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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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