Opinion | Don’t Let the A.I. Optimists Fool You

To the Editor:

Re “A.I. Will Empower Humanity,” by Reid Hoffman (Opinion guest essay, nytimes.com, Jan. 25):

Mr. Hoffman is whistling past the graveyard when he airily dismisses the dystopian potential of artificial intelligence that, as he proposes, will have access to so much of our personal data that it knows us better than we know ourselves.

In the hands of a totalitarian regime, A.I. that analyzes, as Mr. Hoffman writes, “anything — or everything — you do on your PC, phone and…