AI has huge potential for surveilance. Palantir exists.

To continue on the nuclear analogy: Yes it resulted in bombs that can kill us all multiple times over, but nuclear energy isn’t completely neutral either. It encourages centralization of infrastructure and the dangers associated with it result in regulation by governments. Both of these shaped societies.

To quote a piece of text I read just recently that I feel put this quite neatly:

We are told that “guns don’t kill people, people do”, or that a component is just a component, indifferent to what its combinatorial potential is. This is a convenient lie. It serves only to allow the builders to wash their hands of responsibility.

But we know better now. We know that architecture is politics, and politics is control. The way you build a system determines how it will be used. If you build a system optimized for mass surveillance, you will get a panopticon. If you build a system optimized for centralized control, you will get a dictatorship. If you build a system optimized for extraction, you will get a parasite.

• The zen of reticulum

The current LLM boom is primed to deskill current and especially future workers and the biggest business case is to invade the workplace with even more technological feudalism through subscription services than is already in place.