At the same time as these departments getting more funding, it feels like most departments have decided its better to use taxpayer funds to settle court cases rather than train and be more selective.

In fact, if you look at basically every major AI/LLM player you'll see a similar "alliance" or "partnership". Its a sales channel of high end referrals.

This is a public forum and thus nothing is ever bog standard because presumably every week new people join with varied to no experience in the ways of the corporate world. Further, much of the software ethos is about being a worker/owner, which rarely comes true and takes some time to realize is incorrect.

OP your post was "if you dont like face scanning don't shop there" because shops need face scanning to stop crime.

However your next comment was that cops don't help. Here's the thing. They have a pretty terrible track record of help in any city including red ones. Have you called after having a fender bender on the highway in any state? Near a city, the answer is "no public property or third party damaged? exchange info yourself". Despite this they have been well-funded in the last few election cycles and this does not depend on the party elected.

How about when an iphone gets stolen, or all the people using airtags to track their luggage? The private sector also does a so/so to shit job of helping you. Apple will let you find your phone, but its up to you to go get it, or wipe and restart.

Tracking and storing all of my info and my face does not make the cops more effective at their jobs or prioritize this shop owner you know. Tracking and storing my info and face, doesn't help the shop keeper.

It does however, seem that all this tracking of my info results in my information getting leaked time and time and again. Meaning that I've gone for a shop and somehow the probability of something being stolen from me goes up

It has been proven and reproven that these claims of crime requiring store shutdowns were improperly put forward, without research, by a lobby. So much so that it was covered in mainstream media.

December 2023: https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2023-12-14/column-ret...

Honestly, this plus things like PermitFlow make me feel like we will be able to build enough. The issue will be making sure the housing is affordable rather than expensive and empty.

And the scale applies at every single step of the process. A citizen homebuyer is playing a oneshot game. There are few discounts to be had and every single fee is its own battle.

A corporation/PE is playing a multi-shot game. There are bulk discounts, relationships, and scale that is applied to everything from title insurance and inspections to cost segregations to filing all of the paperwork.

Americans (citizens that is) have held fairly consistent opinions on healthcare, guns, education, war and yet very little changes because all voices are in fact, not equal. We are not collectively deciding. There are massive thumbs on the scale, often in favor of private profit that keep things as they are now.

Some might even, surprise surprise, be owned by the companies investing in the companies that use this technology.

This is, as the OP noted, a gross invasion of privacy and not avoidable in a country that largely requires cars and their registration for day to day life.

In many markets, transparency wins. Think of Carfax or banking fees or airbnb pricing for example, when regulators or competitors force clarity, buyers benefit and trust grows.In a functioning government that serves the people (regardless of party) we would see this

People believe they “need” these AI products partly because they’re saturated in both earned and paid media. In '23 there were nearly 400k articles covering AI. I think we can all safely assume its more now, and when we include financial reporting, quite inescapable.

This is like saying "instead of taking a fixable broken thing we've thrown it out" but there's no current intention to get/build a new one. In fact, the goal continuously has been for it to throw it out, often when you look a little close, by moneyed interests.

Trumps administration and the efforts behind the party has done amazing work pointing out each and every loophole politicians have, often purposefully, left in our attempt to create a governance that supports society. Its our job to close them.

A similar example would be "to be fair, our education system has always had problems" - yes. and its been a purposeful choice driven by moneyed interests to not have nationally funded egalitarian public schools cloaked in verbiage like "states rights"

There's no way to cheat at that point. You either have what they need (yay btw) or its not a fit