The Camera Isn't Really the Question

I have been thinking about cameras.

Which, naturally, has somehow led me to artificial intelligence, privacy, crime, electronic medical records, cheating spouses, license plates, Ring doorbells, Blink home cameras, and what on earth our world is going to look like five years from now.

Welcome to my brain. 😂

It started with Flock cameras.

If you haven't heard about them, they are cameras increasingly being used in communities and public spaces that can capture license plates and identifying characteristics of vehicles.

Law enforcement can use that information to help locate stolen cars, investigate crimes, find missing people, and potentially determine where a particular vehicle has been.

Some people think they are wonderful.

Some people think they are terrifying.

I initially landed pretty firmly in the first camp.

I like cameras in public spaces. I actually wish we had more of them.

If my granddaughter were ever missing, I wouldn't particularly care whether a camera had recorded my car, your car, or 10,000 other cars that day if one of those images helped someone find her.

If someone commits a hit-and-run and leaves another human being injured on the side of the road, I want the camera.

If a child is abducted and a license plate can tell police which direction a vehicle traveled twelve minutes ago, I want the camera.

If someone commits a violent crime and technology can help get that person off the street before someone else is hurt, give me the technology.

And yet...

There is another side to this.

And I think this is where the conversation becomes much bigger than Flock cameras.

We are already tracked. A lot.

Our phones know an extraordinary amount about where we go. Many of us voluntarily share our locations through Find My with children, parents, partners and friends.

Our cars know things.

Our watches know things.

Our credit cards know things.

Our apps know things.

At work, an electronic record can create an audit trail showing when someone logged in and potentially where that access originated.

Your Ring camera may record every car that drives past your house.

A Flock camera recording a license plate doesn't seem like an enormous leap from any of that.

Except there is a difference.

It isn't necessarily the camera.

It's what happens when thousands—or eventually millions—of individual observations become connected, searchable and intelligent.

And that is where I think we need to start paying attention.

A data point isn't the same thing as the truth.

A camera can tell us that a car was somewhere.

It cannot necessarily tell us who was driving it.

A phone can tell us where a phone is.

It cannot necessarily tell us where its owner is.

Find My may tell you that someone is sitting at the office while that person has actually left the phone behind and gone somewhere entirely different.

Someone might leave a phone in a car while charging it or while supposedly taking a walk, when in reality they are spending a few private hours with someone they care about and they simply don't want everyone who can see their location asking questions about where they are.

That isn't necessarily sinister.

Sometimes human beings simply want a corner of their lives that belongs only to them.

And that matters too.

Technology gives us information.

We human beings are the ones who turn that information into a story.

And sometimes we get the story wrong.

Now add AI.

This is the part that fascinates me.

Today we are debating whether a camera should be allowed to photograph a license plate.

But I don't think the camera is really the question.

The question is what happens when artificial intelligence can connect the camera to thousands of other pieces of seemingly insignificant information and recognize patterns that no human being could possibly see.

One observation may tell us almost nothing.

Ten thousand observations may tell us quite a lot.

And an extraordinarily intelligent system capable of examining billions of observations simultaneously may eventually be able to infer things we never explicitly told it at all.

That's a different world.

AI is advancing rapidly. Agentic systems are increasingly capable not simply of answering questions, but of taking actions, using tools, searching information, connecting systems and completing increasingly complicated tasks.

And somewhere beyond what we can currently do sits the possibility of AGI—artificial general intelligence capable of performing across an enormous range of intellectual tasks at or beyond human capability.

I know some people hear conversations like this and think science fiction.

I don't.

I think these are questions for right now.

Because the infrastructure we build today may become the nervous system of intelligence that exists tomorrow.

And I am still incredibly excited about it.

That's important.

I don't want fear to stop progress.

I think AI and emerging technology have the potential to improve healthcare, accelerate scientific discovery, prevent errors, find diseases earlier, reduce tedious human work, make education more accessible, improve safety and perhaps solve problems we currently consider unsolvable.

I want to see what we discover.

I want the cameras that can help find the missing child.

I want the medical system that notices the subtle pattern everyone else missed.

I want AI helping scientists connect dots that would have taken humans twenty years to recognize.

I want technology making our lives safer, healthier, easier and perhaps even longer.

But embracing technology doesn't require surrendering our judgment.

Progress and guardrails are not enemies.

Perhaps the real issue is access.

We already understand this concept in medicine.

An electronic medical record contains some of the most private information imaginable.

We don't solve that problem by saying physicians and healthcare workers shouldn't have access to medical records.

They need access.

Instead, we ask:

Who should be allowed in?

What are they allowed to see?

Why are they looking?

Is their access logged?

Can someone audit what they did?

And what happens if they abuse that privilege?

Maybe those are exactly the questions we should be asking about the technologies we're building everywhere else.

Not:

Should cameras exist?

But:

Who gets access to what they see?

Not:

Should AI be allowed to analyze information?

But:

What information should it be allowed to connect, and for what purpose?

Not:

Can we build it?

But also:

What rules should exist once we do?

Because people are entitled to privacy.

People are entitled to dignity.

And no one should be permitted to abuse access simply because technology has made that access possible.

At the same time, privacy cannot mean pretending enormously useful technology shouldn't exist.

There is something remarkable happening around us.

For most of human history, technological change happened slowly enough that generations had time to absorb it.

I am not convinced we have that luxury anymore.

Five years doesn't feel very long.

But look at how dramatically artificial intelligence has changed ordinary life in just the past few years.

Now imagine another five.

I genuinely don't think we can comprehend it.

And maybe that is why these seemingly little conversations matter.

A camera on a pole isn't just a camera anymore.

A phone isn't just a phone.

A medical record isn't simply a chart.

A collection of data isn't simply a collection of data once intelligence can understand the relationships hidden inside it.

We are building extraordinarily powerful tools.

I hope we don't become frightened of them.

I hope we don't stop building.

I hope we don't allow fear of what could go wrong to prevent us from discovering everything that could go beautifully right.

But I also hope we are wise enough to understand that the more powerful our tools become, the more important our responsibility becomes in deciding who may use them, how they may use them, and where the boundaries belong.

Maybe the future isn't asking us to choose between technology and privacy.

Maybe our challenge is learning how to have both.

And perhaps we need to start figuring that out now.

Because the camera isn't really the question.

What we eventually teach intelligence to do with everything the camera sees—that's the question.

🍯 A Honey Note

The future has never asked our permission before arriving. Perhaps our job isn't to fear what is coming, but to meet it with curiosity, courage, and enough wisdom to protect the things that should never become obsolete—our freedom, our dignity, our privacy, and our humanity.

Progress doesn't need us to close our eyes.

It needs us to keep them wide open.

With wonder for what we're building, respect for what we're protecting, and one very big question—

If technology eventually makes it possible to know almost everything about everyone, will wisdom teach us when we should choose not to look?

Honey 🍯🐝