Elites Could Shape Mass Preferences as AI Reduces Persuasion Costs

>I long for the day that we solve problems facing regular people like access to education, hunger, housing, and cost of living.

That was only for a short fraction of human history only lasting in the period between post-WW2 and before globalisation kicked in, but that was only a short exception from the norm.

Now, society is reverting back to factory settings of human history, which has always been a feudalist type society of a small elite owning all the wealth and ruling the masses of poor people by fear and oppression.

The wealth inequality we have today, is as best as it will ever be.

> I long for the day that we solve problems facing regular people like access to education, hunger, housing, and cost of living.

EDUCATION:

- Global literacy: 90% today vs 30%-35% in 1925

- Prinary enrollment: 90-95% today vs 40-50% in 1925

- Secondary enrollment: 75-80% today vs <10% in 1925

- Tertiary enrollment: 40-45% today vs <2% in 1925

- Gender gap: near parity today vs very high in 1925

> Musk acknowledged the mix-up Thursday evening, writing on X that “Grok was unfortunately manipulated by adversarial prompting into saying absurdly positive things about me.”

> “For the record, I am a fat retard,” he said.

> In a separate post, Musk quipped that “if I up my game a lot, the future AI might say ‘he was smart … for a human.’”

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.

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.

I'd wager the child already exists who trusts chatgpr more than its own eyes.