Xprize founder says ‘humans behave better when they’re being watched’
Xprize founder says ‘humans behave better when they’re being watched’
Xprize 创始人称：“人类在被监视时表现得更好”
Xprize Foundation founder Peter Diamandis has joined a growing list of tech executives who think that global surveillance is a good idea, saying, “[h]umans behave better when they’re being watched.” Xprize 基金会创始人彼得·迪亚曼迪斯（Peter Diamandis）加入了一长串认为全球监控是件好事的科技高管名单，他表示：“人类在被监视时表现得更好。”
Diamandis shared his opinion in a post on X this week, and went much deeper on his beliefs on his Substack, where he described, essentially: Big Brother, but good. “Radical transparency is coming. A future where you can know anything, anytime, anywhere. A future where no one can hide,” he wrote on Substack. “We are wrapping the planet in an ‘Sensor Ecosystem’: a living, multi-layered sensing system that runs from the cameras in your home, to the phone in your pocket, to autonomous cars and humanoid robots on the ground, to drones and flying cars in the air, all the way up to a constellation of satellites imaging every square meter on the Earth every single day.” 迪亚曼迪斯本周在 X（原推特）上分享了他的观点，并在其 Substack 专栏中深入阐述了他的信念，他所描述的本质上就是：一个“好的老大哥”。他在 Substack 上写道：“彻底的透明化即将到来。那是一个你可以随时、随地了解任何事情的未来。一个无人可以隐藏的未来。”他写道：“我们正在用一个‘传感器生态系统’包裹地球：这是一个鲜活的、多层次的传感系统，从你家里的摄像头，到你口袋里的手机，到地面上的自动驾驶汽车和人形机器人，再到空中的无人机和飞行汽车，一直延伸到每天对地球每一平方米进行成像的卫星群。”
Diamandis’ comments come roughly two years after Oracle founder Larry Ellison said something very similar. “Citizens will be on their best behavior, because we’re constantly recording and reporting everything that is going on,” Ellison predicted during an Oracle event in 2024. 迪亚曼迪斯的言论发表于甲骨文（Oracle）创始人拉里·埃里森（Larry Ellison）发表类似言论约两年后。埃里森在 2024 年的一次甲骨文活动中预测：“公民们会表现得最好，因为我们一直在记录和报告正在发生的一切。”
Diamandis appears to have been spurred to make such claims after hosting a podcast interview with Will Marshall, the CEO of Planet, the largest operator of Earth-observing satellites. “No one can hide anymore,” Marshall told Diamandis during the conversation. “If you build a school, we’re going to see the school. If you build a data center, we’re going to see the data center. And the accountability is going to be there for the whole world to see, no matter what.” 迪亚曼迪斯似乎是在主持了一场与 Planet 公司（最大的地球观测卫星运营商）首席执行官威尔·马歇尔（Will Marshall）的播客采访后，才受到启发发表了这些言论。马歇尔在对话中告诉迪亚曼迪斯：“再也没有人能隐藏了。如果你建了一所学校，我们就能看到这所学校。如果你建了一个数据中心，我们就能看到这个数据中心。无论如何，全世界都将看到这种问责制。”
Diamandis, Ellison, and Marshall are not wrong that much of this tech is here and spreading. It’s becoming increasingly hard for people to make it through their day without being photographed by home security systems like Ring, camera-laden cars like Tesla makes, or automated license plate readers from Flock. Even if they can, they are surveilled through their phones by ad networks and data brokers. 迪亚曼迪斯、埃里森和马歇尔并没有说错，这些技术中的大部分已经存在并正在普及。人们在日常生活中越来越难以避开被 Ring 等家庭安防系统、特斯拉等装有摄像头的汽车，或 Flock 的自动车牌识别系统拍摄。即使能避开这些，他们也会通过手机被广告网络和数据经纪人监视。
But Diamandis’ comments are some of the most blunt about seeking to eradicate privacy. “Your kids will grow up in a world with no ‘off the record’,” he writes to any parents reading his post. “Teach them that the best privacy strategy is integrity, living so that being seen costs you nothing. And fight, hard, for a world where the watching goes both ways.” 但迪亚曼迪斯的言论在寻求彻底消除隐私方面表现得最为直白。他写给阅读其文章的家长们：“你们的孩子将在一个没有‘非正式记录’的世界中长大。教导他们，最好的隐私策略是正直，生活得坦坦荡荡，这样即使被注视也不会让你付出任何代价。并且要努力争取一个双向监视的世界。”
Diamandis seems to treat this as an inevitability, but that’s not how everyday people are responding to the rise of surveillance tech. Some cities have covered their Flock cameras with trash bags after reports that the company’s data was being accessed by ICE、the FBI, and other law enforcement. Public pushback on Ring’s “Search Party” feature — aimed at finding lost dogs, an idea that is typically hard to argue against — contributed to the company canceling its own partnership with Flock. Meta, meanwhile, has been dealing with complaints about its camera glasses (made in partnership with Ray-Ban), and is also fighting a lawsuit over privacy concerns. 迪亚曼迪斯似乎将此视为一种必然，但普通民众对监控技术兴起的反应并非如此。在有报道称 Flock 的数据被美国移民及海关执法局（ICE）、联邦调查局（FBI）和其他执法部门访问后，一些城市用垃圾袋遮住了他们的 Flock 摄像头。公众对 Ring 的“搜寻队”（Search Party）功能的抵制——该功能旨在寻找丢失的狗，这本是一个很难反对的想法——促使该公司取消了与 Flock 的合作。与此同时，Meta 一直在处理关于其智能眼镜（与雷朋合作生产）的投诉，并正在应对一场关于隐私问题的诉讼。
Much of Diamandis’ Substack post is framed around giving advice to entrepreneurs or executives on how to live in a world with no privacy. This advice mostly boils down to: “be a good person.” And even he doesn’t have an answer for the question of whether people would do this because it’s the right thing to do, or because they might be under surveillance. (He writes that it’s the question he’s “been chewing on” since concluding the interview with Marshall.) 迪亚曼迪斯 Substack 文章的大部分内容旨在为企业家或高管提供建议，告诉他们如何在没有隐私的世界中生活。这些建议归根结底就是：“做一个好人”。即便如此，他对于人们这样做是因为“这是正确的事”，还是因为“他们可能处于监视之下”这一问题，也没有答案。（他写道，这是他自结束与马歇尔的采访以来一直“反复思考”的问题。）
What Diamandis doesn’t wrestle with is the same set of questions that tech executives often elide in conversations about surveillance and privacy. The definitions of “good” or “honest” are, unfortunately, often in the eye of the beholder — in this case, powerful tech companies that control the surveillance infrastructure. Diamandis briefly argues that these companies are offering transparency, and that “transparency is a tool, and tools don’t have ethics.” He doesn’t reckon with the fact that tools often inherit the biases of their creators. Who decides what behavior captured by a security camera is “good” or “honest”? This question isn’t explored, let alone answered. All he’s willing to say is that transparency “only builds trust when it points both ways.” That balance seems tricky, at best, in a world where the technology to create such “transparency” is controlled by so few. 迪亚曼迪斯没有探讨的问题，正是科技高管在讨论监控和隐私时经常回避的问题。不幸的是，“好”或“诚实”的定义往往取决于观察者——在这种情况下，就是控制监控基础设施的强大科技公司。迪亚曼迪斯简短地辩称，这些公司提供的是透明度，而且“透明度是一种工具，工具没有道德”。他没有考虑到这样一个事实：工具往往继承了其创造者的偏见。谁来决定监控摄像头捕捉到的行为是“好”还是“诚实”的？这个问题没有被探讨，更不用说被回答了。他唯一愿意说的是，透明度“只有在双向时才能建立信任”。在一个创造这种“透明度”的技术被极少数人控制的世界里，这种平衡充其量看起来也是棘手的。