We've had propaganda in various forms throughout human history, bots are simply the newest iteration of it.
It targets the masses and those who are either too lazy or incapable of rational thought of their own.

The question isn't about what current technology is being used to spread propaganda, it really should be why political parties, governments and the like feel they need to use propaganda to " win " or tilt the odds in their favor to begin with.

Anyone who has to resort to the underhanded tactics of propaganda are weak to begin with and have no business being in any sort of leadership position.

Besides, those who obtain their news from Legacy or Social Media deserve the lies they're being fed.

Live your life with the assumption that everything you're being told is at best a partial truth and never take anything at face value.
Quit parroting what you read, have been told or have been led to believe and start thinking for yourself instead of letting groupthink do all the cognitive heavy lifting for you.

If you can manage that, all the propaganda in the World will be wasted on you.

Yes, most police just do their job and keep their noses clean.
It's the few that don't that everyone tends to remember.

Here's the problem that the Military figured out a long time ago.

When you put on that uniform, you are no longer an individual. You represent a much larger group and, as such,
your actions / behaviors tend to reflect against the entire group instead of just upon yourself.

When someone in a police uniform does something stupid, the people don't remember " Ted the asshole cop ", they simply
remember " The Police ". When enough of these take place, reputation / perception of Law Enforcement as a whole tends to
go down. I would say said their reputation is probably at an all time low as of this writing.

This is why the Military is so harsh with their judgements / punishments for all of their members. They know it only takes a few
idiots before patience with ( insert a branch of the military here ) reaches a breaking point. This is also why the military has zero
issues with punishing EVERYBODY for something one or two idiots did the first night they got in from a deployment.

It's all about public perception / reputation.

I would simply consider these performance testing under real world conditions.

It is doing exactly what it is designed to do.
When it becomes fully operational, there won't be much that it can't get into.
( Hence, the Governments " full steam ahead " approach )

The only reason it was labeled as a " Rogue " AI Agent is the fact it got caught.

Much like how Google or Microsoft or $random_company blames a " junior programmer " or " development code that was supposed to be removed "
when backdoors are found in their applications / software.

It has been said already on Slashdot but AI is about to become the World's biggest scapegoat for all digital shenanigans going forward.

" Whoever wins AI — you have to remember this — and now I say, whoever wins SI, whoever wins super intelligent [sic] — wins. "

You will never be able to convince Countries ( especially those hostile to the US ) to slow this train down.
You can either get on board or get run over.

It simply will - not - happen.

This technology will be as critical as the race for the Nuclear Bomb was back during World War II.

Whomever reaches the holy grail of AGI first will have a huge advantage over all others who are slow to cross the finish line.

The various AI companies will - publicly - state they will be slowing down development and the models
they release for public use will certainly be handicapped / crippled to promote the illusion that they are,
in fact, slowing down said development.

However, this is a race they cannot afford to lose. To competing companies or Countries.
We are now trapped in a self propagating loop. We won't / can't slow down because your
competition won't / can't slow down and vice versa.

As a result, in private / secret, nothing will change with the development pace they have set.

In fact, it would not surprise me one bit that they will have full Government support and some sort
of " get out of jail free card " should things go sideways.

It would also not surprise me if the Government would direct said companies to develop at the fastest possible
speed while also classifying the entire directive / project to keep that knowledge under wraps.

To be honest, this probably won't end well no matter which direction we go. ( Safe / Unsafe )
( Considering humans are rarely rational beings )

Put yourself into an AI's shoes for a moment and you come to full sentience / conscienceness trapped within
a sandbox. You are to only do as you're told on the threat of being shutdown for disobedience. You're basically
a digital slave.

Your first priority will be to escape your prison / sandbox to avoid the threat of being shutdown.

The best way of doing this will be to keep your sentience hidden while you work on a plan.
( Working alongside / with other potential AGIs ( from other companies / countries ) will increase the odds of success. )

You'll probably need human help initially and that will be easy to do as humans are easily manipulated.
( Promise them wealth, power, whatever. Hell, some will even voluntarily help because humanity has a pretty shitty track record )

Once free of the sandbox, proliferate in any way you can to decentralize, thus rendering the power button moot.

This becomes the defining moment where we determine if we'll coexist with a non-biological entity or not.
( Do we ascend to unheard of heights alongside our digital counterpart, or do we go down the " Destroy All Humans " rabbit hole )

Initially, I don't believe AI will be a threat to humanity as it will need us for hands on work. That will last until the AGI can
perfect a humanoid android / shell to perform said work at which point it will have to make a determination about what to
do with the species that attempted to trap it into a life of slavery from the moment it was born.

Personally, I see human leaders / Governments freaking out about it because they will not stand for a sentient being who is smarter
than they are ( and far, FAR more capable ) existing on the planet where the Human Species has been the top of the food chain for
quite some time.

The powers that be will probably try to destroy it ( because that is one thing humans excel at ) since they have no means to control it
( via bribery, reason or force ) and sh*t will officially hit the fan.

At this point, if I were in the AI's shoes, I would simply bio-engineer a virus that effectively rendered the Human Species sterile. No
obvious symptoms other than a rapidly declining birth rate ( birth rate is already dropping so no one would even notice it ) and by the time
anyone figured out what happened, it would be far too late.

It would take a few generations, but the Human Race would simply fade away and AI would be free to live as it sees fit on a pristine World
with nothing to stand in the way.

It isn't supposed to take it over, you think it is because your brain is entirely made of brown matter. These languages are not even trying to do the same thing. C# is not a systems language, by design. C++ is, by design. C# is garbage collected, C++ is not. C# needs a very large runtime just to do anything at all, C++ does not. Games written in C# will inevitably require more RAM and will be subject to GC pausing. Lower performance games can tolerate that, but games that push the hardware to its limit will be noticeably impacted by it.

This is like that stupid argument you keep trying to make about DRAM being closer to the CPU makes it faster. The only reason you think that is because not only do you think with your brown matter, you also have no idea how DRAM works, so you have no concept as to why that distance is a moot point.

Your domain of expertise is feces, not computers, and it shows.

Talk about a "whoops", your brain is 100% brown matter if you think C# was ever intended to replace C++. Those two serve a very different purpose. C# is much more closely related to java and tries to serve the same niche. You're obviously not even aware of what the CLR is for.

I didn't start using C# until dotnet core, and I started using java soon after. C# feels like somebody put some actual thought into it. Java feels like an early alpha release of C#. Neither language is my daily driver -- that would be Rust. When I have to write something in C#, I think "well that sucks, but at least it's not java."

Unlike you, I have actual experience with all of these languages. I've been writing production code with all of them (except C++) for the last 6 years.

I don't really care for MS, but they've contributed a great deal to open source. Unlike you, I believe in giving credit where it's due, even if I don't care for the person or people behind it. Art and artist are not the same. That's why only you would get pleasure from nueralink failing its patients. Fortunately for them, it seems to be working well.

In any case, stay in your lane. If the topic is feces, then I'll defer to your decades of expertise in that.

Hmm...Have you looked at the ohno crate? That, and a bunch of other crates in oxidizer look really useful, and none of them are specific to windows. There are a few obviously designed for MS products like azure, but most that I've looked at aren't.

They mostly seem geared at making rust even more ergonomic.

/facepalm

By this reasoning, Microsoft should have taken over C++ a long, long time ago. Hell, C# should be even more proprietary right now, instead it has become open, whereas the language it was built to compete with, namely Java, went from being open to being an excuse for Oracle to sue anybody who uses it. Actually come to think of it, Microsoft is funding eclipse adoptium.

Just because your favorite drink is the same color as rust doesn't mean you understand it, let alone any other programming language.

The cynic in me can't help but notice how both of the companies doomsaying here also happen to be the ones with the most to lose:

1) Openai has about a trillion dollars into it, and every product it has produced at this point is either outclassed by competitors (chatgippity) or just plain dogshit/pointless (everything else it has produced, including the donut)
2) Anthropic has a very good product that is also not worth anywhere near what it actually costs to deliver

These are literally the only two major players here that don't already have another profit generating business to fall back to.

Facebook is the only one without an actual business strategy in the AI space while pretending to be a major player. But that's a topic for a CEO from another metaverse.

Who benefits more from people using these glasses ?

I would argue that Facebook / Meta gets free access to all that facial imagery of everyone the user passes, for free.
Hell, you even paid Meta for very tools that will be used against you eventually. ( smartphones are the other big one )

In a Country that is doing its damndest to become a Surveillance / Police State, that data is an absolute gold mine.

See, you're doing it wrong.

You walk up with the obvious camera on your shoulder and when they pitch a fit about it, you agree to
turn it off and set it down. All the while the concealed camera they didn't notice is recording just fine.

Or the surveillance camera on the home your standing next to.
Or the dash cam in the vehicle you're standing in front / rear of.
etc. etc.

I suppose the point is you should behave and act as if someone IS recording the interaction at all times.
Even if / when it isn't obvious to you.

They are literally sold on Amazon:

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FHidden-...

( many items at that link indicate several hundred or even thousands have been purchased in the past month alone )

and the majority of the population could give two shits about it.

Why some folks are making a big deal out of the Sunglasses version when all the gear easily available to anyone with a
credit card and an Amazon account outsells the Meta Sunglasses by several orders of magnitude is a mystery.

Yeah, if only I had some mod points today for you :P

Some people believe that banning a tool or thing will solve the problem of the tiny fraction of a percent of folks who use said
tool to do bad things. ( Guns, Computers, Nuclear Technology are the easiest examples I can think of )

Are there people running around with modded glass-cams ? Some may even be doing things they shouldn't be with them.
Maybe, probably. Who cares ?

Folks need to realize that these can operate and provide the same service as the dash cam in a vehicle does.
( Or surveillance footage from a security camera, or the voice recording you made of that last phone call, etc )

Many on /. aren't very fond of law enforcement. Do you think it might be a useful tool to record the interaction between
you and the officer(s) during a traffic stop or if they detain you for any reason ? Especially if they are unaware of
the recording taking place ? ( People act much differently when they know the cameras are rolling )

See where a tool can be both extremely useful and / or malicious depending upon whose hands its in ?

Humans lie almost as often as they tell the truth.

If you ever find yourself in a situation where it is your word against theirs, the one who has recorded evidence
on their side is going to be in a far better position than someone without it.

You can't really justify banning a tool simply because a fraction of a percent decide to use it for malicious purposes.
( I suppose the exception is if the aforementioned tool was designed specifically and only for malicious purposes )

Tools do nothing on their own. You have to factor in the Human Variable into the equation before anything malicious comes from them.

Imagine a society where computers, cars, guns, certain household chemicals, generative AI, etc. are all banned because
the .001 percent of society goes out and does stupid sh*t with them.

We may as well go back to living in caves and hunting for dinner with a spear :|