The World Is Growing a Nervous System

Last week, I wrote about the growing push toward “smart wearables” and the idea that AI could become an “always on” assistant in the background of our lives.

Turns out, not everyone is into the idea.

But most people seem to be more concerned about the privacy implications of these new devices than about how they look.

The funny thing is, we’ve been down this road before.

Twenty years ago, the idea of carrying a device that constantly tracks your location sounded invasive too. Yet today, millions of us willingly use smartphones to remember where we parked or to recommend nearby restaurants, while it quietly builds a detailed record of where we go and what we do.

This doesn’t mean our privacy concerns have disappeared.

Far from it.

Most Americans still say that protecting personal information matters to them. And many people remain uncomfortable with how much data modern technology already collects.

In a recent poll, 56% of Americans said they’re specifically concerned that wearable devices reveal too much personal information.

But a strange study published recently suggests we may be approaching a future where opting out is no longer an option.

The Wi-Fi Spy

Researchers in Germany recently found that ordinary Wi-Fi routers can identify individual people with 99.5% accuracy.

That means that the same router currently helping stream Netflix in your living room could also be able to recognize that you are the person walking through it.

Not with facial recognition. And the researchers weren’t tracking phones or asking people to wear smartwatches either.

They were simply studying how Wi-Fi signals move through a room.

You see, Wi-Fi works by sending radio waves through the air. Those waves bounce off walls, furniture and people. So when a person walks through a room, their body slightly changes the signal.

Normally, your router uses that information to improve your internet connection. This helps direct the signal more efficiently toward your devices.

But researchers at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology found that the same information could be used for something very different.

They used AI to identify people based on the way their bodies disrupted Wi-Fi signals. And unlike some earlier Wi-Fi sensing experiments, this worked with standard routers using Wi-Fi 5 or newer technology.

To be clear, Wi-Fi 5 isn’t some futuristic lab standard.

It’s already in homes, offices, hotels, airports, schools, coffee shops and apartment buildings all over the world.

And this changes the concept of privacy as we know it.

Throughout the internet era, privacy debates have mostly centered around devices we’re aware of. Things like cameras, phones, smart speakers, doorbell systems, fitness trackers and smart glasses.

These devices all feel like a choice.

You can decide not to buy smart glasses. You can turn off your phone’s location tracking. Or you can refuse to put an Alexa in your kitchen.

But Wi-Fi is different.

According to researchers, these signals could be passively captured by any nearby device with a Wi-Fi card. Even something as ordinary as a laptop or Raspberry Pi.

Image: raspberrypi.com

That pushes us into a very different kind of privacy debate.

Because once a room can recognize you, opting out gets a lot harder.

Researchers didn’t teach the system who people were. Instead, AI learned to identify patterns hidden inside ordinary Wi-Fi signals and use them to distinguish one person from another.

This proves that AI is learning to understand the physical world through signals humans weren’t built to notice.

We mostly experience the world through sight, sound, touch, taste and smell.

Machines don’t have to stop there.

They can learn from radio waves. Heat signatures. Vibration patterns. Wireless interference. And as we just learned, movement through physical space.

When you combine those hidden signals with artificial intelligence, ordinary environments can behave like sensor systems.

Which means a home could notice if an elderly person fell. A factory could monitor workers, machines and safety conditions in real time. And a hospital could track patient movement without asking everyone to wear a device.

And that could be incredibly useful.

It could help older people live independently. It could save energy and improve safety. And it could reduce the need for cameras in sensitive places.

But it also raises a much bigger question.

What happens when the world around us starts paying attention?

Here’s My Take

Smart wearables are based on the idea that we need devices for AI to quietly operate in the background of our lives.

But this Wi-Fi study suggests that intelligence might not need to stay inside of gadgets.

Every recent major technology wave has seemed to expand what machines can understand about us. Smartphones learn where we go and what we do. Wearables are learning how we sleep, move and live our daily lives.

Now AI may be learning something else new: how to understand us through the spaces we move through.

That sounds unsettling.

But if the last twenty years has taught us anything, it’s that people tend to accept new technology when its benefits become useful enough.

Which leaves us with a strange and potentially disturbing possibility.

The next major computing platform might not be a device at all. It could be the environment around us.

Because the world has already started growing a nervous system.

And Wi-Fi is just one of its senses.

Regards,

Ian KingChief Strategist, Banyan Hill Publishing