One of the things that I took away from reading about the history of the transatlantic slave trade was that rich people always get the ideas they need circulated.

I don't want to call all of those people liars, although I'm sure some are. But the incentive structures at least select and reinforce the people espousing whatever notions support and justify a profitable status quo.

Previously, the cost of that was quite high. You had to find a bunch of reasonably smart people and fund them for years to go around and say what you liked. From royal patronage to modern think tanks, it cost real money to shift a lot of minds.

But now given the incredible concentration in "AI" chatbots and their nature as text averagers, I suspect the cost of influence has dropped an order of magnitude. So I think we'll see a lot more of this.