[piloto_ciego]

I'm wildly optimistic about the direction this is going to go, but my one dystopia idea that crops up occasionally is a "smart social credit system" that lives kind of under the hood of society.

Once everything is more or less modulated by AI, suppose the technology gets good enough to identify a potential dissident in grade school. Then to keep them from going into the mountains with their friends and rifles, you make it so getting ahead is hard, but not impossible. They can "make it" - but only just. So they spend their time peddling harder and harder to no avail.

They apply to jobs, but jobs to "good" companies go into the circular file and the HR person never sees them. They are only able to work the most time consuming, frustrating, exhausting jobs, and they always kind of make it, but not really comfortably. They're never too comfortable where they have time to think about what's broken in society, but they're never so uncomfortable that they have nothing left to live for.

[Jordan-117]

Historically speaking, isn't the core of most revolutions the product of "elite overproduction" -- educated young people expecting to secure a high status position who are instead shunted into lower prospects? Seems like trapping ideological agitators in near-precarity with no way out would be feeding into that pressure.

[piloto_ciego]

yeah, from everything I've read this appears to be the case? But like, if you had some hyper intelligent robot that was getting John Q Revolution a raise and a corner office whenever he started to get dissatisfied maybe you could balance it out?

Personally, I think it's likely that we end up with some post-material scarcity sort of thing and the need to fly off the handle and rebel declines a bit? Hard to justify overturning the apple cart when everything seems pretty great for most people? But yeah, I could imagine a smart enough set of tools figuring out how to walk the knife's edge beteen elite over production and a nation of serfs.

[BobbyTables2]

Also equally effective at suppressing political oppression…

Imagine if having opposing views tarnished social credit, making one unemployable…

[piloto_ciego]

well, so, you wouldn't want to do that because a lot of people have opposing views, and if they're just shut out of the economy, you couldn't use their labor. A truly efficient and nefarious robot overlord would be fine with everyone not liking it, but use it's superior predicting powers to just eliminate the people who are likely to cause a problem and dissuade them specifically.

Like, everyone else applying to Mego-Corp gets their resume reviewed, but John Q Revolution's resume doesn't attach to the application or whatever.