Well, maybe dystopian SciFi turns out to be not as much fiction as we had hoped ;-). Ubiquitous surveillance together with artificial intelligence are probably

Well, maybe dystopian SciFi turns out to be not as much fiction as we had hoped ;-). Ubiquitous surveillance together with artificial intelligence are probably one of the most powerful tools for authoritarian regimes you can imagine. They already have the physical power to hurt their opponents, now they also know exactly where they need to apply this power to keep themselves at the helm and quash any resistance before it can get too organized. And the artificial intelligence doesn't need to be all that intelligent if you have enough data, it's not as if authoritarian regimes would care if they locked up a few more people than required.