI AND UNPLUG

From the very old-fashioned, very low-tech, fully accessible world of real human emotion comes a wholly human DEW, rather, DLEW (Directed Low Energy Weapon): the concept called Gray Rock.

As implied in the quote, above, when some enemy, usually in this case, a mean person, bully, psychopath, or just irritatingly controlling “other” attempts to disturb the peace by the thousand cuts of criticism, put-downs, false accusations, and so on, the best defense is little to none.

Say, what?

That’s right, Gray Rock (aka Grey Rock), i.e., become so boring and minimally interactive the drama-seeker loses interest. Moves on. Finds somebody else to pick on. Or if the enemy is the SWS Police tracking emotions that, at least according to the algorithms, might trigger existent or future resistance to the plans of the folks behind the levers, the machines move on, as it were.

In short, don’t show the enemy, real or virtual, that tell-tale face!

BUT THAT’S NOT ALL

Back to AI’s new talent for discerning the emotions in various ways that might predicate rebellion, consider resisting by not only “gray rocking” but also by resisting other thought-stopping, emotion-inciting “weapons” such as rabble-rousing headlines, hate-mongering diatribes (instead of rational debate), and labeling any opposition as racist or xenophobic.

Turn off the television, power down the social media, re-engage in good, old-fashioned person to person communication.

Step off the rage-go-round.

But this is so hard to do when a thousand angry talking heads and paid black bloc participants and rage-mongers and fake news conjurers are so good at breaking the peace! And when it is so easy to become addicted to the fast-paced, truncated news and thoughts and opinions whizzing by on our computerized gadgets, especially these days when the push is on to delete any alternative news sources…

Yes.

It is hard.

Ask anybody who has ever employed gray rocking in an abusive relationship until they could leave.

Ask anybody who swims against any tide, stands alone in protest of evil, battles for a righteous cause.

But, despite what algorithms, analytics, and artificial intelligence can deduce in their man-made “minds,” we humans are endowed with much, much more.

Human beings are not just bred of logic but also of potent survival instincts, not only physical but also mental, emotional, psychological, and spiritual. And we have the capacity to love, that powers joy, hope, and dreams; that powers our capacity to change and grow into something that even we find hard to predict. This is something all the metal and plastic of even the most expensive computers are incapable of

And we are endowed with an exceedingly potent will to be free.

But operating in the best of what we have is not easy, either.

Nevertheless, if we turn off everything that buzzes, beeps, distracts, and incites and truly think about it, if it were not for those who resisted control mongers of the past with questionable motives and designs on the rest of us, we would not likely be here.

For, when you boil it down, what is the end game of evil? When does it say “enough”?

I am reminded often of two quotes: “Absolute power corrupts absolutely,” and “The eye of man is never satisfied.”

I don’t think evil ever gives up, only increases.

Resist, friends.

Smile, engage, look people in the eye–and unplug. Simple actions, but revolutionary.

It all starts there.

Who knew?

Taking action like old-fashioned, mature human beings–low tech, quiet, simple–in order to clear the mind and the heart, enables us to step away from the strictures of the reptilian brain “they” want us to remain in, so they can better control us. Fear is a powerful prison.

And in order to discern what comes next, we need all the clarity of mind and heart we can muster.

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For the entire series, click here.