wuffah

Yea, that last time the US and Russia did this we had to ban nuclear weapons in space.

You’re right, it appears that NPU hardware was introduced in the iPhone 8, in 2017, and I say this typing away from an Apple device. Sounds like I’ll be busy this weekend with that rusty spork.

However, it’s the recent generation of NPUs that provide the processing power needed to run the expanded scanning services implemented by these OS’s. That’s why Apple Intelligence requires an iPhone 15, and Microsoft is hawking Recall laptops.

While I admit the pins-and-string-on-a-corkboard tone, I don’t think we actually disagree on anything here. Eventually, an open source platform will become the only way to avoid this kind of hardware enabled surveillance.

Microsoft, Google, and Apple are all quietly integrating NPUs into their devices, and implementing the software infrastructure in their operating systems to do on-device classification of content: Windows Recall, Google SafetyCore, and Apple Intelligence. These services are obsequiously marketed as being for your benefit, while all are privacy and surveillance nightmares. When the security breaking features of these systems are mentioned, each company touts convoluted workarounds to justify the tech.

Why would these companies risk rabidly forcing these unwanted, unpopular, insecure, expensive, and unnecessary features on their collective user bases? The real reason is to capture everything you do and store on your device, use the tensor hardware you may or may not even know that you purchased to analyze the data locally, then export and sell that “anonymized” information to advertisers and the government. All while cryptographically tying the data to your device, and the device to you, for “security”. This enables mass surveillance, digital rights management, and targeted advertising on a scale and depth previously unseen. Who needs a backdoor or a quantum computer to break consumer-grade encryption when you can just locally record everything everyone does and analyze it automatically at the hardware level?

Each of these providers is already desperate to scan, analyze, and classify your content:

Microsoft has been caught using your stored passwords to decrypt archives uploaded to OneDrive.

Apple developed forced client side scanning for CSAM before backlash shut it down. They already locally scan your photos with a machine learning classification algorithm whether you like it or not. You can’t turn it off.

Google recently implemented local content scanning with SafetyCore to “protect you from unwanted content like spam”. Then why is it scanning your photo library?

I would rather saw off my own nuts with a rusty spork before willfully purchasing a device with an integrated NPU. I fear that in the next 5-10 years, you won’t be able to avoid them. We are paying for the edge hardware being used for our own unwilling surveillance. Then, our tax dollars are paid to these tech companies to purchase the data!

Do you trust the rising fascist regimes and their tech lackeys in America and the UK to use this power morally and responsibly?

Do you really believe that these features that you didn’t ask for, that you cannot disable, and are baked directly into the hardware, are for your benefit?

I can hear every sound referenced in this thread in my head.

I don’t know much about MMA or Ireland and I could have told you that.

What a great way to prepare students for our AI enabled social media and digital surveillance society. Take note kids, trust no one!