Flock is Just the Beginning: Inside the Era of AI-Powered Policing

In a 2018 TED Talk, Yuval Harari argued that democracy prevailed over fascism and communism in the 20th century not because of any inherent advantage, but because the technology of that age favored open and democratic societies. It was simply too difficult and too costly to centralize power using pre-digital technology. But, Yuval warned, with the rise of AI, the calculus might flip: it might actually become far more efficient to run highly centralized authoritarian governments. Eight years later, we're starting to see what Yuval was warning about. Right now, police across all levels of govern