Manipulation of the "Big Data"

The mass storage of data that runs through the various global communications networks is known by its name "Big Data", and from the very beginning of the Internet, or even earlier, when telephone communications and the use of Credit cards, there has been a fear that governments and corporations will know too much about you and can use that knowledge against you or, in the best of cases, in your favor.

Conspiracy theory or reality?

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This article and its grisly implications are based on an interview given by Martin Hilbert to the website The Clinic, published on January 18, 2017. Hilbert, of German origin, holds a PhD in Social Sciences and PhD in Communication, works in the University of California, is the technology adviser to the Library of Congress of the United States.

This expert in digital networks argues that Big Data has generated artificial intelligence that interprets itself and makes decisions without human intervention, through programs like Deep Learning, an I.A. Present today in smart phones, computers and other communication equipment connected to digital networks.

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He states that between 2014 and 2016 we humans produced the same amount of information as all of humanity from prehistory to 2014, and that this information doubles every two and a half years.

It is a mass of information that surpasses human understanding and is being processed by an I.A. Like Deep Learning, and that could allow access to any human being connected to the networks, to know who it is, how it is, what it is doing, what it will do, and even how to induce it to do what you want.

Part of this huge network of espionage and manipulation was uncovered by Snowden a few years ago, but according to Martin Hilbert would be just the tip of the iceberg, and put some examples, with Google and Facebook.

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If you have Gmail on your cell phone you can know where you were every day and hour the last two years, and what really scares is that processing this information could say with a certainty of 90% where you will be every day and time of the following year.

Hilbert also comments on the results of a study conducted in Cambridge by Dr. Michal Kosinski with the Big Data of Facebook:

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"Having between 100 and 250 likes on facebook, you can predict your sexual orientation, your ethnic origin, your religious and political opinions, your level of intelligence and happiness, if you use drugs, if your parents are separated or not. With 150 likes, the algorithms can predict the result of your personality test better than your partner. And with 250 likes, better than yourself. "

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Managing this information, its use for better or for worse, can give you immense power, so it is not surprising that of the 10 richest companies in the world, 5 are providers of information. Or that after his study, Michal Kosinski has created a company, Cambridge Analytics, hired by Trump for the campaign of the US presidential elections of 2016.

It is from here where the handling of the Big Data and the narrated by Martin Hilbert bordering the theory of the conspiracy, or a frankly alarming reality. He asserts that Trump's advisors used Big Data information and a methodology to create profiles of each citizen who could vote, and thus develop a personalized campaign that would tell each voter only what he wanted to hear.

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Trump would not have been the first to use this technique, as Obama had earlier, in the campaign for the 2012 presidential election, but there are quantitative differences. Obama used Big Data to influence about 12 million voters, while Trump used it with 250 million voters.

The possibilities for manipulating the opinion of majorities are such that they endanger democratic systems, not only by internal actors, but also by the possibility that the government of one country can influence or intervene in the decisions of others, manipulating Its Big Data.

Hilbert believes that the rapid development of information technologies and the evolution of intelligence like Deep Learning, fed by a Big Data of superhuman proportions, will lead us to a kind of world government and a new species of human being formed by the fusion of Artificial intelligence with biological.

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Big Data can have beneficial uses for planning the development of a nation or its health and education programs; Can provide more reliable and up-to-date data than the national censuses that are carried out every 10 years. But, of course, the possibilities of manipulating citizens for political or economic advantages are often more tempting.

As always, the problem is not that machines with artificial intelligence will dominate the human being, but that some humans use these machines to dominate the rest, as has been done since the invention of the first tool.

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