At Salon security expert Bruce Schneier warns that just as one of the effects of the Internet has been mass surveillance one of the effects of artificial intelligence will be mass spying:
This spying is not limited to conversations on our phones or computers. Just as cameras everywhere fueled mass surveillance, microphones everywhere will fuel mass spying. Siri and Alexa and “Hey Google†are already always listening; the conversations just aren’t being saved yet.
Knowing that they are under constant surveillance changes how people behave. They conform. They self-censor, with the chilling effects that brings. Surveillance facilitates social control, and spying will only make this worse. Governments around the world already use mass surveillance; they will engage in mass spying as well.
That’s the very reason we turned off our Echo Dot (which we received for free) years ago and haven’t turned it back on. And the mass spying he refers to has been predicted by science fiction writers for most of the last century. For one interesting take on that I recommend the novella “Home is the Hangman” by Roger Zelazny. I don’t believe it is a coincidence that Mr. Zelazny wrote the story after having been an employee of the federal government for a number of years.
Suggested SF, “Repent, Harlequin!” Said the Ticktockman by Harlan Ellison. The Master Timekeeper watches all, tardiness is punished by time subtracted from your life.
Somewhere around here I have the issue of Galaxy in which I first read that.