[pradn]

Imagine an adversary country surveilling all the youth of another, or even just at elite schools, and being able to use that as blackmail as they age into the leadership class. Or maybe we just won’t care any more. We’ve recently had a US president accused of all sorts of unsavory things, but who still retains a massive following, even among Evangelicals. What possible revelation could bring him down?

[johnnyworker]

I think it really depends on the person. If you're Assange, it doesn't matter if you did it. It's easier if you did it, but it doesn't have priority. For your in-group (be that cult followers or large power structures), you can get away with pretty much anything.

Which I think makes it even harder to get people to understand how shit this timeline is, because everybody is dreaming about what it could do for them, not to them. And the people who have reason to believe to never be at the wrong end of these sticks, have no idea how it deforms them, either.

Humanity has proven its skill at dehumanizing humans in all sorts of ways, with all sorts of rhetorical and technological means, so yeah, sure, "AI" (which in practicality means "surveil everyone and get them to like/do what you want them to like and do", the rest are gimmicks and chaff) is "nothing new", but it's still like humans going from "always having had weapons" to "fucking nukes".