And the big wildcard for me will be the currently unanswered question of how easy will it be to use new technologies like ChatGPT, various image and voice generation tools/models, to create content that manipulates them directly or indirectly towards or away from things as desired by the current (and future) powerful and wealthy people who don’t want to lose their power or wealth.

Humans being social animals makes me worried that its going to be a fighting retreat by those aware of the manipulation against these technologies being used to manipulate.

I don't think new technologies change anything in this regard. Democracy has always been fundamentally a contest between powerful factions shaping the public opinion to their liking. Does not matter whether it's done through pamphlets, tabloids, radio, TV, internet, or generative AI.

I completely agree, the question isn’t so much about complete immunity to such technological manipulation since that’s been an ongoing theme of history, but more a matter of if the current trend of awareness and resistance (be it conscious or unconscious resistance) to such manipulation, which undeniably functions as a component of the younger generation’s rejection of classical narratives with respect to the normative trajectory of adulthood… a large part of this is obviously social dynamics robbing them of the ability to have these things, but when you look at the people who are bathed in the propaganda and drink the cool aid and spend all their time desperately trying to hustle their way towards the ludicrously difficult traditional goals of a house in the suburbs with a backyard, big enough for the 2.5 kids to run around in, with a two car garage so the wife can go shopping while the husband is at work… and somehow they fucking afford this on a single income because that’s still something people pretend can happen.

The point being… it’s not a given that the current rejection/resistance to the normative cultural pressures will remain strong enough to prevent these younger generations from slowly bending towards conservatism the way the previous three/four generations have. And I was just highlighting the fact that we can’t yet tell if the component of this drive towards conservatism that’s powered by technological manipulation by the powerful (newspapers, then radio, then television, then cable tv (in America), then the internet, now social media) will continue to be ineffective of these people or if they will slowly be sway over time.