January 13, 2023
We've turned a corner with technology. And it's not a good one.
People in general are becoming more and more intellectually lazy. That combined
with the enormous proliferation AI, increased reliance on externally-developed
autonomous systems whenever and wherever possible, the average person being
totally okay with connecting every little gizmo and gadget to their home network
without a second thought... too many people have access to incredible technology
without the ability to utilize it responsibly.
But then even the people who think they know what they're doing might not know
what they're doing. We already have an AI lawyer booting up to defend not one
but TWO cases in court. Companies have produced some mind-boggling abilities via
AI photo generation and editing, which of course has led to a massive increase
in people trying to pass off fake photos as genuine. And don't get me started on
the whole deep fake stuff, because outside of legitimate artistic use (such as
in de-aging characters for TV and movies) or clear comedic applications (see:
Full House of Mustaches), there are little other than terrifying implications.
Government, for the most part, has its hands tied. And where they don't, they're
going to either ignore the problem completely OR they're going to make stupid
decisions about it, because legislative government is made up entirely of people
who don't understand technology AT ALL.
We are at a point that is precariously close to no longer being able to
determine what's real and what isn't if we didn't experience those things with
our own senses. How long until we see the first AI-generated political attack ad
showing the opponent on video doing something that never happened? How long
until faked voice recordings are argued as genuine? How long until someone
absolutely guilty is TRULY ACTUALLY captured on video doing something horrible
provides a plausible defense of "that's a fake video?"
The separate part of this equation is inadvertent danger. 50 years from now,
plug a then-modern AI into a team of 1000 robots and task them with helping to
reduce climate change. Result: they start killing humans. It's a simplistic
scenario, yes, but not entirely unrealistic when expanded out over various
intellectual puzzles.
Via the internet, technology essentially has access to the sum of human
knowledge. Now we're creating intelligence to act on that knowledge. And just
like humans, there will end up being benign intellect and there will be
malicious intellect - with people who still don't even know how to live
alongside their own caught in the middle. I have zero confidence the majority
will operate with benevolent intent, because reality has already shown
otherwise.
TL;DR: We're screwed.
(06:44)
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June 11, 2021
One of my hobbies since I was very, very young, has
been doing genealogy research for my own family. I've posted a few bits of info
here and there, but as often happens during genealogy research, I had long been
stymied by the inability to go back any further in my family history than I had
reached many years ago. On my mom's side it was understandable; much of the way
in records in Germany was destroyed during WWII so even when I physically hauled
myself to Germany to do research there, I came up with absolutely nothing new.
(It didn't help that it almost felt like that side of my family WANTED to stay
hidden, never finding so much as a single entry in the Stuttgart public phone
books of the time.)
On my dad's side it was a bit different. There was a
lot more information available, and I had been able to trace a bit farther back
in my family line. Because my last name is Curzio, I had always wanted to dig
backward through history to find its origins and to uncover the stories of the
people who did what they did, inevitably resulting in me flopping into this
ridiculous existence.
One of my favorite stories while researching my
Italian side was when I went to the Municipio (public records hall) in Afragola
Italy. After struggling politely for a few minutes with shared smiles and
chuckles with the woman behind the counter, us both trying to work through an
impenetrable two-way language barrier, I improvised. I mimed for a piece of
paper and a pencil which she provided, and then I wrote my name. I then drew a
line upward and wrote my father's name. I drew another line upward from his name
to my grandfather's name, then to his father's name, then drawing one final line
from there to a question mark. I handed her the paper, pointed to the bottom
name on the paper while simultaneously pointing to myself, and her face lit up.
"OH!"
She started chattering in beautiful, incomprehensible Italian to her
co-workers behind the window, and 3 people immediately started excitedly
swarming behind her, pulling books off shelves and flipping through file
cabinets. Several books were brought to the counter where I was standing, with
the top one flipped open to a birth record for my great-grandfather Antonio.
From that birth record I was able to get a corrected birth date, a more specific
place of birth (Melito), as well as his father's name:
Giovanni.
Unfortunately I had arrived at the Municipio at around 4pm on a
Friday. They closed at 5, were closed over the weekend, and I was heading back
to the states that Monday. Bad timing. I expressed my sincerest thanks to all of
them as best I could (which they understood), and came back to the US with a
small but still valuable amount of additional information. I was one step
further back in my family line, which I hoped would let me continue the
research.
The good news is, that information DID finally lead me to the
very origins of the name Curzio within my family. The bad news is, I have
reached what will very likely be a permanent brick wall preventing me - or
anyone else - from ever being able to research any farther back.
Picture
it: March 1, 1856. Napoli. It's around 11pm outside of the Real Casa Santa
dell’Annunziata (the Royal House of the Holy Annunciation in Annunziata,
Naples). A woman quietly approaches the outside of the building, and gently
leaves a wrapped bundle inside of its foundling wheel. She turns the cylinder a
half-turn, rings the bell, and disappears into the night. Hearing the bell,
caretakers inside of the building rush over to the wheel and find only a wrapped
newborn baby. Once it became clear that no one would (or could) return to claim
and care for the child, the governor of the orphanage named him: Giovanni
Curzio.
At the time, children abandoned at orphanages were often left with
either a religious item or some kind of identifiable article of clothing which
would allow the parents to return at a later time to prove a child was theirs
and reclaim them. Since Giovanni was abandoned cold and had been left with
absolutely nothing at all, circumstances of the period indicate that his mother
was an unwed victim of extreme poverty. Because the governor of the orphanage
was the one responsible for giving Giovanni his full name, he represents the
very beginning of the Curzio line within my family. When his mother disappeared,
she took with her any real possibility of discovering her identity and her - my
- family's earlier history.
I certainly don't blame or resent her for it;
obviously there were reasons and circumstances that forced her into such an
awful position. It's just really disappointing to be thrown a mystery that can
never be solved. At the very least, I do hope she somehow ended up living a
decent life.
As for Giovanni, at 22 years old he married his wife Maria -
a woman he very likely grew up with at the orphanage, since the governor was the
one that gave the consent for her to marry. He lived with Maria in Afragola his
whole life, the two of them eventually having five children.
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