Artificial intelligence excels at combing through large amounts of data to provide whatever answer or analysis a user needs. The Trump administration has been leveraging the power of AI to sift through a tremendous amount of publicly available data to help fulfill the president’s promise of mass deportation.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has promised to revoke visas and detain foreign students if AI-fueled reviews of their public speech unearth disfavored opinions. The AP reported that more than 4,700 student visas have been cancelled as of May.
Beyond targeting students, the Homeland Security Department has expanded its use of tools such as facial recognition technology and canine cyborgs to support the mass deportation crackdown President Trump promised during his campaign.
The administration is largely building on technology that was in development prior to Trump taking office. In 2022, DHS showed off its development of robot dogs to act as a “force multiplier” on the border, and in December, the agency released its AI use case inventory, which included facial- and voice-recognition tools. Joe Biden was president during both of those releases.
Late last month, senators introduced a bipartisan bill to make permanent a technology team within Customs and Border Protection that helps accelerate the use of AI at the border.
But there is no reason to believe the administration will stop at using AI to arrest foreigners. Local law enforcement agencies have already started employing AI and the immense amount of public data.
For two years, the New Orleans Police Department seemingly violated a city ordinance and used more than 200 facial recognition cameras to constantly monitor the streets for potential suspects, a move that does not seem to have any precedent, the Washington Post reported. The agency only ended the project after the Post started asking questions.
At the federal level, the Trump administration, in response to an executive order signed in March, has tasked the technology company Palantir to consolidate the personal data of citizens collected by all federal agencies.
Palantir was co-founded by Peter Thiel, who seemingly gave up on democracy in 2009 and was one of the earliest political backers of Trump in his 2016 campaign and Vice President J.D. Vance when he ran for the Senate from Ohio.
The company, named after the seeing stones in The Lord of the Rings, has received more than $113 million to process government data on citizens since Trump took office in January and is currently in talks to provide their services to both the Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service, the New York Times reported.
The technology would give the federal government an unprecedented ability to violate the privacy rights of everyone in the nation, according to 13 former Palantir employees, who signed a letter urging the company to stop its work with the Trump administration.
“Big Tech, including Palantir, is increasingly complicit, normalizing authoritarianism under the guise of a ‘revolution’ led by oligarchs. We must resist this trend,” the letter said.
—Philip Athey
Labor and management:
Top labor takeaways:
- After years of largely deferring to workers’ wishes or at the very least supporting an environment where dissent was tolerated, big tech companies are more willing than ever to fire employees who speak out about AI safety. This is done despite the public largely remaining wary about the dangers of AI.
- Tech CEOs are predicting that their technology will revolutionize the economy to the detriment of white collar workers.
Big tech takes a harder line against worker activism, political dissent: Silicon Valley companies are increasingly suppressing employee dissent, especially around AI safety, by firing protesters, restricting internal debate, and enforcing stricter speech policies amid a tighter job market. (Washington Post)