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@FantasticalEconomics@mas.to · 5 days ago

This captures my biggest fear for #AI. China is a few steps ahead in using AI to perfect authoritarian 'pre-emptive suppression of dissent' but companies like #Palintir are ready and willing to enact the same across the world.

AI's pattern matching paired with an utter disregard for false positives (in the US we've already seen #ICE not care one wit about arresting US citizens, for instance) paint a dark picture for people taking back control from their governments.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/04/china/china-ai-censorship-surveillance-report-intl-hnk

CNN

China’s censorship and surveillance were already intense. AI is turbocharging those systems | CNN

Chinese authorities are using artificial intelligence to turbocharge surveillance and censorship, with the technology predicting public demonstrations and monitoring prison inmates, according to a new report.

GhostOnTheHalfShell

@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai replied · 5 days ago

@FantasticalEconomics

More than that they *intend* the same thing only with deliberate malice.

You could say that the Chinese government are interested in ruling. Techbros are interested in reducing all of us to a permanent under class.

In this sense, the Chinese government at least this generation is marginally interested in prosperity because that is the basis of their rule. The social contract is we delivered to you reasonable amounts of economic prosperity in exchange for our dominance

Kyle Montanio

@FantasticalEconomics@mas.to replied · 4 days ago

@GhostOnTheHalfShell

That's a good point. Though, I'd argue, both are striving for a controlled permanent underclass. Both systems may be approaching the same level of well-being for their underclass too, just from different directions.

GhostOnTheHalfShell

@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai replied · 4 days ago

@FantasticalEconomics

I think there’s a real distinction between the people ruling China and the guys from Silicon Valley.

The majority of individuals in the CPP rose through the ranks by managing lower levels of society, running a city running a region running a province whatever the names they have.

Its a system with its own positives and negatives.

The guys in Silicon Valley are strictly run by ideology and palatable psychopathic contempt for society.

Cavyherd

@cavyherd@wandering.shop replied · 4 days ago

@GhostOnTheHalfShell @FantasticalEconomics

Also, AIUI, China's system draws on a millennia-long tradition of cultural & administrative bureaucracy that Europrean-derived (& especially the US) just doesn't compare. So, very different foundational frameworks.

GhostOnTheHalfShell

@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai replied · 4 days ago

@cavyherd @FantasticalEconomics

Yeah, I have some sense of that. To me the distinguishing factor for the guys from Silicon Valley is they are psychopathic nut jobs.

They want to believe humans are completely optional and would be happier getting rid of them. In their minds, getting rid of people is a great idea.

Cavyherd

@cavyherd@wandering.shop replied · 4 days ago

@GhostOnTheHalfShell @FantasticalEconomics

Yeah. Like psycho-social outliers that happened onto a highly effective trick to manipulate the system, & like a disease organism when the body or the ecosystem is out of balance, suddenly overpopulate & result in disease states. Koyaanisqatsi, wot?

Whereas with China, it's more, "Okay, here's this thing we've been refining for millenia. Now we've got some additional powerful tech to reinforce it."

GhostOnTheHalfShell

@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai replied · 4 days ago

@FantasticalEconomics

These two systems are generally autocratic, and certainly the Chinese government has worked very hard to have an Orwellian level of surveillance. And I don’t yet have any sense that it’s particularly malignant.

The guys out of Silicon Valley are malignant

Cavyherd

@cavyherd@wandering.shop replied · 4 days ago

@GhostOnTheHalfShell @FantasticalEconomics

Further, AIUI, the Chinese system also derives from a deep, society-level fear of "disorder." So their obsession (again, AIUI) is less about "control" than it is about "order."

With our tech broligarchs, it's just the opposite. Control for control's sake, bc being out of control is existentially threatening. & also, control is deeply, viscerally gratifying for its own sake. (Code-level control, only for society, amirite?)

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