We may be witnessing the revival of the US state’s relationship with Silicon Valley tech firms for capital surveillance.
AI guru Sam Altman, creator of Chat GPT at OpenAI before his shock dismissal this week, is an investor of a number of Silicon start-ups developing drones.
Skydio is a Silicon Valley firm deploying artificial intelligence to make self-operating drones and one of the contractors engaged by the New York Police Department, as well as another start-up, Brinc, where Altman is an investor in night-vision camera surveillance.
The trend of Silicon Valley companies signing contracts with the state for capital control is making a re-emergence.
It comes as OpenAI, Google and Meta as well as other firms signed an agreement at the UK Summit to allow their technologies to be risk assessed by governments against the need to uphold national security, despite the American state clearly employing emerging AI tech firms to invade people’s privacy.
The legal agreement was made between UK, US and Singapore governments involving OpenAI.
In addition, the Summit assembled a global panel of experts who will produce an annual report on the risks of AI around privacy, bias and misinformation.
Biden’s administration keeps embarking on a myriad of different courses for AI, to police AI – the U.S. also said it planned to set up its own institute – and endorse AI drone companies.
“The state is dragging itself into the digital age”, The Economist writes, in order to be seen to deliver national security of its infrastructure and invade more civilian lives.
At the end of 2022, The Economist reported that the Pentagon awarded a $9 Billion cloud-computing tender to giant tech companies including, Amazon and Microsoft, which Altman has now joined to develop their AI team.
AI is being used by the American state to its own ends to bolster national defence and rekindle a surveillance state with tech companies supplying the government again.
“Techies are also selling tools to help law enforcement make better use of the profusion of images and information now at their fingertips”.
As a path the state has already ventured down, surveillance capabilities may soon be further “fortified by generative AI, of the type that powers Chat GPT”, in spite of the state claiming to take a stand against the risks of AI.
“Surveillance is likely to remain lucrative, not least because governments are not the only customers for these technologies”.
