I feel like AI is going to be all those things on steroids.

Yeah, Google, Facebook and Microsoft putting a massive fraction of their resources on AI is what already happened, but isn't really encouraging.

Yeah they are the dark pattern, tracking, advertising l, privacy violating kings. Of course they’re going to keep doing all that “but with AI (TM)”

I'll reply here since your comment was first.

AI has the potential to go in many directions, at least some of which could be societally 'good'.

Advertising is, has always been, and likely always will be, societally 'bad'.

This differentiation, if nothing else.

(Yes, my opinion on advertising is militantly one sided. I'm unlikely to be convinced otherwise, but happy for, and will read, contrary commentary).

I don't think it's advertising that's inherently evil. Like government, it's a good thing, even a needed thing. People need laws and courts, and buyers and sellers need to be able to connect.

It turns evil in the presence of corruption. Taking bribes in exchange for power. Government should never make rules for money, but for the good of the people. And advertising should never offer exposure for sale - exposure should only result from merit.

Build an advertising system with integrity - in which truthful and useful ads are not just a minimum requirement but an honest aspiration and the only way to the top of the heap. Build an advertising system focused, not on exploiting the viewer, but on serving them - connecting them with goods and services and ideas and people and experiences that are wanted and that promote their health and thriving.

I won't work on advertising as it's currently understood... I agree it's evil. But I'd work on that, and I think it would be a great good.

I used to think there were useful ads. But really, even a useful add is an unsolicited derailing of your thoughtspace. You might need a hammer, but did you really have to think about it right then? I think back to how my parents and grandparents got their goods before the internet. If they needed something they went to the store. If they were interested in new stuff that might be useful thats coming out, they'd get a product catalog from some store mailed to them. Is a product catalog an ad? Maybe, depending on how you argue the semantics, but its much more of a situation like going to a restaurant and browsing the menu and choosing best for yourself, vs being shown a picture of a big mac on a billboard every time you leave your home.

AI is the anti printing press. Done well, it removes the ability t read something written by someone far away, because it erodes any ability to trust that someone exists, or to find that persons ideas amongst the remixed nonideas AI churns out.

Advertising is similar, of course, and the only thing that has kept the internet working as a communications medium in spite of advertising is that it was generally labeled, constrained, enclosed, spam-filtered, etc.

The AI of today is being applied to help advertising escape those shackles, and in doing so, harm the ability to communicate.

Only in a sense that computers are all those things on steroids. It's a low-level tech that can be used for many different things. Given the incentives in our socioeconomic system, it will be used for the things that you have listed, just as everything else.

Is it miles ahead? An engine that ingests a ridiculous amount of data to produce influence? Isn't that just advertising but more efficient and with even less accountability?