Sharing is Caring? On Location Sharing and the Rise of our Surveillance State
This past summer, as I waited for my London internship to start, I spent my days reading the news and doing deep dives into the New York Times Opinion section. The most recent article that I read from it was Jessica Grose’s “Stop Location-Tracking Your Friends and Lovers.” Her piece argues that we are opting into our own surveillance state and ruining our relationships by tracking each other and allowing them to track ourselves (something I completely agree with). No one has ever had my location, and no one ever will. Even when I drove across Europe on an aid mission to deliver vehicles to Ukraine, I was hesitant to provide a live status update to my friends. Although I must admit, I was ultimately convinced, but after the three-day journey, my location sharing was eternally suspended.
One night, I was at the pub with a group of friends. We were all meant to meet after our respective internships had ended, which was roughly at 6pm, for happy hour in South Kensington. Several of them were running late, resulting in the person next to me opening their ‘Find My’ app. They scrolled through a list of at least 25 names, locating our friends who were missing in action. It turned out that they were just down the street, exiting the nearby tube station.
I couldn't help but think that everyone on that list of shared locations was choosing to acclimate themselves into a techno-utopia, one that I believe can never, and will never exist. This argument can be extended beyond location sharing, as our general media usage is resulting in self-regulatory actions. We want to be seen at the most fashionable restaurants, so that is where we spend our Friday evenings. We want to appear busy and luxurious, so we curate our movements accordingly. Increasingly, we anticipate documentation, rather than merely living our lives and then documenting them.
Location sharing seems to have become a default action, one that is not questioned due to the assumption that transparency equals trust. In some cases, as I noted earlier, it can be helpful when anticipating the arrival of delayed friends. However, I also argue that it is an invasive practice that is capable of leading to more suspicion than answers, and Grose tends to agree. In her article, she details how sharing one’s location has become ‘a litmus test of close friendship for people in their 20s,’ and that it’s disguised as a sign of trust, rather than a powerful tool of control.
I can’t help but think of Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon, and how it provides a useful metaphor for understanding how people begin to self-regulate under surveillance. Bentham designed a prison structure with a central watchtower that observed the prisoners in surrounding cells – prisoners cannot see the observer, but the observer can see them, so “those subjected cannot know whether or not they are being watched.” Even if no one is watching, prisoners behave out of fear. By sharing one's live location, they voluntarily surrender themselves to structures of surveillance that have the power to shape behaviour. Michel Foucault expanded on the Panopticon prison structure, suggesting it has become a model for power in modern society. Power becomes internalised even in the absence of direct force. Passively sharing and monitoring locations becomes a double-edged sword: the trade-off of direct communication for perpetual visibility.
Whilst my intention for this article was not to spiral into a web of academic jargon and theory, it is nevertheless useful for mine and Grose’s argument to extend this discussion to the impending AI boom. Max Tegmark, a professor at MIT, wrote a book called “Life 3.0,” where he details the potential outcomes of artificial intelligence. Many AI scientists don’t fear extinction because of the technology's rise, but are hoping for it. 99.99% of species that have ever existed have gone extinct, and maybe AGI’s are just our future descendants. Philosopher Toby Ord believes that the likelihood of AI killing all humans is 100 times higher than human extinction from nuclear war, proving that many leading thinkers view advanced AI as one of humanity’s most significant existential risks.
Leaders in the field describe AI as a “new digital species.” Here, the threat isn’t malice, but competence. What happens when two different groups meet, and their goals are not aligned? We can look at the Aztecs and Incas for our answer: the Spanish Conquistadors were significantly smaller in numbers, but their technology was so much more advanced that they seized control of the Americas, wiping the native population out. At least we knew the conquistadors' goals of spreading Christianity and gaining land to expand their empire. Who knows what AGI’s desires for our future are. Look at Geoffrey Hinton, the “Godfather of AI,” who left his position at Google in 2023 to openly criticise and warn the public about the risks of AI.
Tegmark details different outcomes where AI becomes our Gods or Dictators. In either case, humans must surrender control in exchange for security. The final possible outcome Tegmark discusses is “1984,” in reference to George Orwell's novel. Here, he suggests that we may need to use technology to prevent more technology. Basically, superintelligence can be prevented by a human-led global surveillance state. If we can't trust AI to save us from AI, maybe the only option is to trust humans watching humans. This technology already exists, and no futuristic technology is required. It seems that our future is either surveilled by the state or surveilled by AI. Maybe, if we all share our locations, safety can be achieved. Or maybe we are telling ourselves that a little more surveillance is the price of security, and soon we may discover that the freedoms surrendered are far easier to lose than to regain.
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