Never before has a single corporation – Google – reached so deeply into our lives.
With its projects in DNA data, biometrics, drones and robots, Google acts more like a military agency than an Internet search engine giant. Just like the National Security Agency (NSA), Google grabs headlines for collecting data on people in the U.S. and around the globe.
Google is again making headlines for its latest privacy-busting move. This one involves setting up a sweetheart deal with the National Health Service (NHS) in England. Through the deal, the Royal Free NHS Trust will allow Google to use “artificial intelligence” to access and analyze the health records of millions of people, New Scientist reported.
About 1.6 million patients who pass through the Trust’s three hospitals every year will have their records turned over to Google’s DeepMind for “analysis.” Records can include patient status, visitor logs, daily hospital activities, and data from the intensive care and emergency departments.
The explanation for all of this, of course, is improving patient health. But how else could the information be used? The UK move begs the question of whether Obamacare patients and others in the U.S. will soon find their private medical records opened up for scrutiny.
It’s one more way that Google, governments, and private data brokers are up to their eyeballs in spying on us.
Every piece of information collected from the public is potential money in the bank. Without our consent, our personal data is shared or sold to the highest bidder. One of the biggest data brokers in the U.S., Acxiom, is privy to terrorist watch lists, private health information, bank account numbers, religious affiliations and other lifestyle information, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) reported.
But the technocrats are gathering far more than our telephone calls, emails, webcam images, bank statements, medical reports and Facebook posts. The scope of it is mind-boggling.
Scary Scope of Work
A worldwide database of DNA is being created, with Google at the helm. Google’s chief engineer wants to merge people with computers and robots to create “immortal” avatars. Experts working for Google, NASA and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) are building a computer so advanced; it takes only seconds solve problems that would take an average computer several centuries to figure out.
These massive public experiments are being used to define us, track us and ultimately, control us.
Google’s quest to buy up intelligence- and military-related companies appears unequaled, even by Facebook. Many of the acquisitions and partnerships are listed on Google’s public research blog.
Now whether you believe their work is pure evil or it’s a gift to humanity, one thing is certain. Google controls a vast majority of the world’s technology and information.
And it’s positioning itself to control even more.
Your DNA on Google
In 2011, Google Ventures, an investment arm of Google, teamed up with several companies to help fund and develop the world’s largest database of DNA. A programming interface, Google Genomics, was designed for the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health, of which Google is a member.
The United States National Library of Medicine defines a genome as “an organism’s complete set of DNA, including all of its genes.”
Your DNA holds billions of pieces of data about your physical traits, your likelihood of developing certain illnesses and even your behavioral traits. In the right hands, the information could be used for curing and treating a myriad of illnesses and diseases. In the wrong hands, DNA information could be used for discrimination and creating social stigmas for people with undesirable traits. For example, employers might use DNA data to make decisions on which employees to hire or fire.
Federal laws exist to prevent DNA discrimination. But like any form of discrimination, proving it is difficult.
Under the Global Alliance, genomic and other information will be shared on a computer cloud system, with “research and healthcare communities,” according to Nature.com. This system is being created under the guise of finding cures for diseases and unearthing new medical treatments.
A lot of space is needed to store DNA – about 100 petabytes for the genome of just one person, according to Nature.com. (One petabyte is equal to 100 million gigabytes). Yet the sheer volume of DNA data being collected is only expected to grow. Genetic testing “will become a routine part of health care in the future,” according to the National Human Genome Research Institute, a federal agency.
One of the companies working with Google Ventures, 23andMe, offers ancestry information gleaned from the DNA in a sample of spit. Participants supply a spit sample which is shipped off to a lab and the results are returned a few weeks later. The catch? The information is rolled into the DNA database.
In addition to showing your ethnic background, the test by 23andMe claims to tell how much Neanderthal blood you have. Then it compares the amount of Neanderthal you have with the rest of the people in the database. Some scientists classify Neanderthals as a subspecies or a species separate from humans.
The company’s terms of service for DNA donors states:
“Genetic information you share with others could be used against your interests.”
DNA testing by 23andMe was initially offered people information on whether they were susceptible to certain kinds of diseases and illnesses. Also included in the terms of service is the statement:
”By providing any sample, you acquire no rights in any research or commercial products that may be developed by 23andMe or its collaborating partners.”
The Food and Drug Administration put a stop to that portion of 23andMe’s work in 2013, claiming it constituted medical testing without oversight by a physician. Today, a notice at the top of 23andMe’s website states it provides ancestry-related genetic reports and “un-interpreted” raw genetic data. In other words, they’re still in the business of collecting DNA.
Even if they weren’t, hospitals have collected millions of DNA blood samples from babies when they were born, as reported by the Washington Post and others. Michigan has a DNA depository in Detroit filled with millions of DNA samples. In 2009, the New York Times reported the FBI and other law enforcement agencies had already gathered DNA from millions of suspects.
We should all be asking where the DNA data is being stored, who has access to the information and how it is being used.
“There has not been a good national discussion about the use of these samples,” Jeffrey Botkin, a pediatrician and bioethicist at the University of Utah told the Washington Post in 2009. “Genetics is an area that touches a nerve. The public is concerned about massive databases.”
Well, now we have one on a global scale.
Google’s brain
Google’s chief engineer, Ray Kurzweil, coined the term “singularity” – merging humans with robots and machines. He believes computers will be conscious and able to think on their own as early as 2029. By 2045, people will upload the content of their brains to computers so they can create digital immortality, Kurzweil says.
The ultimate goal is to create artificial, living avatars of people. This will allow an elite group of people to “live forever.”
Computers and robots, powered by artificial intelligence, will be just like us, only faster, smarter and more efficient, according to Kurzweil and other like-minded researchers. Heralded in the media as geniuses and visionaries, these scientists and researchers dream of a future where computers and humanoid robots essentially run the world.
They render us obsolete.
The website for the 2045 Social Strategic Initiative represents a group of scientists and others concerned with creating artificial intelligence. Featured on the site is an “immortality button” that allows people to create a “personalized, immortal avatar.”
By signing up for the project, you can agree to have your head transplanted onto a robot after you die. The exact wording on 2045’s website is: “Full body prosthesis, i.e., an Avatar A or superior robotic body onto which one’s head is transplanted at the end of the healthspan of one’s biological body.”
This technology is in the laboratory stage, with more experiments needed, according to the website. It could be fully implemented within five to seven years.
Google’s Kurzweil was a speaker at the 2045 Social Strategic Initiative held in June 2013 in New York City. In a video for the conference, Kurzweil said,
“We’re going to become increasingly non-biological, to the point where the non-biological part dominates and the biological part is not that important.”
Already, Google has a computer software version of the human brain that is able to learn and think on its own. Google Vision, is a computer system that “currently has 16000 microprocessors equivalent to about a tenth of our brain’s visual cortex,” according to betanews.com.
“Google Vision looked at images for 72 straight hours and essentially taught itself to see twice as well as any other computer on Earth,” betanews.com reported. “Give it an image and it will find another one like it. Tell it that the image is a cat and it will be able to recognize cats.”
Scientists are scrambling to develop programs that can do even more. In addition to recognizing images, artificial intelligence systems are able to translate speech. Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon.com and others are also hiring top experts to work on artificial intelligence projects.
Computers powered by artificial intelligence can recognize patterns and analyze data, giving them the ability to “think” independently.
Google’s artificial intelligence work falls under Google X, a semi-secret division whose full details are not revealed to the public. Under the artificial intelligence umbrella, Google acquired include DNNresearch, Inc. and also purchased DeepMind Technologies.
Google is a partner in the Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab hosted at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley in California, just down the street from Google headquarters. The lab houses a quantum computer from D-Wave Systems, and the USRA (Universities Space Research Association). The program is a joint effort by Google, NASA and the CIA’s In-Q-Tel program.
The computer is touted on Google’s Research Blog as a means to process information to learn how to cure diseases, create new environmental policies, study climate change or build a better search engine algorithm.
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