Intelligence operatives had a terrific view of Depeche Mode’s recent two-night stint at the Accor Arena, thanks to AI-powered mass surveillance algorithms. Smart cameras captured everything, everyone, in the name of protection.French law enforcement and intelligence deployed the “threat-detecting” software as a trial run for the widespread surveillance that police of every rank will use during the 2024 Summer Olympics, which will take place from July 26 to August 11, 2024. It turns out that Big Brother isn’t monitoring us, because we’re doing all the work for him.Authorities will divide Paris into various zones, connected by checkpoints that require passes via QR code. Spectacle is at play, lads and lassies. And what better stage for spectacular lust and hatred than the Olympics, originally a mud-fight between intelligent beefcakes? The Paris Police Chief Laurent Nunez hailed the state overreach as “largely successful.”One of the software platforms is Wintics, whose Cityvision provides “video analysis software for urban stakeholders.” YouTube www.youtube.com Beyond the bone-chilling gravity of mass surveillance called “Cityvision,” especially when paired with the word “stakeholder,” the software's capabilities are unknowable. One of the biggest investors in Wintics is Ardian, a French private investment company that handles billions of dollars in assets and has assured us that Cityvision is a fantastic idea.The media, meanwhile, has been vaguely giddy. The Washington Post announced that “AI is powering a revolution in policing, at the Olympics and beyond.” Paris security perimeter to be enforced week before 2024 Olympics opening ceremony • FRANCE 24 www.youtube.com Human Rights Watch in its World Report 2024 concluded that “surveillance technology at the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games poses risks to fundamental rights.”Amnesty International urged French lawmakers to “reject any plans to use video surveillance powered by artificial intelligence (AI) at the 2024 Paris Olympics,” because “such draconian technologies of mass surveillance violate the rights to privacy and can lead to violations of the rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly,” potentially leading to “dystopian levels of surveillance in the future.”The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated this technological hyper-revolution, a war that we’d already surrendered to, outfoxed by the prevailing methods of digital control: self-surveillance and willing surrender of our privacy and some of our lesser freedoms, caught in an increasingly elaborate state of exception. The urban fortressFrance’s historic role in the spread and ubiquity of surveillance rivals its prestigious cuisine. “Surveillance” is a French word, after all. In the 11th century, this emerged in the restructuring of the city, leading the mid-1700s' invention of the urban fortress.Law enforcement had figured out how to spy. Napoleon was the first to use aerial surveillance — a new kind of espionage. Suddenly, warfare was secretive. Invisible. Military violence became clandestine, the task of secret police, an “army of the interior.” Its weapons were surveillance and disinformation. The war could take place behind the scenes. Nobody even had to know who was fighting. It was a game the elites could play on their own but through society. This marks a shift from passive surveillance to active, AI-driven mass surveillance. Modern warfare is about depriving the enemy. Containing its movement. The ability to move is the mark of freedom. This is part of the reason governments often want to centralize.Where’s the revolution?There’s a funny connection between surveillance and disinformation. We like to think that surveillance is designed to get rid of disinformation. In reality, surveillance and disinformation are like two con men pretending to fight. They’re both working for intelligence agencies and secret services. Their job is to confuse us. To make us dumb. To believe in the right illusion. We’re supposed to feel tired and outraged.The funny thing about disinformation is that it’s a counterattack. It’s an assault on truth. It’s a way to silence. But in order to work, intelligence elites have to know what we think, feel, and believe.Modern wartime always leads to a flood of propaganda, especially in the social media era. War is when the elites put all their knowledge of propaganda to use. Surveillance is how we lose our privacy and our personal information. Our information gives the powerful people even more power. Intelligence agencies use that information to make disinformation. Worse, they’re doing it all right before our eyes.It turns out that Big Brother isn’t monitoring us, because we’re doing all the work for him. We are experts at self-surveillance. We do it with a smile. For the sake of convenience, we surrender our privacy and some of our freedoms. All the while, a new totalitarianism is on the rise. Our future is a world of surveillance. Nonstop surveillance. More and more, we’ll be watched, scanned, monitored, ranked, punished, spied on, and evaluated.

In the 2013 film "Her," Joaquin Phoenix plays a shy computer nerd who falls in love with an AI he speaks to through a pair of white wireless earbuds. A little over a decade after the film’s release, it’s no longer science fiction. AirPods are old news, and with the imminent full rollout of OpenAI’s GPT-4o, such AI will be a reality (the “o” is for “omni"). In fact, OpenAI head honcho Sam Altman simply tweeted after the announcement: “her.” GPT-4o can carry on a full conversion with you. In the coming weeks, it will be able to see and interpret the environment around it. Unlike previous iterations of GPT that were flat and emotionless, GPT-4o has personality and even opinions. It pauses and stutters like a person, and it’s even a little flirty. Here’s a video of GPT-4o critiquing a man’s outfit for a job interview: Interview Prep with GPT-4o www.youtube.com In fact, no human involvement is required. Two instances of GPT-4o can carry on an entire conversation without human involvement. Soon, humans may not be required for many jobs. Here’s a video of GPT-4o handling a simulated customer service call. Currently, nearly 3 million Americans work in customer service, and chances are they’ll need a new job within a couple of years. Two GPT-4os interacting and singing www.youtube.com GPT-4o is an impressive technology that was mere science fiction at the start of the decade, but its also comes with some harrowing implications. First, let’s clear up some confusion about the components of GPT-4o and what’s currently available. Clearing up confusion about what GPT-4o is OpenAI announced several things at once, but they’re not all rolling out at the same time. GPT-4o will eventually be available to all ChatGPT users, but currently, the text-based version is only available for ChatGPT Plus subscribers who pay $20 per month. It can be used on the web or in the iPhone app. Compared to GPT-4, GPT-4o is much faster and just a little smarter. Web searches are much faster and more reliable, and GPT is better about listing its sources than it was with GPT-4. However, the new text and voice models are not yet available to anyone except developers interacting with the GPT API. If you subscribe to ChatGPT Plus, you can use Voice Mode with the 4o engine, but it will still be using the old voice model without image recognition and the new touches. Additionally, OpenAI is rolling out a new desktop app for the Mac, which will let you bring up ChatGPT with a keyboard shortcut and feed it screenshots for analysis. It will eventually be free to all, but right now it’s only available to select ChatGPT Plus subscribers. ChatGPT macOS app... reminds me of Windows Copilot www.youtube.com Finally, you may watch these demo videos and wonder why the voice assistant on your phone is still so, so dumb. There are strong rumors indicating that Apple is working on a deal to license the GPT tech from OpenAI for its next-generation Siri, likely as a stopgap while Apple develops its own AI tech. Is GPT-4o AGI? The hot topic in the AI world is AGI, short for artificial general intelligence. In short, it’s an AI indistinguishable from interacting with a human being. I asked GPT-4o for the defining characteristics of an AGI, and it presented the following: Generalization: The ability to apply learned knowledge to new and varied situations. Adaptability: The capacity to learn from experience and improve over time. Understanding and reasoning: The capability to comprehend complex concepts and reason logically. Self-awareness: Some definitions of AGI include an element of self-awareness, where the AI understands its own existence and goals. Is GPT-4o an AGI? AI developer Benjamin De Kraker called it “essentially AGI,” while NVIDIA’s Jim Fan, who was also an early OpenAI intern, was much more reserved. I decided to go directly to the source and asked GPT-4o if it’s an AGI. It predictably rejected the notion. “I don't possess general intelligence, self-awareness, or the ability to learn and adapt autonomously beyond my training data. My responses are based on patterns and information from the data I was trained on, rather than any understanding or reasoning ability akin to human intelligence,” GPT-4o said. But doesn’t that also describe many, if not most, people? How many of us go through life parroting things we heard without applying additional understanding or reasoning? I suspect De Kraker is right: To the average person, the full version of GPT-4o will be AGI. If OpenAI’s demo videos are an accurate example of its actual capabilities, and they likely are, then GPT-4o successfully emulates the first four tenets of AGI: generalization, adaptability, understanding, and reasoning. It can view and understand its surroundings, can give opinions, and it constantly learns new information from crawling the web or user input. At least, it will be convincing enough for what we in the business world call “decision makers.” It’ll be convincing enough to replace human beings in many customer-facing roles. And for many lonely people, they will undoubtedly form emotional bonds with the flirty AI, which Sam Altman is fully aware of. Mysterious happenings at OpenAI We would be remiss not to discuss some mysterious high-level departures from OpenAI following the GPT-4o announcement. Ilya Sutskever, chief scientist and co-founder, quit immediately after, soon followed by Jan Leike, who helped run OpenAI’s “superalignment” group that seeks to ensure that the AI is aligned with human interests. This follows many other resignations from OpenAI in the past few weeks. Sutskever led an attempted coup against Altman last year, successfully deposing him as CEO for about a week before he was reinstated as CEO. Sutskever can best be described as a “safetyist” who is deeply concerned about the implications of an AGI, so his sudden resignation following the GPT-4o announcement has sparked a flurry of online speculation about whether OpenAI has achieved AGI or if he realized that it’s impossible, because it would be strange to leave the company if it were on the verge of AGI. From his statement, it seems that Sutskever doesn’t believe OpenAI has achieved AGI and that he’s moving on to greener pastures — ”a project that is very personally meaningful to me.” Given OpenAI’s rapid trajectory with him as chief scientist, he can certainly write his own ticket now.

If you’ll allow me to labor a metaphor, the jagged fault lines and yawning chasms that opened across Azeroth with the launch of Cataclysm reflected, also, a division in the World of Warcraft fandom. For some, the 2010 expansion delivered a badly needed remake and revitalization of the map. For others, the new raids were too tough at launch, and fresh material for Cataclysm didn’t arrive fast enough. And they also didn’t like the new map. 14 years later, Cataclysm has finally returned via World of Warcraft Classic. Is the history of WoW’s most controversial expansion about to be rewritten? Continue reading WoW’s most controversial expansion is back, but better than before MORE FROM PCGAMESN: WoW The War Within beta sign up, WoW The War Within release date, The best WoW addons

When is XDefiant coming out? If you're looking to dive headfirst into Ubisoft's newest shooter, we have a rundown of all of the PC launch times for your region, as well as details on preloads. Continue reading When is XDefiant coming out? PC release times MORE FROM PCGAMESN: XDefiant release date, Best multiplayer games , Best FPS games

As a live game, Helldivers 2 constantly sees new content Warbonds drop while developer Arrowhead also delivers periodic fixes and updates. This is a hard balance to strike at the best of times, but the game’s colossal success and comparatively small team keep butting heads. The relationship between consistent monthly Warbonds and patches that fix ongoing issues or change weapon stats is an ongoing one, and now Arrowhead is exploring spacing out how often future patches are, with hopefully beneficial results. Continue reading Helldivers 2 may sacrifice more patches for better quality updates MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Helldivers 2 weapons, Helldivers 2 servers, Helldivers 2 system requirements

What are the best Hellblade 2 settings for PC? With a capped frame rate on consoles, it looked as though Hellblade 2 might also be challenging to run on PC. Luckily this isn't the case, and most modern GPUs should achieve high frame rates in this game. You won't need the best graphics card to get Hellblade 2 running on PC, but the game packs in some intense visuals that help immerse you in the story. The good news is that the Hellblade 2 system requirements show us that the game is capable of running on later Nvidia GTX GPUs. Continue reading Best Hellblade 2 settings for max fps MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Best graphics card, Best gaming PC, Best SSD for gaming

I had a lot to look forward to with Starfield, but primarily - more than the ships, the combat, and the quests - I was anticipating finding a nice homestead on a quiet little planet, and raising my own crops. This was always the dream in Skyrim, to one day retire the sword and shield and settle into a calm, picturesque pastoral lifestyle. Inspired by Stardew Valley but with a healthy dose of sci-fi, and landmark launches like No Man’s Sky, a new farming game has just hit Steam, and you can even try it for free. Continue reading Gorgeous new Steam farming game is like Stardew Valley in space MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Best farming games, Best RPGs, Best games like Stardew Valley

It’s the age-old hypothetical - if you were shipwrecked on a desert island, how do you think you’d survive? Would you find a cave, keep your profile low, and subsist on roots and coconuts, or would you make your mark, and construct a big wooden shelter to house all your hunting trophies? Blending the survivalism of Sons of the Forest with the combat and exploration of Far Cry, particularly Far Cry Primal, one FPS that’s already accumulated glowing reviews has just hit 1.0, and you can play the full thing today. Continue reading Far Cry and The Forest inspire beloved survival game that just hit 1.0 MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Best survival games, Best crafting games, Best FPS games

Released in 1822, the Travelers’ Tour Through the United States took players on a cross-country adventure

Even if we wanted to keep space weapons-free, space is already a domain central to modern military operations.