IMO this is the kind of AI hazard that Musk et al are decrying. Imagine if you could pay someone astronomically small amounts of money (0.05 USD/day) to do som

IMO this is the kind of AI hazard that Musk et al are decrying. Imagine if you could pay someone astronomically small amounts of money (0.05 USD/day) to do some menial task like this. Imagine now that their work would be very consistent and pretty good quality. The entire world is filled with "the obscurity of mundane activity" for which it makes no sense to track. But there is a utility to tracking this mundane activity (deterring/investigating crime in the case of this device). And as you point out there's a huge downside to tracking/mining this mundane activity. It is a valuable, good thing that anyone's activity in public can be summarized, written down, recorded on video/audio. This way we can punish criminals and corrupt officials. The protections from the US Bill of Rights don't shield us from law enforcement doing the same. In the past this has been (mostly?) a net benefit. If you commit crimes in public or leave evidence of a crime in public and it's found by investigators, it does not constitute "unreasonable search" of the government. Should this be legal? It's a tough call IMO. I recognize the enormous potential for abuse, but this seems more beneficial than harmful. I would not be surprised if we cross a threshold where the amount of information gathered has more potential for harm than good in the next decade or two.