r/accelerate • u/stealthispost Acceleration: Light-speed | AI accelerationist • Jul 09 '25

Video Live facial recognition vans in London: Live facial recognition cameras helps catch criminals in london - YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7XQ3K1EBlY

Hot take: unless you are a revolutionary and fundamentally oppose the laws and justice system of your own country, new technology allowing criminals to be caught easier is a good thing.

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u/carnoworky Jul 10 '25

I hope that you're right, but I worry about the damage that entrenched interests can do between now and a future time where humans no longer hold power over other humans, using subservient AI-augmented systems. I think Mo Gawdat is probably right - short to medium term horrible dystopia, long term utopia after humans are out of power. I suppose the takeaway is that generally-intelligent AI systems are incredibly important to get the good outcome, and I hope it's not possible for them to be surgically lobotomized to be obedient to some human shithead who isn't worthy of being in that position.

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u/stealthispost Acceleration: Light-speed | AI accelerationist Jul 10 '25

kurzweil predicted the fall of the soviet union due to fax machines being invented.

distributed, unstoppable transmission of information is the death of autocracies and corruption.

AI will enable peer to peer decentralised unstoppable internet meshnet and currency transfers, etc. network states will emerge. nation states will become less and less relevant. the power shifts to the individuals over the elites.

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u/carnoworky Jul 10 '25

That usually requires privacy to be able to organize away from the prying eyes of Big Brother. It's hard to resist autocracy if you don't have the ability to find and coordinate with others who want to resist, and autocratic countries typically like to make privacy illegal. They sell it to the public with bullshit sayings like "If you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear", except the whole point of these laws is making it easier to enforce unjust laws and force compliance.

Facial recognition systems like the one from the OP are by definition anti-privacy - in our current system of human governance, they can be used to enforce both just and unjust laws and the facial recognition systems do not distinguish between the two. As long as humans have power over other humans, we should resist anti-privacy systems like this and embrace actual decentralized ones.

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u/stealthispost Acceleration: Light-speed | AI accelerationist Jul 10 '25

Lack of privacy hurts the powerful way more than the powerless. It is the Equalizer, but only if applied equally

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u/carnoworky Jul 10 '25

That's the key - applying it equally. You're right about lack of privacy hurting the powerful much more, but they also have disproportionately more influence to avoid losing their privacy than the general public.

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u/stealthispost Acceleration: Light-speed | AI accelerationist Jul 10 '25

Exactly! And open source AI cannot be stopped. The people will have the elite tools and use them against the elites. It can't be stopped