Technology

Wtf are you talking about? Do you even know the nature of data usage today? You can't identify reality from science fiction?

AI enables them to better do what they have already been doing with analytics and user data. They are already doing it and have been for decades.

I've seen it first hand on smaller software products during analytics reviews and telemetry design discussions during preproduction through product launch and post launch. I know the questions that gets asked, the purpose of a telemetry hook for a user action, heard what they wished they could track and why. I know how they can cohort a user base, how they extrapolate and predict user behavior and user characteristics from that data to target content. There's laws already written to prevent some data collection because of what is known can be done. That's a small software product with a few millions users, not Amazon or Google who have billions of users, many of whom give them access to their entire phone telemetry at all times, cross device access and service wide account tracking, across decades of their lives. Location, region, timezone, battery usage, app usage, age, phone numbers, address, gender, mac ids, wifi connections and data usage etc etc etc.

With just my gender and age, you can make predictions, of some accuracy, using existing research data, about my life, who I am, what I think and how I behave. Every single piece of data more allows further clarity and breadth. That knowledge is what gives them more and more accurate predictions about me, you and all of us. Now they want cameras everywhere, microphones everywhere, OS real ID and VPNs to be banned so there is no anonymity. They want as much data as possible because they now have a data pattern recognition system(LLMs) that can effectively make use of that amount of data.

FFS, this isn't science fiction anymore, it's here, now. And those companies have never had your, or my, interests or well-being in mind. They will use it for power, as they always have.