Interesting, but long read. To summarize: people are easy to manipulate and AIs are learning how to do this at scale and with intent. AIs are still tools though. It's easy to anthropomorphize AIs and think in terms of us and them. It's how we are wired to think. But the reality is that they are expensive tools that are owned and wielded by other people.

So, you get all the unimaginative dystopian thinking. Which is of course largely the product of science fiction written decades ago. It's hard to be innovative in this space. We already imagined all the bad outcomes a long time ago. But that doesn't mean it will play out like that. Precisely because we've imagined all the bad stuff, that's likely to not happen.

The short term reality is actually an arms race between companies and countries. And like most arms races, the people with the best toys and the most resources end up on top. The question is not what AIs will do but what the people wielding them will do with them. And how we can hack their purposes. The system these companies and countries operate in is of course hack-able. Democracies are a power hack. We once had these all powerful kings, emperors, and dictators. And then the people that gave them power got smart and organized. Democracies basically curb that power in the interest of self preservation.

Like with most technology, the answer to what will happen with AIs will be mostly harmless and beneficial stuff. That's where the money is. But with some intentionally harmful stuff and maybe a little bit of unintentionally disastrous stuff. So, we as a society need to get better at countering/preventing/disincentivizing the bad stuff and preventing the unintentionally harmful stuff. Rejecting technology is not the answer. It just makes us more vulnerable. The more of us get smarter, the better it is for all of us.