alt Hacker News> This is an extraordinarily inefficient system of keeping everyone under control. To have a person being watched at all times means that some other person must be doing the watching at all times (at least in the Orwellian society) and must be doing so very narrowly, for there is a great development of the art of interpreting gesture and facial expression.
You don't even need an AI.
This is such a core misunderstanding that Asimov seems to have, and it kind of kills his entire analysis for me.
The assumption is that only some small fraction of a fraction of the people who could be surveilled at any time are being surveilled.
The crux of the thing is that everyone COULD be under surveillance at any time, so in effect everyone must behave as if they are being observed because they do not know they are not.