the AI gAme is not your standard hype

  One drive factor of the stampede toward artificial inelligence is the concept of some expert elite running the planet, perhaps through covert deal-making or through misrepresentations or through 100 other nefarious means, variously hyped to sell, ensnare, cajole, deceive.  Yes, behind 5G is AI. 
  Behind Hitler were many peculiar forces.  Edwin Black wrote IBM and the Holocaust, 2000, in order to pin down some of this.  
-r, mt. shasta
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10-24-18   An interesting thing happened recently in the ongoing saga that is Google’s attempt, through its subsidiary Sidewalk Labs, to build a private, fully surveilled micro-city inside of Toronto.  The privacy expert Google had hired to assuage concerns over the dangers of a neighborhood built to collect data on its inhabitants, has stepped down.  ­­https://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/273283/smart-cities-for-dumb-humans

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11-13-18    (AI) “smart city,” known as Quayside,  in Toronto, has faced fierce public criticism since last fall, when the plans to build a neighborhood “from the internet up” were first revealed.  Quayside represents a joint effort by the Canadian government agency Waterfront Toronto and Sidewalk Labs, which is owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc., to develop 12 acres of the valuable waterfront just southeast of downtown Toronto.

In keeping with the utopian rhetoric that fuels the development of so much digital infrastructure, Sidewalk Labs has pitched Quayside as the solution to everything from traffic congestion and rising housing prices to environmental pollution.  The proposal for Quayside includes a centralized identity management system, through which “each resident accesses public services” such as library cards and health care.  An applicant for a position at Sidewalk Labs in Toronto was shocked when he was asked in an interview to imagine how, in a smart city, “voting might be different in the future.”  https://theintercept.com/2018/11/13/google-quayside-toronto-smart-city/

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any freight-car loads of lumber going this year into California?  Guess.