Comprehensive surveillance systems
webCredibility Rating
High quality. Established institution or organization with editorial oversight and accountability.
Rating inherited from publication venue: RAND Corporation
A RAND Corporation report relevant to AI safety discussions around concentration of power, permanent authoritarianism as an existential risk, and the governance challenges posed by AI-enhanced surveillance technologies.
Metadata
Summary
This RAND research report examines the development and proliferation of comprehensive surveillance systems, analyzing their technical capabilities, societal risks, and governance challenges. It explores how such systems could enable authoritarian control and create path-dependent lock-in effects that are difficult to reverse, with implications for long-term human autonomy and global power dynamics.
Key Points
- •Comprehensive surveillance technologies can concentrate power in ways that may be irreversible, posing risks to democratic institutions and individual freedoms.
- •The report analyzes how surveillance infrastructure creates path dependencies—once deployed at scale, dismantling such systems becomes politically and technically difficult.
- •State and non-state actors gaining asymmetric surveillance capabilities could fundamentally alter geopolitical power balances.
- •Governance frameworks must anticipate surveillance proliferation proactively rather than reactively to avoid lock-in of oppressive systems.
- •AI-enabled surveillance represents a qualitative leap in monitoring capacity, raising existential-risk-adjacent concerns about permanent authoritarianism.
Cited by 1 page
| Page | Type | Quality |
|---|---|---|
| AI Value Lock-in | Risk | 64.0 |
Cached Content Preview
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