Let's see if I can get this across, because you seem to have one singular idea stuck in your head. Quite an accomplishment, considering how small that space appears to be.

Read this part carefully. We already have a surveillance infrastructure. It's been in place for decades. It exists for law enforcement, and even more extensively for marketing. Can AI improve those systems? Yes. Will it? Probably. To what extent remains to be seen.

What I reject is the claim that privately owned AI data centers are being built as part of some grand conspiracy to spy on the public. They're being built for one reason: money. Companies are investing billions because they expect a return on that investment, not because they're secretly constructing an Orwellian surveillance network.

I already acknowledged that license plate readers and similar technologies exist. Then you responded with a story about a traffic camera incorrectly flagging a woman for having her cellphone in her lap. That doesn't refute my point, it reinforces it. The surveillance infrastructure already exists. You're arguing against something I explicitly agreed with.

Any system can be abused. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. None of that is in dispute.

And what exactly am I "shilling" here? Why do people keep making assumptions instead of reading what's actually written?

I never advocated for building AI data centers, nor did I advocate for using LLMs. My point was simply that these facilities are not being built for the purpose of secretly spying on the public. If someone wants to monitor people, there are already far cheaper and more effective systems in place.

By that logic, car manufacturers build cars so they can be used in drive-by shootings rather than for transportation. That's obviously an absurd way to infer intent from a tool's potential misuse.

Since this will probably be ignored as well, here's something that doesn't fit your narrative: I'm actually against the construction of AI data centers. I think they're an environmental and societal blight. But opposing AI infrastructure doesn't require inventing conspiracies about why it's being built.