Privacy? Forget About It

Most of us have learned to be very careful when we're online. We don't give out our social security number or any private information that we don't want others knowing. As a result, we're safe from strangers knowing all kinds of things about us that we want to keep private, right? Wrong.

I was googling something the other day when an ad on the right side of the page caught my eye. It was a service that could search for people and find out all kinds of things like where they lived, their emails, their birthdays, the names of their spouses and children, and much more.

I wasn't tempted to check out someone else, but I was curious about how much this company knew about me. For free, they gave me the names of my wife and kids, and promised to give me more information if I used a paid service. Since my primary job is saving my readers from doing anything foolish, I checked the box and committed to a small fee. They listed my age and date of birth, and my address and phone number. They also told me I didn't have any liens on our property, they did a criminal check, and gave me the names of neighbors. It seems that it would be a lot more neighborly just to introduce myself to my neighbors in person, but I'm obviously not living in Cyber Space 2010.

They had my correct age and date of birth, and, if they want to send me a birthday present, they've got my address. They know how much we paid for our house, and the size of it. Actually, they were somewhat short on the house size. They didn't count our finished basement. Maybe their electronic spies missed it when they made their cyber visit. And they gave us an extra bedroom. I hope this doesn't mean that they think there's an extra room that they can use for one of their people to spend the night.

They said I had no criminal record, so I guess they don't count parking tickets. They claim there are no registered sex offenders in our neighborhood. In terms of other crimes, burglary and vehicle theft are listed as "average." I don't know if this means that the crooks do an average job when they steal something, or if we have the average number of thefts in our area. They had all kinds of statistics including the claim that a whopping 52% of my neighbors have masters' degrees. If they're so smart, why can't they remember to put on their turn signals?

I immediately realized that if I can find out so much about me, so can everyone else in the world. And no, I still wasn't tempted to check out anyone else. The whole thing made me feel like I'd be peeking in someone's window, going through their garbage, or tracking down their old math teacher. So I called the company to cancel everything. I asked the woman on the phone, "Don't you feel like this whole thing is a bit creepy?"

Not surprisingly, she did not, and said she's a customer as well as an employee. She touted the ability to check out a possible employee like a nanny. She also said you could find an old friend whom you had lost touch with. My feeling is, if I've gotten along this well without them, I can stay out of touch. I added, "Aren't you concerned about that annoying kid from elementary school tracking you down?"

She answered, "If you're worried about somebody like that finding you, you can check the box that doesn't allow your records to be public."

I responded, "I'm not worried about the annoying kid from school finding me. I was the annoying kid." I was just using that as an example.

So, I resigned my membership a few minutes after I had joined. However, we all know that there are many companies like this that can tap into our computers and find out all kinds of things about us: what products we buy, whom we e-mail the most, and probably if we picked up after our dog this morning (I did). It doesn't seem to matter how careful we are, "they" will find out more about us than they should. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if I get an email in a few minutes from one of these companies saying something like, "Who are you kidding? Those socks you're wearing don't go with your pants."

Computers in Jeopardy?

I read the other day that IBM plans on having a computer compete against human contestants on the TV show, "Jeopardy!" The claim is that if the computer beats people, it will be a big leap forward in the field of artificial intelligence. It doesn't sound like a leap to me. We already know that computers can be faster than humans and that their "brains" can contain more information. So what's the big deal? However, the people at IBM are quite excited about this. I assume "quite excited" translates at IBM to mean that some of the folks there are actually considering loosening their ties.

If IBM (or one of its clones) were announcing that it had finally made a computer that will last longer than a ballpoint pen, then I might be excited. If they had come up with a computer that doesn't crash the night before something important is due, I'd put on a tie and loosen it. I'd be impressed if they were demonstrating a new program that could tell the difference between e-mail from my mother and spam from "Swedish Porn And Farm Supplies." But a computer that's good at playing a game? Big whoop.

So I wasn't all that impressed when I first read about this, but then I started thinking that maybe I was being too quick to judge. Maybe I'll consider this computer amazing when I actually see it on the show. Once they put it on the set, sandwiched between a male and a female contestant, maybe it will do things besides just answer questions. Maybe the computer will be better dressed than the human contestants. Maybe it won't make dumb wagers. Maybe it will be impressive during what the show's producers refer to as the "interview portion" of the program and what we at home call, "the bathroom break." That's the time when the contestants tell "fascinating" stories about themselves like, "One time I had a flat tire." Maybe the geniuses at IBM will have programmed the computer to tell an anecdote that's actually interesting, like a story about the time the computer was caught in a motel room fooling around with a DVD player.

One of the quirks of "Jeopardy!" is that the contestant is actually given the "answer," and he or she must supply the "question." For example, the "answer" might be "Claimed She Could See Russia From Her House," so the correct "question" would be, "Who is Sarah Palin?" A response that would be technically correct, but not what they're looking for would be, "Who is Mrs. Putin?"

I guess this kind of subtlety about giving an answer that is factually correct but obviously not what they're looking for is one of the things that make it difficult for a computer to play the game. Understanding the vernacular of the show and the strange categories that sometimes appear are all things that aren't easy for computers. It would be a slam-dunk if the show just asked questions like, "What's the square root of the year President Obama was born, multiplied by the number of cosmetic surgeries that Joan Rivers has had?"

The computer that they'll use isn't like the one I'm using right now. It's going to be a Blue Gene supercomputer, whatever that is. Most people will probably be rooting for the people against the computer. That's just human nature. We often hate machines, hate talking to them on the phone, and hate having to deal with them when we forget our stupid passwords.

We love stories about a guy who can do math faster on his abacus than some computer. We shake our heads sadly when computers replace people at work. We shrug knowingly when we hear about a major computer mess-up like when students are told they've been admitted to a university that they aren't even qualified to visit. So I predict that the audience will be cheering if that librarian from Omaha kicks the computer's hard drive.

Gary Johnson, "Jeopardy!" Head Writer, said he wasn't worried about the computer challenging "Jeopardy's" human contestants until he read the last sentence in the news article about the challenge. That's where computer scientitst, Eric Nyberg said that he and his colleagues sit around after work and talk about ideas while "having beers." Johnson's response was a big "uh-oh," because "that's exactly what we do around here after work."