Surveillance is only a symptom: artificial intelligence and the systematic enforcement of profile-based identity

This article argues that in current surveillance studies, too much emphasis is placed on authenticity-based ideas, and this is done at the expense of recognizing that surveillance also results in an enforcement of profile-based identity, which is changing how society operates. In other words, surveillance is not merely about seeing and observing people (invading their privacy) and then, on the basis of these observations, steering them without consent (violating their authenticity). Instead, surveillance today is much more about seeing how people see - that is, observing their observations - and, with the help of AI, forming a profile of their identity. Surveillance systems, and the AI incorporated in or constituting them, have been developed to function without concern for people outside of their profiles. Any regard for sincere, individual, or authentic persons is simply not necessary. And people, because of social validation feedback loops and their own participation within networks of surveillance, have increasingly adopted profiles as a major identity technology for themselves as well. They increasingly identify themselves and others according to profiles. This enforcement of profiles marks deep existential, social, and political shifts.