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Unless you're subscribing to some ineffable human spirit outside material constraints brainwashing is just a matter of using the right inputs to get the right outputs. If we invent machines capable of parsing an entire lifetime of user data, tracking micro changes in pupillary dilation, eye movement, skin-surface temp changes and so on you will get that form of brainwashing, bit by tiny bit as the tech to support it advances. A slim cognitive edge let homo sapiens out think, out organize, out tech and snuff out every single one of our slightly more primitive hominid rivals, something 1000x more intelligent will present a correspondingly larger threat.
It does not follow. A human can be perfectly computable and still not vulnerable to brainwashing in the strong sense; computability does not imply programmability through any input channel, although that was a neat plot line in Snowcrash. Think about this for a second, can you change an old videocamera's firmware through showing it QR codes? Yet it can «see» them.
Ah yes, an advertiser's wet dream.
You should seriously reflect on how you're being mind-hacked by generic FUD into assuming risible speculations about future methods of subjugation.
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There is no reason to suppose that "pupillary dilation, eye movement, skin-surface temp changes and so on" collectively add up to a sufficiently high-bandwidth pipeline to provide adequate feedback to control a puppeteer hookup through the sensory apparatus. There's no reason to believe that senses themselves are high-bandwidth enough to allow such a hookup, even in principle. Shit gets pruned, homey.
Things don't start existing simply because your argument needs them to exist. On the other hand, unaccountable power exists and has been observed. Asking people to kindly get in the van and put on the handcuffs is... certainly an approach, but unlikely to be a fruitful one.
I doubt it's possible to get dune-esque 'Voice' controls where an AI will sweetly tell you to kill yourself in the right tone and you immediately comply, but come on. Crunch enough data, get an advanced understanding of the human psyche and match it up with an AI capable of generating its hypertargeted propaganda and I'm sure you can manipulate public opinion and culture, and have a decent-ish shot at manipulating individuals on a case by case basis. Maybe not with chatGPT-7, but after a certain point of development it will be 90 IQ humans and their 'free will' up against 400 IQ purpose built propogando-bots drawing off from-the-cradle datasets they can parse.
We'll get unaccountable power either way, it will either be in the form of proto-god-machines that will run pretty much all aspects of society with zero input from you, or it will be the Yud-Jets screaming down to bomb your unlicensed GPU fab for breaking the thinking-machine non-proliferation treaty. I'd prefer the much more manageable tyranny of the Yud-jets over the entire human race being turned into natural slaves in the aristotelian sense by utterly implacable and unopposable AI (human controlled or otherwise), at least the Yud-tyrants are merely human with human capabilities, and can be resisted accordingly.
And with the capacity to gain local monopolies over AI.
If there is the AI Voice and I have the AI Anti-Voice designed to protect me, then I am in dangerous waters, but at least I can swim. If I am banking on people selected on their desire for and ability to leverage power to not seek and leverage power over the AI Voice, then I am trusting the sharks to carry me to shore.
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If you want people to take your scenario seriously, it needs to be specific enough to be grappled with. You said "brainwashed with surgical precision". Now you're saying "manipulate public opinion and culture" and "have a decentish shot at manipulating individuals on a case-by-case basis".
All of the above terms are quite vague. If the AI makes me .0002% more likely to vote democrat or literally puppets me through flashing lights, either can be called "manipulated".
As for the rest, I see no reason to suppose that the Yud-tyrants would restrict themselves to being merely human with merely human capabilities. They're trying to protect the light-cone, after all; why leave power on the table? Cooperation with them is an extremely poor gamble, almost certainly worse than taking our chances with the AIs straight-up.
We'll be dealing with machines that are our intellectual peers, then our intellectual masters in short order once we hit machines making machines making machines land. I doubt humans are so complex that a massively more advanced intelligence can't pull our string if it wants to. Frankly I suspect the common masses (including I) will defanged, disempowered and denied access to the light-cone-galactic-fun-times either way, but I see the odds as the opposite. Let's be honest, our odds are pretty slim either way, we're just quibbling about the hundreds, maybe thousandths of a percent chance that we make everything aligned AI wise and don't slip into algorithmic hell/extinction, or that the Yud-lords aren't seduced by the promises of the thinking machines they were sworn to destroy. I cast my vote (for all the zero weight it gives) with the Yud-lords.
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