With AI ‘democratizing’ work being constantly mentioned and repeated in AI company manifestos, it feels more and more like the notion of democracy—while having positive qualities of needing to care about ordinary people’s sentiment and common sense—has often served in practice to pacify individuals and give an incentive for manipulation. Suppression of public squares, huge PR campaigns, and other manipulations to legislative processes (see tobacco industry, smoking, etc.) can do way more than one vote.
Much like many things that are bad about current AI technology amplifying bad things that already exist I think this is one of them, and you’re right to point it out in the opening paragraphs here. I think you’ll find “democratic institutions are yet to collapse” is subjective as many people are bowing out of the system, expressing record low trust, or expressing “can’t vote your way out of this” sentiments. (and implied in those views is that a central AGI could likely do a better job.)
With AI ‘democratizing’ work being constantly mentioned and repeated in AI company manifestos, it feels more and more like the notion of democracy—while having positive qualities of needing to care about ordinary people’s sentiment and common sense—has often served in practice to pacify individuals and give an incentive for manipulation. Suppression of public squares, huge PR campaigns, and other manipulations to legislative processes (see tobacco industry, smoking, etc.) can do way more than one vote.
Much like many things that are bad about current AI technology amplifying bad things that already exist I think this is one of them, and you’re right to point it out in the opening paragraphs here. I think you’ll find “democratic institutions are yet to collapse” is subjective as many people are bowing out of the system, expressing record low trust, or expressing “can’t vote your way out of this” sentiments. (and implied in those views is that a central AGI could likely do a better job.)