Recent reports of large language models developing emergent capabilities beyond their programming parameters suggest that once artificial intelligence (AI) is fully integrated with real-time data sets, the temptation for it or its human masters to use it to control, manipulate and suppress people may become irresistible. Totalitarian governments have been early adapters of digital surveillance technologies because of the ability it gives them to entrench their power. Will democratic nations be able to withstand the temptation to follow?

In recent books like “We Have Been Harmonized” and “Surveillance State,” the authors describe how the Chinese Communist Party uses elaborate surveillance systems composed of more than 300 million facial recognition cameras, mobile phone applications, GPS services, internet gating mechanisms, and a range of human overseers to collect and analyze data on the movement, activities, thoughts and patterns of citizens. Often packaged as ways to enhance societal safety and security, these technological tools are rapidly facilitating repressive forms of government that can be used to both entitle or punish citizens based on their adherence to authoritarian rules. The brutalization of classes of people such as Chinese Uyghurs is a clear example of the misuse of such........

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