To that end, there are two different discussions:
Does AI technology itself facilitate mass surveillance, any more than smartphone adoption has?
Does the financing structure of data centers facilitate mass surveillance; more than it facilitates advancements in AI?
> And now AI is making all that much worse...
As for your questions, I agree those are different and related discussions that I'm not looking to bring here, as I'm not sure it'll be necessarily productive, but I'm happy to be proven wrong!
Advances in small models, on-device. This feels closest to your question.
The rare CEO who is maybe bearish on AI, but preparing for a bubble to burst. Asset managers, for instance. Paid to be early, but also to survive being early.
The actual purpose of hyperscalar data centers. Are they all guilty of advancing some mass surveillance? Or do we call it model training, which is only sometimes pointed at mass surveillance?
I'm working on reinventing IDEs to give make human code editors competitive with agents again.
I have a Discord where I collect an ever-growing crowd of people like you who have become disillusioned: https://discord.gg/NfMNyYN6cX
To answer OP, there's also the Handmade community which isn't necessarily anti-AI, but using it goes completely against its ethos, so it's very much frowned upon. And in my experience it's a great bunch of smart and creative folks.
Driver downgrades not allowed.
Flashing old firmware will brick the economy.
There are a few who will remain defiant, but they are easy to identify.
They are still wearing their Fauci signed COVID mask.