Concordia
4 HN recommenders · recommended in 3 months, 2017–2026
11:01 · 733K views · Sep 27, 2016
Alexander Nix of Cambridge Analytica presents at the 2016 Concordia Summit on using big data, psychographic profiling and behavioral microtargeting in elections.
HN points to it as the company's own pitch, used in debates about data-driven manipulation and extrapolated to today's AI.
10 comments from Hacker News
I urge everyone to watch this video from Cambridge Analytica about their techniques with big data and psychographic profiling leading up to the 2016 election. Very dystopian, it almost feels like a seminar with a Bond villain. Quote from the video: > "we were able to form a model to predict the personality of every single adult in the United States of America." this video Edit: also this article is a good read about how they used Facebook likes to build up profiles. Also contains a summary of the video: [LINK]
> Ultimately, the bigger problem is that even in crowds like HN's, no one seems to have a good idea of what should be done about governments abusing datascience so efficiently. The general-populace/crowd/mob has already lost this game. Govts/Companies (all of them irrespective of ethics/democracy/etc.) are doing what they want with data and datascience. The populace is easily propagandized/distracted from reality and can be easily cocooned. The only recourse left for the individual is to learn and start playing the game himself. Fortunately the new tools are a great help in this asymmetric warfare. Organizations like EFF/OpenSource/GNU/etc. need to take the lead on this since most people are like sheep when it comes to uses/misuses of technology. Palantir is just "Cambridge Analytica" redux but with more money/connections/data/breadth/depth/etc. Watch this old presentation by their then ceo Alexander Nix and extrapolate to today's AI world - this video Finally go and read the works of George Orwell, Edward Bernays, Jacques Ellul, Marshall Mcluhan, Noam Chomsky etc. on the whole subject of Propaganda/Manipulation to really understand where we are now.
Palantir is just "Cambridge Analytica" redux but with more money/connections/data/breadth/depth/etc. Their ethical/moral stance i will leave it to you to infer. Watch these old presentations by CA's then ceo Alexander Nix and extrapolate to today's AI world - this video and [LINK] (note the Q/A at the end here) Also watch this interview with Christopher Wylie the CA whistleblower and again extrapolate to today's AI world - [LINK] Be afraid, Be very afraid.
The article [1] and video [2] below shed some light on the "how". The video is mentioned directly in the article. The text explains how highly sophisticated targeting was deployed by the Trump campaign, and how it differed from Clinton's campaign. Highly informative. [1] [LINK] [2] this video
If you feel like the article is too long, you can watch this 11 minutes presentation: this video . It summarizes their methodology. I took the presentation link from the article.