From Robert Peck, York, UK
Mhairi Aitken does well to argue against claims of sentient artificial intelligence independently bringing about humanity’s doom, but, like so much discussion around AI, there is no mention of the most dire threat (1 July, p 21).
Throughout history, censorious, authoritarian and surveillance-obsessed governments have always found their abilities limited by what percentage of a population they can employ to keep the rest under observation and control. With AI, this limitation is removed and totalitarians can expand their apparatus of control with nothing more than the addition of extra racks to a server farm.
