An unusually unpredictable political landscape hides another imminent danger — our speeding technology race. We are more vulnerable to victimization and exploitation from technology than ever before. A well-thought-out Human Integrity Amendment to the Constitution will help meet the challenge caused by our tech gluttony.

When I was young, the mining of data on individuals did not exist as it does now. Nor was our individual DNA vulnerable to exploitation. And the predictive analysis was not stalking individual citizens and consumers on a massive scale daily. And no one could decode and interpret the routine thoughts of individuals as they carried on their lives, which is now also a gathering danger.

Merge that with a thriving demand for artificial intelligence, and you realize we have found a new way to unravel our most basic human rights. Could the Enlightenment literally be snuffed out by a keystroke?

It took 25 centuries for mankind to go from Socrates to Julius Caesar, from Ghengis Khan to Leonardo da Vinci, from Alexander Hamilton and Benjamin Franklin to Adolf Hitler, to Ronald Reagan, and to Donald Trump. The power that resides in our new technology can foul up our entire species beyond all recognition within a few years because it gives our worst angels a direct line to devastating not only democracy but humanity itself.

We’ve barely escaped a global nuclear conflict on three occasions during the Cold War, one being the Cuban Missile Crisis. Now, there’s a handful of scientific fields converging in excess when American society is ill-prepared to responsibly manage them. It’s left to us, the people. We’re not superheroes, but we don’t need to be idiots, either.

Believe the facts:

According to the National Human Genome Research Institute’s website, an individual’s DNA can never be made anonymous once made public. Everyone, except identical twins, has unique genes. Even removing individual identifying information from DNA won’t solve the problem. Genome.gov wrote, “A study published in 2013 shows that research participants can be re-identified using genomic data from one such database paired with genealogical databases and public records.”

According to research analyst Manoj Phagare, corporate data mining has led to remarkably accurate results in the quest to predict the habits of individual citizens. “Probably the most famous example of Target’s predictive powers surfaced when it detected the pregnancy of a teenage girl before her parents did, based on changes in her buying habits,” he wrote.

The federal government also uses data mining and predictive analytics to understand and act on the predicted behavior of political figures. Artificial intelligence “Senturion Alpha” is listed on current AI inventory as “a stakeholder/influence-driven model that identifies where key decision-makers fall on an issue spectrum and who influences whom. The simulation analyzes the political dynamics within contexts and estimates how the policy positions of competing interests will evolve over time.”

The ramifications of such official efforts, if they turn toward the citizenry, are troubling.

Decoding the thoughts of individuals is continuing. That science met with success in 2024 in the cases of ALS patients (Lou Gehrig’s disease), allowing communication when they can only express ideas through internal thoughts. The benefits are real, but not everyone is a Socrates or a Hamilton. Some are Ghengis Khans and Adolf Hitlers. In the wrong hands, this tech will devastate, not enlighten.

Artificial intelligence is a partner in Pandora’s Box. My social media is inundated with AI imagery, displacing human talent and expression. That’s the silent digital noise cutting into my individual freedom, a little at a time, and likely every day this year.

Americans have a window to do something. Democracy is a verb. Action is the main ingredient.

The Human Integrity Amendment will help ensure that the rights and precious individuality of each of us will be unassailable. This amendment could be made a “working amendment,” ratified in the usual way but flexible enough to return to as new technology emerges.

This is our year. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather ring in 2026 as myself, free and unique and annoying as ever. The Borg, after all, are so 1990s.

Happy New Year!

Matthew Liptak is the editor of the Glen Burnie (Md.) Lamplighter. He wrote this for InsideSources.com.