Clearly their argument is that social media algorithms has an outsize influence on people's opinions, and that a handful of people have the power to alter those algorithms and content feeds to influence people in a way they find favorable. It's not mind control, but in a country like the USA, shifting the middle 10% of voters to either side is enough to determine elections. They don't need to "mind control" everyone as a result.
I would call it mind control, I think normal people that know nothing about tech and have their gaurd down are quite hypnotized by doom scrolling social media.
I would say they can also successfully do "remote viewing" through a network of worldwide IOT devices.. While not metaphysical, modern surveillance techniques are certainly is inspired by those earlier more mystical ambitions.
Early intelligence programs had an outsized influence on Cybernetics and thus the internet.
Imagine telling a MK Ultra researcher in the CIA that in 50 years you'll be able to listen into, and steer the behavior of an individual through a glass screen they hold in their hands all day.. That you could target people individually, important people even, while they sit alone in a room customizing and tweaking the propaganda they see every 10 seconds as they touch the screen to swipe.
This all sounds pretty normal, and run of the mill to us now but if you take a step back its all very trippy. Its interesting to follow the evolution of early cybernetics research to the modern day and if you follow the lineage of researchers back in time you'll find some very suspect connections/influences.
That only makes any sense if you consider that influencing people is 100% effective. If you look at advertising, it clearly influences some people to buy certain products, but more cynical people might well see through the new product and realise that it's just the same as other un-advertised brands.
What do you mean by "heavily editorialized titles"? Editorialized how if at all, for articles from which source (just Techdirt, or multiple sites shared on HN?), editorialized by whom?
The original title, while conversational in tone, is straightforwardly factual. I edited the title (not heavily in any sense) to fit the character limit. In terms of why I posted the article on HN, the article body matters more than the title.
Did you even read the quoted text you posted on here?
They say:
> The Advisory Group on Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence, from whom OpenAI has claimed to derive its legitimacy, opened their initial advisory statement by saying that frontier AI corporations should not test advanced mathematical problems on internal models
Read: "on internal models"
Then you go:
> They're basically telling OpenAI or any AI lab to stop using the models for advanced math research because for some reason it isn't "ethical".
> [This is a guest post by the Association for Human Mathematics, reposted from their statements page. This blog post was initially written in a different file format and converted using AI. — T.]
Secret? Its called "X" and Facebook.