AI & Tech Authoritarianism — Day 5 of 5: The Test
Over the past four days, I have argued that AI and surveillance technology could reshape the relationship between citizens and their government more than most laws passed in our lifetimes.
A progression is worth keeping in mind. Surveillance leads to identification, identification to classification, classification to prediction, prediction to restriction, and restriction to punishment.
The early steps are not authoritarian on their own. Police work sometimes requires surveillance. Governments need identification systems in order to function. Fraud detection depends on classification. AI can help find real threats. The danger comes when the entire chain is linked together, automated, and politically controlled, with fewer and fewer points where a human being has to justify moving to the next step.
The United States has faced a version of this problem before. The Fourth Amendment was written when searching someone required physical effort and personal risk. The founders understood what generalized searches do to a free people. They could not have pictured smartphones, facial recognition, cloud databases, or machine learning, but they would have recognized the question underneath. How much of a person’s life should government be able to examine when that person is not suspected of anything?
Here is the test I keep coming back to. When government asks for a new surveillance power, do not picture the politician you support holding it. Picture the politician you trust least. Then ask whether you would still be comfortable granting that power if that person took control of it tomorrow.
If the answer changes depending on who occupies the White House, the governor’s office, or the local police department, the safeguard is not strong enough. A protection that depends on the character of whoever holds office is not really a protection. It is a courtesy.
Technology will keep advancing. Our constitutional protections have to advance with it.
Marty Crean
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Books by the Author:
Short Essays on Artificial Intelligence - Vol 1
Short Essays on Artificial Intelligence - Vol 2
Your Child is Already Using AI
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