[keiferski]

Yes, but I guess my point is that this is just another symptom of the polarization problem, and not some unique nightmare scenario where AI has mass influence over what people think and vote on.

So it matters in the same way that the billions of dollars currently put toward this small silver matter, just in a more efficient and effective way. That isn't something to ignore, but it's also not a doomsday scenario IMO.

[ImPleadThe5th]

I think the concern is that it will become a leading contributor to polarization.

Polarization is the symptom. The cause is rampant misinformation and engagement based feeds on social media.

[hodgesrm]

I think it's actually the other way around. The US Civil War predated social media by 150 years. The root causes were slavery and states rights. The result was a bloody conflict whose effects lasted for generations. That's an existence proof that existing communication mechanisms are sufficient if people really want a war.

So why is social media-based propaganda so effective today? One reason that the current polarization seems so durable is that similarly persistent root causes (such as immigration, economic dislocation, and racial attitudes) have arisen again. Blaming social media obscures the fact that attitudes have hardened. People are looking for support and social media makes it very easy to find. It seems more like a feedback loop than a root cause.

Just my $0.02. It's the sort of problem that should make us all feel pretty humble about diagnosing it easily.

[dylan604]

Pre socials, you could attend a gathering of like minded people and come away energized and pumped about whatever the event was about, but that "high" eventually fades away as you re-entered the real world and got away from that echo chamber of an event.

Today, you can stay in the echo chamber and never hear anything other than like minded views because that's what the algo thinks you should see more of which means you never come down from that "high".

It's way worse in post-social algos than anything that's come before

[hodgesrm]

> It's way worse in post-social algos than anything that's come before

By what standard? Judged by outcomes it's hard for me to see that the effects will be worse than historical events like the French Revolution or the Killing Fields of Cambodia. [0,1] They and many others included periods of indiscriminate slaughter that tore apart societies.

I don't mean to undersell the effect of the Internet. Technologies do come along that make things fundamentally different. Social media amplifies fringe views and makes it possible for people holding those views to find each other more easily. The guardrails for bad behavior are also much weaker online. At the same time many IRL institutions that held US society together have become far weaker. [2] It's hard to untangle these effects in the moment, but some of the forces pulling US society apart date back to the 1960s or earlier.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reign_of_Terror

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_Fields

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone

[marcosdumay]

Pre socials all the social movements around had been already captured by vocal "status quo defenders" that insisted (violently if needed) that the way to get what you want is to do the no-impact highly-performative action they picked.

Your only chance of attending a gathering of like minded people was by somebody organizing a new one, and only before those vocal bad elements discovered it.

Today the same happens over the internet.

[dylan604]

Today, you just join a Reddit thread or Telegram channel or follow someone on social. You don't have to seek it out. It is now just delivered to you with a notification that your twitchy little brain just can't find a way to ignore and must investigate the new new. Not only are you being fed nonsense, but you're having it fed to you in the most addictive way possible. Cult leaders would dream of having that much control.

[blooalien]

> Cult leaders would dream of having that much control.

These days they no longer need merely dream of it. They just set up a recruiting website and a propaganda channel on their favorite social media channel and they're good to go.

[Terr_]

A good chunk of the polarization comes from plurality / "first past the post" voting, with its huge spoiler-effects.

That choice of algorithm--which is not required by the Constitution--creates deep and very real "if you're not with us, you're against us" situations, entrenching a polarized political duopoly.

[keiferski]

I don’t agree that polarization is caused by social media, and I think it definitely precedes social media by decades.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_polarization_in_the_...

I do agree that social media might make it worse, though. But again I don’t know if AI is really going to impact the people that are voting based on identity factors or major issues like the economy doing poorly.

I could see how AI influences people to associate their identity more with a particular political stance, though. That seems like a bigger risk than any particular viewpoint or falsehood being pushed.

[blooalien]

> I don’t agree that polarization is caused by social media, and I think it definitely precedes social media by decades.

I tend to think you're right. It's just been magnified and multiplied and handed a microphone with a worldwide amplifier by (anti)social media (and much of the more "traditional" media landscape in general as well).