Urgent warning: Black Mirror has entered the United States, with AI as its handmaiden
AI as a smoke screen to cover for authoritarian actions
[pressed for time; please excuse brevity and typos]
I have always felt that one of the most chilling episodes of Black Mirror was called Nosedive. As the Wikipedia summary puts it, “The episode is set in a world where people can rate each other from one to five stars, using their smartphones, for every interaction they have, which can impact their socioeconomic status.” Nobody would want to live in that world.
Axios broke a story this morning that made my blood curdle. The State Department intends to revoke the visas of large numbers of foreigners (in this case largely student protestors) in part based on AI analysis of their social media posts .
A senior official is quoted as saying “it would be negligent for the department that takes national security seriously to ignore publicly available information about [visa] applicants in terms of AI tools. ... AI is one of the resources available to the government that's very different from where we were technologically decades ago."
Right now the targets are (putative) supporters of Hamas. I despise Hamas. I am loathe to defend anyone who supports them.
But I also fear a world in which the State department can judge anyone, at any time, to be a “threat” to the state, even based on superficial AI analysis, and deport them without due process, using AI as a smoke screen to authoritarian action.
"First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
—Martin Niemöller https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/martin-niemoeller-first-they-came-for-the-socialists
I agree with your argument. I have one seemingly subtle, but profoundly important thing to add. You said that they were looking for “supporters of Hamas”. That’s not really true. They intentionally conflate the support of Palestinians with supporters of Hamas. It’s very deliberate - especially for people who call Antifa (not a real group and shorthand for anti-fascist) a terrorist group. They know many Americans and elected Democrats will happily decry someone who actually supports Hamas and also let the bad faith right wing conflate those with people who don’t like Apartheid-like rule and/or genocidal/war crime actions.