> AI bros keep telling me “just turn it off” and when I do they remove the choice.

The reason corporations disable our right to stop AI tracking is because, at least for now, AI agents can be held to account for crimes once blamed on a person or corporation -- all one need do is disable the off-switches.

Until we sort out our relationship with AI, it will be the universal whipping boy, blamed for all sorts of things that once would indict an individual or corporation.

The best -- or worst, depending on your outlook -- AI trait is its complete absence of an ethical or moral sense. When an AI agent breaks into a computer, it's not with guilty knowledge, because AI doesn't possess that -- it's not part of their design. People need to remember: AI agents live in a moral vacuum, and that's not an accident.

When a corporation is called out for disabling a switch that once stopped AI tracking, the AI bros might say, "Oh, yes, that's an oversight, easily fixed." But it's not an oversight, it's a trial balloon, an A/B test to see how people will react.

But there's more. Decades ago, the Nielsen TV rating service would monitor what people watched on their TV sets (remember TV sets, boxes weighing 500 pounds?), by calling people on their telephones (remember telephones?). By modern standards, the Nielsen people were amateurs -- today's TV sets have built-in AI agents, active 24/7, and no disable switch. They patiently record what you watch.

In the next phase, TV sets will do eye-tracking, find out what parts of a TV scene people are looking at. Not true now but soon (Samsung is working on it). Pupil dilation, facial expressions, everything.

A super-old Bob Hope joke from the Cold War era: "Yes, they have TV in Russia, but you don't watch it, it watches you." Not so funny any more.

> moral vacuum, and that's not an accident

Well that's a philosophical point, because morality is bound up with opinions and personality and internal motivation, and quite possibly with creativity and with whatever intelligence really means. So it probably can't be designed into LLMs, and struggles with "alignment" probably aren't faked.