We cannot escape the tyranny of technology

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…