> people consuming auto-generated content to keep the masses from away from critical thinking. This is now happening
The people who stay away from critical thinking were doing that already and will continue to do so, 'AI' content or not.
Perhaps, but the solution is the same either way, and it isn't trying to ban technology or halt progress or just sit and cry about how society is broken. It's educating each other and our children on the way these things work, how to break out of them, and how we might more responsibly use the technology.
I'm not sure how that would imply anything about the past. We as a society have spent decades defanging the public school system through changing school to be test score driven, tying a schools funding to the local property value, making them less effective and less safe, choking them out financially etc... it should be no surprise that children are not equipped to navigate modern life. I've been though these systems, they are deeply flawed.
I don't know, individually finely tuned addictive content served as real time interactive feedback loops is an other level of propaganda and attention capture tool than largest common denominator of the general crowd served as static passive content.