[j9461701]

I'm reminded of the novel The Golden Globe, by john varley. In that novel very powerful AI handle most day to day operations of society, and it is mentioned by one of them that - technologically speaking - they could create the single most despotic and privacy-eliminating regime in human history. A place where even an individual's thoughts and emotions are no longer secret, let alone snooping on every word they ever speak. The AI then says it could do this, but it will not, and has intentionally blinded itself to all such data streams. The central intelligence refuses to examine the incoming data as it believes doing so would violate its subjects human rights. In-novel this is why the AI doesn't just tell our protagonist where the big bad is, but I've found it an interesting possible trajectory for the future. Where every word we say is monitored, but it is strictly illegal to view said monitoring.

I wonder if that is the most realistic version of a future were we still have private lives.

[bjo590]

> I wonder if that is the most realistic version of a future were we still have private lives.

I think it's almost impossible for someone to build these data streams and not look at them. Look at the mass amount of surveillance every major country is participating in. Government officials in open and democratic countries have lied about the amount of surveillance they are doing, get caught, and keep the surveillance going. I think the more probabilistic future where we have private lives comes from futures where that technology is never built. This is to say, privacy is almost certainly dying.

[shadowprofile77]

Unless a still unknown counter-technology comes along to make privacy and individual empowerment much more concrete. Or, more conservatively, existing or near-extrapolation derivative technologies democratize enough to make surveillance far too costly for state actors without blowback.