[HN Gopher] Cold war spy satellites and AI detect ancient underg...
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Cold war spy satellites and AI detect ancient underground aqueducts
Author : Brajeshwar
Score : 89 points
Date : 2024-09-17 16:20 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newscientist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newscientist.com)
| ggm wrote:
| I learned about Qanat reading Desmond Bagley airport thrillers
| written in the 60s. It's part of a plot line dealing with middle
| eastern drug trafficking. When I met Persians in Australia 40
| years later it was interesting to realise they were still
| significant in their culture. Keeping on top of the maintenance
| was a social capital exercise in frustration, endless manana.
| rurban wrote:
| https://archive.is/20240917041034/https://www.newscientist.c...
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| We have similar (above ground, but still labour intensive)
| aqueducts on the dry side of the Alps, and you can see early
| beginnings of data processing in the solutions they came up with
| for the problem of "we want people to take water out of the
| system in direct proportion to how much labour they contribute to
| its maintenance" -- including medieval one-way functions like
| broken tallies.
| detourdog wrote:
| Would love some links to descriptions of these systems.
| squarefoot wrote:
| Might be a chance to use AI to refine the search for ancient
| settlements that has been already done for years using Google
| Earth.
|
| For example:
| https://metaldetectingforum.com/index.php?threads/using-goog...
| killjoywashere wrote:
| What this really tells me is that we have massive unreviewed
| data. This is imagery from _decades ago_ still yielding fruit. We
| 're getting close to having a replayable copy of history at
| centimeter resolution from multiple angles and through a broad
| spectrum.
| AyyEye wrote:
| > We're getting close to having a replayable copy of history at
| centimeter resolution from multiple angles and through a broad
| spectrum.
|
| This is absolutely terrifying
| kibwen wrote:
| This doesn't deserve to be downvoted.
|
| The primary impediment to the implementation of a panopticon
| state has been the unrealistically high amount of human labor
| needed to analyze everyone's movements. With AI analysts,
| that barrier will be destroyed. Authoritarian governments are
| salivating at the prospect.
| klyrs wrote:
| Technologists abject refusal to acknowledge fear as a valid
| response to certain tecnological developments will be our
| downfall.
| karmakurtisaani wrote:
| "But building the Torment Nexus was _really cool_! "
| xhevahir wrote:
| It doesn't have to be watching everybody. Just enough that
| the subjects believe their behavior to be under scrutiny,
| and police themselves accordingly. At least, that's the
| principle of the panopticon.
|
| I've been reading We Have Been Harmonized, which talks
| about China's efforts to build something like this on a
| massive scale.
| kibwen wrote:
| The classical panopticon was phrased that way ("pretend
| that you're watching and everyone will fall in line")
| precisely because _actually_ paying attention was
| infeasible. But anyone with half a brain knows that, up
| until now, 99% of cameras that you see (or don 't see)
| are completely unmonitored, meaning that smart dissidents
| understand how to deal with them. Once every single
| camera has an AI agent phoning home and producing a real-
| time map of everyone's movements at all times, this
| becomes orders of magnitude more difficult.
|
| In the AI age, revolution becomes impossible. Hang on for
| dear life to your freedoms, because once they're gone,
| you're never getting them back, thanks to tech.
| detourdog wrote:
| I think you are correct. The moon landing high resolution
| content is a great example of this.
| fforflo wrote:
| What is the go-to place to browse/find catalogued satellite image
| data?
| rabf wrote:
| You could try here:
|
| https://www.planet.com/science/#programs
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