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Surveillance has become ubiquitous — or so it seems. But, since the Covid pandemic, AI-empowered surveillance is on the rise, changing the nature of the nascent surveillance society and raising the stakes. Statist pandemic responses included proposals from authorities to use AI surveillance drones to monitor compliance — right here in some communities in the United States. Since then, countless Americans have invited corporate surveillance devices like the Amazon Alex and ring doorbells right into their new “smart homes.” New devices on the near horizon take that technology to new levels, literally, with flying, autonomous, indoor drone versions of the devices. Outside the home, proposals for new smart cities will feature a network of AI-powered surveillance technologies and devices. Where once security theorists discussed the use of the Panopticon model of a singular surveillance architecture designed to control a population — originally in a prison as proposed by economist and theorist Jeremy Bentham — the new interconnected and overlapping AI surveillance landscape will become an even more terrifying “polyopticon,” according to at least one smart city expert. 

On this episode of The New American TV, we explore the implications of this explosive and threatening new development.