he calls this technology "exciting." it makes me shudder. i have been contemplating this for a decade, this specific thing, and now it really is right in front of us. what happens when the useful data within any image or video stream can be extracted into the form of text and descriptions? a model of the world or of a country will emerge that you can hold in your hand. you can know the exact whereabouts of anyone at any time. you can know anything at any time. a real-time model of a country. and AI will be able to digest this model and answer questions about it. any government that has possession of such a system will wield absolute control in a way that has never been possible before. it will have massive implications. liberal democracy will no longer be viable as an economic of political framework. jeff bezos once said that we are essentially lucky that the most efficient way for resources to be utilized is in a decentralized manner. the fact that liberty is the strongest model economically, where everyone acts independently, is a happy coincidence. centralized economies, otherwise known as communism, havent worked in the past but that will change because with the power of AI, and with the real-time model and control-loop that it will make possible, the most efficient way to manage and deploy resources will be with one central management entity. in other words, an advanced AI will do literally everything for us, human labor will be made worthless, and countries that stick to the old ways will simply be made obsolete. inevitably, the AI-driven countries, with their pathetic blobs of parasitic human enclaves hanging off their tits, will move in on the old countries and destroy them for some inane reason such as needing more space to store antimatter. whatever.
even without looking all the way into the future, these AI video and image digesting tools will give birth to new and horrifying possibilities for bad actors in the government. their ability to steam roll over peoples lives in a bureaucratic stupor will be completely out of control. this seems like a sure thing but it doesnt seem likely at all that AI will be proactively and bravely used to counter-balance the negative uses by concerned citizens. people need to open their eyes to the possibility that different levels of technology are like points on a landscape -- not necessarily getting better or worse with time or "progress."
Lets say you were looking to (violently or non violently) resist the government.
Governments don't have weaknesses in the sticks. You need to enter a highly surveiled space to meet them.
Time was that you could just drive into town, protest, go home.
But then cops started recording protests. So you had to wear protection. Masks, long sleeve coats etc.
Then with LPR, you would rather jump a train or something. because they will know down to the block who you are and were you parked. So public transport and some basic precautions was enough for most people. But now with AI and enough processing grunt, they will be able to follow the entire reverse journey of all protesters in semi real time without wasting human detective time.
So how do you do it? Protesting becomes something that can only be a one way trip. You either ignore the problem, or arm up and tear it down. No middle ground. Feedback mechanisms in democratic society stop functioning. Its either acceptance or suicide. Which further polarises society, which increases the disintegration of democratic systems. Its a big feedback loop.
Democracy has this implicit notion that it is the alternative to the violence necessary to remove a dictator. The country provides a non violent democratic pathway to remove the goverment, or people will inevitably just physically remove the government. Tools like AI will give governments more leeway to make themselves less democratic, and more dictatorial. And the end result of that is inevitable violence.
Man. LLMs are basically auto-complete systems. This scenario you're painting seems too far-fetched for this technology at any timeline you could propose.
just five years ago it would be far fetched to suggest that we would have what we have now. its clear that peoples intuition about what is likely and what is not is not accurate right now. and this scenario is actually the opposite of unlikely, its inevitable. the economic forces will not allow any other outcome. its not really surprising when you consider how inefficient market based economies are, how inefficient and fragile humans are, and the fact that communism has already come close to working in the past. even without AI, centralized economies rival decentralized ones. and the loss of human agency that comes with centralized economies cant be dismissed.
even without looking all the way into the future, these AI video and image digesting tools will give birth to new and horrifying possibilities for bad actors in the government. their ability to steam roll over peoples lives in a bureaucratic stupor will be completely out of control. this seems like a sure thing but it doesnt seem likely at all that AI will be proactively and bravely used to counter-balance the negative uses by concerned citizens. people need to open their eyes to the possibility that different levels of technology are like points on a landscape -- not necessarily getting better or worse with time or "progress."