The whole idea that Microsoft would invest $10B in AI with no intention of profiting from it simply because they want to improve everybody's life is so preposterous it's hard to imagine how the writer can keyboard it out without gagging.

The fallacy in here comes in this statement:

we need dependable ways to organize people to work together to build complex things within complex systems.

Doesn't this guy know anything about Chaos Theory?  He never saw Jurassic Park?  You CAN'T dependably do this anymore than you can predict which way a raindrop will go when it drops down on top of your hand.  There are too many variables and too many interactions, and with human beings too many things which can't be quantified.

What you can say reliably is that if Microsoft is involved, they'll do everything they can to make sure AI is developed to benefit their shareholders.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/11/openai-sam-altman-corporate-governance/676080/

The OpenAI Mess Is About One Big Thing

RE

Without doubt, the data mining of keeping track of what you read goes back to the first Library Card issued from the Great Library at Alexandria.   It has of course become ever more intrusive and prevalent since the advent of the internet, after all targeted advertising finds its targets by looking at the past history of pages you have accessed.  The only thing new here is the level of detail when combined with AI is enough that it's possible for a computer to actually figure out what you are THINKING, not just what you are reading or looking at.  It can keep tabs on how long you spent on a given page.  Which parts of a book did you go back to reread?  The more stuff you read, the more data you give the AI to work with, until it can build a model of the way your mind works.  What kind of romance or porn novels do you read?  Have you read any books about making explosives?  Did you read the Communist Manifesto?

Of course, at this point it's become almost impossible to find anything to read that is truly subversive.  Also tough to find anything remotely resembling the truth that deviates from what Da Goobermint approves as truth.  It's hard to imagine how any kind of revolutionary movement could even get started anymore.  The minute it gets any traction AI bots will pick it up and a Cointelpro designed to break it up.

Stick to reading paperbacks from used bookstores, and pay cash.

RE

https://www.fastcompany.com/90996547/e-books-are-fast-becoming-tools-of-corporate-surveillance

E-books are fast becoming tools of corporate surveillance

RE