Many things in life start from seemingly innocuous beginnings.
A recent pop-back into a dormant Twitter (Now “X”) account got me wondering about the technologies that have been invested into the company and the rapid dehumanizing of the experience.
One of the many new “features” that caught my attention was the introduction of a new “Are you a robot” type recognition process which they called the Arkose Challenge.
Initial tries on it felt like a novel means of security and felt somewhat more in-depth than that of the usual “Captcha” type mechanisms that have been around for longer.
However, since coming back onto the Twitter platform, it seems that the Challenge tends to come up with much higher frequency, and with each iteration, it seems to escalate in complexity. More intricate patterns, more repetition and this challenge is sometimes becoming an actual challenge. Less of a test for one’s intellect, but more of one’s time and patience.
This led to a few questions, is the Arkose challenge truly just a tool for securing access? or is it a shadow program for AI learning with a secondary premise of securing the account? Also if it is designed to be an escalating model, what are the limits, and what determines it? Who administers it? How is it controlled? And is this within the right of the end user to be informed and acted upon?
These questions are just a few that come to mind but the impact of them will inform us of the legitimacy of this process and its purposes as they would affect individuals rights and identity on their online footprint.
Imagine a mechanism that starts as innocuous as asking you a series of questions to simply ascertain if you are a bot or not. Then moving on to asking about more personal details in a bid to “be more secure” — all while harvesting immense fields of data and fueling online organisms (AI) which was meant to be built to escalate mankind but was instead employed by corporations to enslave mankind instead? Also if the problem-solving builds something for the corporation, does that not constitute work and a building of value? Should it be surrendered without pay?
Do we have the checks and balances in place to prevent such a calamity? is there a way to prevent a cyber-apocalypse? Where are we in this vast conversation of online purposes and platforms? Empirically, is the individual still the value that underpins the economy? As every business looks toward farming businesses with the aid of cheap tech, does no one see that it is the beginning of a vicious cycle that leads to the need for cheaper and cheaper workers but also a bigger audience to consume the product? The eventuality might be an implosion that leads to the paralysis of human function in modern society.
We seem to always chase the next big thing. Even when it might just be a big nothing.
