China is a deeply repressive nation, with universal surveillance, fine-grained media and speech control, and ubiquitous censorship. That's the kind of society where only anodyne, cautious artistry can flourish, except in tiny subcultural pockets too small for the government to worry about.
Given the rate of AI progress, it will not be long before such capabilities proliferate, potentially beyond actors who are committed to deploying them safely. The fallout — for economies, public safety, and national security — could be severe.
What is different today is Trump's view that the exercise of state power is no longer in need of ideological excuses, that he possesses a king-like divine right to do as he pleases, unconstrained by norms or law, which people must simply accept as legitimate.
Once the technical capacity for mass surveillance and political suppression exists, the only thing standing between us and an authoritarian surveillance state is the political expectation that this is not something we do here.
For more than a century, Finnish architecture and design has functioned as an instrument of nation-building. It supported the country's independence process, then its consolidation as a highly functioning trust society, and finally the development of its comprehensive defense strategy.
Here, the Trump administration is threatening to invoke a wartime production law to force an AI company to let its software be used for autonomous weapons and mass domestic surveillance.
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Underscored — save the words that stop you in your tracks.
