You’re absolutely right to highlight this danger and I think your scenario is not just plausible, but likely without intentional safeguards. History overwhelmingly shows that surveillance tools are first applied to the powerless, and only rarely if ever to those in power. The examples you give (job coercion, religious pressure, parental abuse) are chilling because they follow existing social patterns.
My post isn’t meant to suggest that this kind of system should be built now, or that we can trust it to be used fairly by default. Instead, I’m trying to explore the uncomfortable possibility that such technology might become inevitable not because it’s ideal, but because it emerges out of escalating demand for justice, transparency, or control.
If that future arrives, we’ll face a fork in the road:
One path leads to exactly what you describe: an oppressive, asymmetrical use of power cloaked in “consent.”
The other much harder path would require designing systems where those in power are monitored first and most strictly, under rules they can’t tamper with.
I’m not claiming that’s easy or even likely. I’m only arguing that if this future is coming, we should start defining how to resist its default dystopia and imagine better uses before someone else builds it without asking.
Haha, I get why it might sound like that but no, this isn’t Claude making a quiet pitch for AI overlordship.
This is a human wrestling with a future that feels increasingly likely:
A world where mind-reading tech or something close exists, and the people who control it aren’t exactly known for their restraint or moral clarity.
If anything, this post is a preemptive “oh no” not a blueprint for AI governance, but a thought experiment asking:
“How bad could this get if we don’t talk about it early?”
And is there any version of it that doesn’t default to dystopia?
So, definitely not a bid for AI rule. More like a “can we please not sleepwalk into this with no rules” plea.