Bluesky

Well, eventually the government needs the public to implement policy. For all the talk of the miracles of AI, you can't just shout orders at ChatGPT from the Oval Office and have them become real by magic.

The problem at hand is that some people have rejected these ultra-wealthy racist buffoons in their quest to automate every white collar job. Other people are hopping on the ICE gravy train or getting their beaks wet on the ballooning crypto/tech secondary markets or otherwise profiteering off the back end of the conservative criminal enterprise. And these are the folks with all the institutional authority, the administrative offices, and the loyal trained footsoldiers carrying around the guns.

Cops seem to get along with AI devices just fine. It does the unfun parts of their jobs for them and offers more free time to go around town in a monster truck, ramming people, roughing them up, and filing them into concentration camps. As more and more of the US labor force is told "The only viable path to the middle class is through the police", you're going to see Americans prodded into the police state (or its many subsidiaries and offshoots) as a matter of economic necessity.

Eventually, if its a choice between being on the inside of the fence or the outside of the fence, who wouldn't pick being Winston Smith over some homeless peer who gets beaten to death on the street?