Jeremy Bentham was the founder of utilitarianism, the ethical system that he said believes the true measure of what’s right and wrong is determined by what brings “the greatest happiness [to] the greatest number.” To say that the devil is in the details when it comes to an idea like that is an understatement, but we’ll leave that for the moment.

In 1813, Bentham received a government grant to build a prison he had designed called the Panopticon — Greek for “all seeing” — which is still in use in New Delhi, India. The Panopticon was designed to provide round-the-clock surveillance of every prisoner.

The multistory prison is round, with walls one prison cell thick. The inner walls of the cells are bars, hiding nothing, and in the center stands a tower with small windows which allows guards to be all-seeing while remaining unseen. The theory is that inmates will have no choice but to behave since any stepping out of line will be seen and punished. Surveillance leads to submission.

On September 12, billionaire Larry Ellison spoke about building a Panopticon for the rest of us.

Digital Prisons

Rather than a physical prison, however, the 80-year-old billionaire would use artificial intelligence to create a digital prison for every person that combines and analyzes “footage from security cameras, police body cams, doorbell cameras, and vehicle dash cams,” according to reports. (Think of the TV series Person of Interest here.)

“Citizens will be on their best behavior,” said Ellison cheerfully, “because we are constantly recording and reporting everything that’s going on. … We’re going to have supervision.”

But as Ars Technica Senior AI reporter Benj Edwards comments, “Ellison’s vision bears more than a passing resemblance to the cautionary world portrayed in George Orwell’s prescient novel 1984. In Orwell’s fiction, the totalitarian government of Oceania uses ubiquitous ‘telescreens’ to monitor citizens constantly, creating a society where privacy no longer exists and independent thought becomes nearly impossible.” In Orwell’s novel, signs everywhere proclaim the ominous reminder, “Big Brother Is Watching.”

The opportunity to use surveillance to trample privacy rights, civil rights, and whatever ideas our relativistic leaders believe to be less than the greatest happiness for the greatest number abound.

Reading Body Language

This becomes particularly true if we add the dangers of “sentiment analysis.” Edwards writes elsewhere that sentiment analysis “signifies a shift from observing actions with traditional digital surveillance to interpreting thoughts and discussions, potentially impacting everything from personal privacy to corporate and governmental strategies in information gathering and social control.” (Think of the old Tom Cruise movie Minority Report.) It’s AI watching your face to interpret your thoughts and emotions — some of which may be deemed dangerous.

All of that is scary — and yet, without constant surveillance, who will behave in ways that we might call (for lack of a better word) “virtuous”? Without some notion of unchanging standards of right and wrong, we’re left with Bentham’s notion of it coming down to “the greatest happiness of the greatest number.” And who — or in the case of AI, what — gets to decide what will bring the greatest happiness to the greatest number and thus, for today at least, determine our standards of behavior and thought?

The Great Decider

It’s safe to say that who or what will control us all. The point of surveillance is, after all, submission.

Upon receiving the Templeton Prize in 1994, philosopher Michael Novak said:

During the next hundred years, the question for those who love liberty is whether we can survive the most insidious and duplicitous attacks from within, from those who undermine the virtues of our people, doing in advance the work of the Father of Lies. “There is no such thing as truth,” they teach even the little ones. “Truth is bondage. Believe what seems right to you. There are as many truths as there are individuals. Follow your feelings. Do as you please. Get in touch with yourself. Do what feels comfortable.” Those who speak in this way prepare the jails of the twenty-first century. They do the work of tyrants.

If there is no truth, no right or wrong, no good or bad except each person’s feelings of what might bring him or her happiness, social chaos is inevitable. The alternative is a government putting everyone on notice that they’re watching to see that they live according to government standards — or else.

Lest we despair, however, Novak pointed out that there is a third alternative:

If a people composed of 100 million citizens is guarded by 100 million inner policemen — that is, by 100 million self-governing consciences — then the number of policemen on its streets may be few. For a society without inner policemen, on the other hand, there aren’t enough policemen in the world to make society civil. Self-control is not authoritarianism but rather the alternative to it.

And self-control begins in our individual lives and spreads to our homes and our churches. Only then by the grace of God can it spread to our communities — making Larry Ellison’s totalitarian fantasies not only undesirable, but completely unnecessary.

James Tonkowich is a freelance writer, speaker, and commentator on spirituality, religion, and public life. He is the author of The Liberty Threat: The Attack on Religious Freedom in America Today and Pears, Grapes, and Dates: A Good Life After Mid-Life and is Instructor Emiratis at Wyoming Catholic College.