Power, Surveillance, and Control

AI amplifies existing power structures and creates new forms of control. This sub-article expands Section 3.2 of Philosophy.

Surveillance

• Facial recognition, predictive policing, and profiling raise civil-liberties concerns.
• Systems can identify, track, and influence populations at scale.

Platform Power

• A few corporations control frontier compute, data, and models.
• Concentration creates dependencies and reduces competition.

National Strategies

• States fund AI for economic and military advantage.
• Export controls and compute governance emerge to manage strategic assets.

Control and Oversight

• Who audits powerful systems? How do governments regulate?
• Compute governance, model licensing, and transparency regimes are debated.

Why It Matters

AI can centralize power; governance must address concentration, privacy, and accountability.

Sources

• Zuboff, S. (2019). The Age of Surveillance Capitalism.
• Crawford, K. (2021). Atlas of AI.

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