Propaganda is Obvious

Because it is excellent, I've cut and pasted from a fascinating- and chilling -article by Berit Anderson and Brett Horvath from scout.ai  If you wanted reasons to spend less time on line, well here you go.  The full article is at https://scout.ai/story/the-rise-of-the-weaponized-ai-propaganda-machine  This is a must read.  Thanks Tom Civiletti for your post.
The upshot:  political, social and economic propagandizers now have the capacity to customize their message to every single individual with an online presence.  They can build a total experience for you, complete with a large group of fake friends, that is emotionally addicting and intellectually manipulative.  They can construct a complete world just for you, solely for the purpose of contolling your decisions.  Which doesn't feel like control at all.
This is why I believe people who run face-to-face businesses like I do will never become extinct.  In fact, now is our time.  We must counteract this powerful, pervasive and unConstitutional manipulation of one another.

At Scout, we’ve been speaking with political strategists, technologists, and machine learning experts about how AI propaganda will spread through society in the near future. We want to work with you, the Scout community, to scenario plan what happens next. Here are some implications to get the conversation started.

IMPLICATION #1:

Public Sentiment Turns Into High-Frequency Trading

Thanks to stock-trading algorithms, large portions of public stock and commodity markets no longer resemble a human system and, some would argue, no longer serve their purpose as a signal of value. Instead they’re a battleground for high-frequency trading algorithms attempting to influence price or find nano-leverage in price position.

In the near future, we may see a similar process unfold in our public debates. Instead of battling press conferences and opinion articles, public opinion about companies and politicians may turn into multi-billion dollar battles between competing algorithms, each deployed to sway public sentiment. Stock trading algorithms already exist that analyze millions of Tweets and online posts in real-time and make trades in a matter of milliseconds based on changes in public sentiment. Algorithmic trading and ‘algorithmic public opinion’ are already connected. It’s likely they will continue to converge.

IMPLICATION #2: 

Personalized, Automated Propaganda That Adapts to Your Weaknesses

What if President Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign didn’t just have the best political messaging, but 250 million algorithmic versions of their political message all updating in real-time, personalized to precisely fit the worldview and attack the insecurities of their targets? Instead of having to deal with misleading politicians, we may soon witness a cambrian explosion of pathologically-lying political and corporate bots that constantly improve at manipulating us.

IMPLICATION #3: 

Not Just a Bubble, But Trapped in Your Own Ideological Matrix

Imagine that in 2020 you found out that your favorite politics page or group on Facebook didn’t actually have any other human members, but was filled with dozens or hundreds of bots that made you feel at home and your opinions validated? Is it possible that you might never find out?

Your Constructive Comments are Welcome!

You Should Always Name a Family Member as Your Personal Representative**

Until a recent death in the family abruptly dragged me into the executor/executrix ("Personal Representative" in Oregon) world, I had no clue how humongous and complex a job you assign to someone by making them your Personal Representative in your will. ORS 114 gives you a pretty good idea.

I did not know, for example, a Personal Representative must comply with these two requirements:

1. You are required to hire an attorney
2. As of 2/2/2015 you are required to take a "Non-Professional Fiduciary Education & Training" course within 60 days of being appointed as Personal Representative by the court.

And there's more.  As Personal Representative:

• You must immediately take possession of all decedent's assets & file an inventory- including estimated values -with the court within 60 days.  This may not be a fun job if significant property is on "loan" to friends or family.
• You must not commingle the decedent's assets with your own or anybody else's.  So don't transfer that bank account to yourself just yet (unless you are a TOD beneficiary).
• You cannot loan estate money to anyone without the court's approval.  And never to yourself.
• You must set up a separate checking account in the name of the estate & keep detailed records of every deposit and disbursement
• If you pay certain documented estate expenses out of your own pocket, such as funeral expenses, you may reimburse yourself from the estate.  If you were owed money by the decedent, you can't pay yourself without written permission from the court.
• You can't give estate property to anyone without permission from the court.
• You have the authority to ""discontinue and wind up any business or venture in which the decedent was engaged at the time of death" (114.305(23).  Since your primary obligation is to preserve and enhance the value of the estate, what if you unwittingly unwind a profitable venture that might continue adding cashflow to an estate?

Having dug deeper into the role of Personal Representative, I recommend that you:

• Give careful thought about who you know that can be trusted, competent and willing to go through all this.
• Possibly designate a lawyer and/or other professionals (CPA, investment adviser, realtor) to work with your Personal Representative.

Your Constructive Comments are Welcome!

**The furthest intention of this post is to be legal advice.  It is not, nor intended to be.  It is no more than the conveyance of the author's personal experience and layman's view of the ORS.  Consult with your estate planning attorney in all such matters.