It’s all about the data. Used to be that the govt had the best data about the world and could theoretically use it to help the citizens (though almost never in practice). That flipped around the year 2000 and the Govt spent a decade to catch up to the ISPs post 9/11. However the govt investment into data/AI couldn’t match private investment even barely. I saw this up front and personal and NOBODY in congress or the White House cared about data or AI - arguably they still don’t and have no real data/AI talent left in the government.

It was very clear by then that Automation broadly was going to consume the planet, and that whomever controlled the data flow behind it would control the levers of power, overthrowing the veneer of “rule by the consent of the governed” (which is an impossible fantasy that can’t actually ever exist).

When Hintons lab won ILVRC in 2012 based on a data focused approach - that was the time that everyone should have sat up and realized what was about to happen. Many in AI did exactly that and that’s why we’re in the state of tech we are in.

Kurzweil predicted it, everyone in the singularity and transhuman communities saw it and the rest of the world has not changed their behavior and have accelerated this process.

Unless society as a whole gets her act together and organizes this planet for the benefit of humans and ecology, this is not going to the way anybody wants it.

Everything that removes the last vestiges of human directed action and control is accelerating rapidly.