The Power of Big Data and Psychographics | 2016 Concordia Annual Summit

What people said

kbaker · 2018-03 · Strong recommendation

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." [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]

Read the original HN comment ↗

rramadass · 2026-02 · Recommendation

> 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 - [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.

Read the original HN comment ↗

rramadass · 2026-02 · Recommendation

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 - [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.

Read the original HN comment ↗