AI never made sense as an investment at this point except out of 1) a desire to discipline workers and labor generally to lower their wages and benefits, threaten them with replacement to get them more compliant 2) to enable a techno-police-state beyond the nightmares of any 20th century writer. It was always impractical for any government anywhere to listen to everyone all the time, to follow everyone all the time. Even a dissident movement you usually only had the resources to track the leadership and everyone else you just chilled with the fear you /could/ be tracking or listening to them. With AI the human surveillance clerk problem is solved, you can monitor and compile dossiers on the exact activities, contacts, etc of 1 million people and have it all reviewed and handled by one NSA/FBI clerk who's just looking for top hits and threat scores or returning results on requested enemies they're emailed about.

So this was inevitable. The ability to replace labor in a cost-effective way isn't quite there yet but it's more than good enough for sifting through visual, audio, textual data and compiling dossiers and threat reports on tens, hundreds of millions of people. The US government can and will print money for such a perfect, inescapable panopticon which promises total visibility and control.