Was expressing this fear to my wife and kids the other day. Ubiquitous cameras everywhere (like in the UK for many years) and other surveillance technology has always been a concern but had scaling limits -- but when you combine it now with the cheap ease of machine learning technologies we have a serious problem.
And then consider drones, mobile devices. And then mass disinformation and/or disruption via LLMs.
As a long time advocate of old school mass action, and a believe in active protest movements as part of a healthy democracy, I have a strong feeling of unease. I've had it since about 9/11, but it's now really bad.
e.g. if you know, with certainty, that heading out to a protest could lead to your instant termination from your job because a drone passed over and took a photo and identified all 100,000 people in the crowd instantly.. would you still go?
Or if having been identified, some malevolent actor could just turn around and mass produce fake content from you and others in the crowd, to discredit you?
Shivers.
And then consider drones, mobile devices. And then mass disinformation and/or disruption via LLMs.
As a long time advocate of old school mass action, and a believe in active protest movements as part of a healthy democracy, I have a strong feeling of unease. I've had it since about 9/11, but it's now really bad.
e.g. if you know, with certainty, that heading out to a protest could lead to your instant termination from your job because a drone passed over and took a photo and identified all 100,000 people in the crowd instantly.. would you still go?
Or if having been identified, some malevolent actor could just turn around and mass produce fake content from you and others in the crowd, to discredit you?
Shivers.