Here’s some interesting food for thought to consider regarding propaganda in the digital age. Take the data center problem, as an example. One person might see jobs, tax revenue, and technological progress. Another could see massive buildings consuming electricity and water while giving little back to the surrounding community. Someone else could see national security: if we want to compete in AI, we need the infrastructure to run it. And then there are people worried about mass surveillance. They understand exactly what these systems could make possible, more data collection, more behavioral tracking, more power concentrated in private and government hands. But even they could acquiesce or support the data centers in the near future. Why? Because they might be influenced to believe that the technology will come either way. Better to build it here, where it can be regulated. Better to stay ahead of foreign competitors. Better to support the infrastructure now and fight over how it’s used later. And as construction expands, it could embolden small radical groups to take violent or illegal action against the centers. If that begins trending, the group would become the story. Anyone raising concerns about surveillance, water, energy, or corporate power could be pressured to distance themselves from the opposition. Nobody wants to be associated with extremists or labeled anti-progress. So the surveillance skeptic will go silent to avoid social scrutiny and vote rationally to choose the lesser of evils. The nationalists will vote for technological independence. The anxious voters will choose security. The optimist will choose progress. Different beliefs. Different emotional triggers. The same outcome: the data centers expand. That’s what makes modern propaganda so unsettling when it becomes possible to map and understand clustered behaviors. A population doesn’t have to share one belief to produce one future. It can be divided into different emotional camps, fear, pride, anger, hope, while still being guided toward the same decision by taking advantage of media feeds and our digital behaviors. So control may not be in the message these days. A lot of it could exist in the destination, itself. submitted by /u/CyborgWriter
Originally posted by u/CyborgWriter on r/ArtificialInteligence