Thread

1. dzink · 1791065932 · focus · HN ↗

   A huge chunk of humans are sedated with infinite supply of cortex-disabling short form video and games.

   Another huge chunk are too distracted by having to scrape by for a living and work multiple jobs or raise kids and survive financially until exhausted. That second group will keep increasing as the first flows into it.

   The rest are aging, disabled, or too young and pegging themselves majorly in the first category until they hit the second.

   The people aware enough to hold on to their brain and do something with it in their time available are trying to figure out AI and how to make money with it. The variable rewards of promoting AI are turning into an addiction with some of them, especially if grasping for straws with little inherent insights into the problems prompted.

   So if you are able to fly above the AI-generated addictions and have the privilege of time to do it, see what you can do.

   1. lukifer · 1791068181 · focus · HN ↗

      One of the dilemmas of trying to communicate the full spectrum of AI Risk, is trying not to insult the intelligence of the human animal in the process. And don't get me wrong: what human wetware can accomplish with 20 watts is the most miraculous thing in the known universe. And yet how many of us can have our cognitive sovereignty one-shotted by engagement algos, Skinner boxes, gameplay loops, propaganda, advertising, flattery, social conformity, bias, fantasy, charismatic demagoguery, or straight-up bullshit?

      If we grant that we are on track to make something smarter than humans (I think so): it's almost a face-saving white lie to spin yarns about a Skynet nuclear apocalypse, or a 7D chess move to mass-assemble a nanovirus with 100% lethality without anybody noticing. I do think those scenarios are worth taking seriously; but what's harder to communicate, is just how effectively a superhuman AI (or a diverse ecology of agent swarms) might be able to manipulate human behavior. It's something few of us are able or willing to truly process (not least because how many of us live in denial of how much our nervous systems are already hacked by technomodernity).

      The appropriate analogy for what's to come may look less like the anthill carelessly demolished to make room for a highway, than the domesticated worker ants from Tchaikovsky's "Children of Time".

      1. ethbr1 · 1791117966 · focus · HN ↗

         > but what's harder to communicate, is just how effectively a superhuman AI (or a diverse ecology of agent swarms) might be able to manipulate human behavior

         You don't even need superhuman AI for the most effective use --- hijacking democracy.

         Imagine you have an AI tool capable of successfully persuading 5% of viewers with individually-targeted material.

         Congrats: you've just won the election.

         All it takes is hooking that AI tool up with existing likely voter lists (parties have) augmented by commercially available ad-targeting profiles (parties can get).

         1. TheOtherHobbes · 1791119085 · focus · HN ↗

            Or you could just hack the results.

            Hypothetically.

            But yes - superpersuasion is the real danger. We're very, very persuadable and easy to manipulate, and the voters with the lowest cognitive abilities are trivially easy prey, with a huge ROI for minimal investment.

            The AI bot farms are already running. What we haven't seen yet, so far as we know, is spontaneous superpersuasion aimed at leaders.

            Are leaders any less susceptible to it than everyone else? Especially if they're narcissistic and easily flattered?

            1. ethbr1 · 1791123623 · focus · HN ↗

               At the leader level itself (in normal times) there are enough expert advisor bodies between leaders and a specific matter, so less worried about leaders being directly influenced by AI.

               To me, the biggest threat to democracy is one-sided persuasion of the most susceptible voters, if there are enough of those voters to turn the election.

               If it's equally employed by all sides, then it effectively cancels out and lets less susceptible voters decide the election. But we're in a transition period (similar to Trump's first election spend on targeted social media ads), so it's likely one side will leverage it first.

               And the outcome of bad elections is democracy not electing leaders that reflect the actual will of their populations, which is very dangerous both to democracy itself and the world.

               1. pixl97 · 1791131052 · focus · HN ↗

                  > there are enough expert advisor bodies between leaders and a specific matter

                  Are there? At least in the US we've had a rather large amount of rejection of the expert and we elect populist leaders willing to purge anyone that doesn't agree with them.

                  Remember the election promises of the US not starting new wars... yea, that didn't work out.

                  Now imagine the coordinated attacks being so large they individually target every lobbyist. They focus on every advisor manipulating what they see as often as they can. They manipulate these peoples friends.

                  The problem of "both sides" doing it each of them will separate to extremes rather than seeking a middle ground. Things are already insanely divided and will only become more so. Along with that your timelines start becoming incoherent. I'm already spending way too much of my time trying to figure out if what I'm viewing/reading is actually real or not. Now imagine almost everything is made up whole cloth.

                  We are not prepared for the scale this will happen at.

            2. wyldfire · 1791123678 · focus · HN ↗

               > spontaneous superpersuasion aimed at leaders.

               <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2026&#x2F;10&#x2F;01&#x2F;musks-ai-chatbot-grok-reportedly-encouraged-trump-to-capture-venezuelas-president&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2026&#x2F;10&#x2F;01&#x2F;musks-ai-chatbot-grok-repo...

            3. lanstin · 1791145594 · focus · HN ↗

               No reason to think leaders are less persuadable than the proles. Lots of people can’t be reliably persuaded to do basic safety or health things or that the earth is round. And we have seen so many leaders throw billions away on obviously impossible projects, persuasive details from their teams be dammed.

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.