Tag Archives: artificial intelligence and surveillance

In Your Bedroom and In Your Bathroom: META’s Glasses

Leave a reply

The META glasses—with chunky frames embedded with cameras and microphones—are the way Zuckerberg imagines AI will be democratized for personal users. Eventually, he wants to offer something akin to god-like superintelligence on demand. The promise of AI is that it will become more and more useful because such devices allow it to see and hear your daily life, gobbling up that information, processing it and using it to inform you about your life. But at what cost to privacy?

In March 2026, Meta was named in a lawsuit that seeks class-action status over concerns that data is being gathered from those glasses in ways that violate users’ privacy. The lawsuit, citing whistleblower complaints, alleges video captured on Meta’s devices are being routed to contractors in Africa to manually view and label the data to train Meta’s AI models. Among the videos in question? “People changing clothes, using the bathroom, engaging in sexual activity, handing financial information, and conducting other private activities inside their homes that no reasonable consumer would ever expect a stranger to watch,” the lawsuit said. 

Excerpt from Tim Higgins, The Backlash Against AI Devices That Are Always Watching, WSJ, Mar. 14, 2026

Porn and Ads: How ChatGPT Plans for the Future

Leave a reply

Sam Altman of OpenAI has expressed conflicted feelings about AI erotica (i.e., porn). When asked on a podcast in August 2025 if there were decisions he had made that were “best for the world, but not best for winning,” Altman replied: “We haven’t put a sex bot avatar in ChatGPT yet.” Altman indicated erotica would boost growth and revenue, but said it wouldn’t align with his company’s long-term incentive of serving users. “I’m proud of the company and how little we get distracted by that,” Altman said. “But sometimes we do get tempted.” But later in 2025, Altman posted that “We [OpenAI] “aren’t the elected moral police of the world,” “In the same way that society differentiates other appropriate boundaries (R-rated movies, for example) we want to do a similar thing here.”

Excerpt from Sam Schechner et al., OpenAI’s Bid to Allow X-Rated Talk Is Freaking Out Its Own Advisers, WSJ,  Mar. 15, 2026

On March 23, 205, it was announced that OpenAI has hired Meta Platform’s  advertising executive Dave Dugan to lead its global ad sales efforts, marking a further step in the company’s push to build out new revenue streams around its artificial intelligence products. Dugan brings experience working with large global brands at Meta, which generated nearly $200 billion in advertising revenue in 2025. (Yahoo Finance).


When Artificial Intelligence Goes to War

Leave a reply

Anthropic scored a major endorsement in the summer of 2025 when it won a contract worth up to $200 million from the United States Defense Department. Now, the AI startup’s relationship with the Pentagon is on the rocks…According to Anthropic’s terms and condition Claude can’t be used for any actions related to domestic surveillance. That limits how many law-enforcement agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) could deploy it. Anthropic’s focus on safe applications of AI—and its objection to having its technology used in autonomous lethal operations (e.g., drones)—have continued to cause problems…

Other AI companies including OpenAI and Google are also working with the military.

Excerpt from Keach Hagey, Anthropic-Pentagon Clash Over Limits on AI Puts $200 Million Contract at Risk, WSJ, Jan. 29, 2026