alt Hacker News> Historically, elites could shape support only through limited instruments like schooling and mass media
Schooling and mass media are expensive things to control. Surely reducing the cost of persuasion opens persuasion up to more players?
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Mass Persuasion needs two things: content creation and distribution.
Sure AI could democratise content creation but distribution is still controlled by the elite. And content creation just got much cheaper for them.
Do you rather want a handful of channels with well-known biases, or thousands of channels of unknown origin?
If you're trying to avoid being persuaded, being aware of your opponents sounds like the far better option to me.
Exactly my first thought, maybe AI means the democratization of persuasion? Printing press much?
Sure the the Big companies have all the latest coolness. But also don't have a moat.
This is my opinion, as well:
- elites already engage in mass persuasion, from media consensus to astroturfed thinktanks to controlling grants in academia
- total information capacity is capped, ie, people only have so much time and interest
- AI massively lowers the cost of content, allowing more people to produce it
Therefore, AI is likely to displace mass persuasion from current elites — particularly given public antipathy and the ability of AI to, eg, rapidly respond across the full spectrum to existing influence networks.
In much the same way podcasters displaced traditional mass media pundits.
> Schooling and mass media are expensive things to control
Expensive to run, sure. But I don't see why they'd be expensive to control. Most UK are required to support collective worship of a "wholly or mainly of a broadly christian character"[0], and used to have Section 28[1] which was interpreted defensively in most places and made it difficult even discuss the topic in sex ed lessons or defend against homophobic bullying.
USA had the Hays Code[2], the FCC Song[3] is Eric Idle's response to being fined for swearing on radio. Here in Europe we keep hearing about US schools banning books for various reasons.
[0] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_28
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hays_Code
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_Song