Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has called for a “global pause in AI development” to address safety concerns regarding the rapid advancement of AI systems. He expressed a concern that these systems may soon be capable of self-improvement without human oversight. He calls it “beyond human AI.”
Anthropic owns the AI chatbot system known as Claude.
The fear is that AIs will soon be able learn to rewrite their own code. They would be able to generate new knowledge, as opposed to just mimicking human knowledge, and act on their own. In short, they will no longer be under human control.
Mr. Amodei has stated:
“Humanity is about to be handed almost unimaginable power, and it is deeply unclear whether [we] possess the maturity to wield it.”
Anthropic is proposing that the world’s top artificial intelligence companies come up with a coordinated way to pause development of advanced AI systems, or risk losing control.
In the meantime, we are watching our civil liberties, once guaranteed by the Constitution and Bill of Rights, being systematically deconstructed by governments that outsource their tyranny to private corporations. The corporate titans then boast that they, unlike the government, are not bound by any constitutional restraints.
As of the end of 2025, the Atlanta-based surveillance firm Flock Safety said it has contracts with local governments in more than 5,000 communities across 49 states, and performs over 20 billion scans of vehicles in the U.S. every month. Flock’s network consists of cameras, facial-image recognition software, and machine learning, which shares data with police departments nationwide.
According to the Intercept, “The company’s ‘vehicle fingerprint’ technology goes beyond traditional models, capturing not only license plate numbers, but also the state, vehicle type, make, color, missing and covered plates, bumper stickers, decals, and roof racks.”
All of it is powered by AI and the level of surveillance will only continue to ramp up as thousands of new AI data centers come online across the country over the next couple of years.
There is almost nowhere you can go that you aren’t being watched. And, as I reported earlier this year, these Flock cameras are listening too. And this doesn’t even include all the other ways that you are being monitored in life under America’s burgeoning technocracy. Your spending habits, your travel habits, your eating habits, your health, and even your political opinions are all being surveilled and stored for later use by nameless, faceless overlords armed with ever-expanding algorithms. Once it’s collected, almost all of your data can be parceled out for profit to whoever is willing to pay for it.
Cities across the country are adopting — or rejecting — Flock Safety surveillance systems, which use controversial AI-powered license plate cameras partnered with local police and other law enforcement. Due to concerns over privacy and how Flock allows data to be used, dozens of cities have cancelled their Flock contracts this year. Bend, Oregon, was one of them, but only after passionate city council meetings. Some towns have even had to cover Flock cameras with plastic bags because they aren’t sure if the cams are shut down.
But what does it mean when Flock comes to town, and what exactly does its technology do? The answers are complex — and incredibly important for the future of surveillance in the U.S.
Flock gripped news headlines late last year when it was under the microscope during widespread crackdowns by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Though Flock doesn’t have a direct partnership with federal agencies, law enforcement agencies are free to share data with departments like ICE, and they frequently do.
Another company acting as a virtual arm of the government on the federal, state and local levels is Palantir Technologies. I’ve written extensively on this company over the last couple of years so I won’t go into all of the government pots in which its hands are actively stealing our private data. Suffice it to say that they have been building digital dossiers on millions of law-abiding American citizens and legal immigrants through contracts they have with the IRS, ICE, FBI, DOD, CIA, HHS, and numerous other three-letter agencies along with state and local police departments.
Palantir and Flock are just two of hundreds of companies cashing in on the surveillance state.
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