Simultaneously, AI acts as the narrative cover for the largest power grab ever attempted by humans. These truths are not at odds with one another, and being able to intellectually navigate both simultaneously and successfully requires a nuanced framework that has, in my opinion, failed to materialize thus far in the public conversation.

The very idea of making an Artificial Intelligence lies within the combination of the intangible with the tangible — the conscious with the unconscious, the metaphysical with the physical, the spiritual with the worldly, the psychological with the physiological, etc. Today's AI programmers and chip manufacturers are yesterday's alchemists — attempting to turn sand into thought in lieu of lead into gold.  

An issue I find discussing AI is that the discourse so quickly sours to straight up propaganda from its creators or — perhaps more insidiously — surface-level, esoteric "mumbo jumbo" (see above) that muddies the ability to create informed consent for the masses. I have yet to resonate fully with any would-be sides of any would-be debate on the matter and remain quite skeptical of the public's perception on its implications today, not to mention tomorrow. In my opinion, no champion of the technology has properly addressed the immediate and long-term effects from this distributed state-change of generative and analytical compute.

These two axioms — tangibility and time — I intend to use as scaffolding to house my thoughts, admittedly of which contain much conflict, confusion, and unknown ignorance.  

The Tangible Today — Data and Surveillance 

The most tangible threat vectors brought about by today's proliferation of LLMs relate to data –– both the personal data willingly given by its users, and the immense amount of data already amassed. Both of these venues for surveillance — not to mention algorithmic-driven predictive policing — are enabled entirely by the incredible ability of AI to comb through ungodly amounts of data with ease, and to efficiently heuristically analyze people and things into a network from an otherwise insurmountable cache of data. While many proponents of the technology counter this notion with the suggestion of using locally-ran, open source models to protect your data, this ultimately does little to truly minimize the effects of a terminally-shrinking anonymity set for internet users.