Being held accountable in the next administration is pretty much the opposite of what a democratic society needs. It's a never ending cycle. Let the court system handle this.
Not GP, but in this context I would interpret the next administration[^1] holding the current administration to account as a willingness to use the court system to prosecute actual crimes committed while in office[^2].
That is by no means a given.
[^1]: Assuming there is one.
[^2]: That is, not petulantly prosecuting those deemed to have slighted you.
SCOTUS has already given POTUS immunity in any form other than impeachment followed by a conviction. The problem with that is that just removes POTUS from office. It does nothing to punish for those crimes that were deemed worthy enough of being impeached/convicted. SCOTUS said that POTUS cannot be held accountable for things done as official acts of office. So Congress cannot hold POTUS criminally accountable, but removed from office to stop the criminal acts. Once POTUS becomes a citizen they are free. At this point, I can only see where the newly sworn POTUS would use their new pardon power to end the question as well.
However, all of this is very far away from the legality of quantum computing
> SCOTUS has already given POTUS immunity in any form other than impeachment followed by a conviction.
That's not exactly accurate and that nuanced difference may be the key to holding the executive branch accountable, now that we're in this disastrous state of the world.
Specifically, POTUS has absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions that are within their constitutional authority, presumptive immunity from all official acts (but not absolute), and no immunity from unofficial, private acts committed by the president.
Congress could also pass legislature or constitutional amendments to revert the effect of that tragic decision, though of course those also come with their own sets of challenges.
Let's not forget the complacency of this Congress. POTUS could not get away with this nonsense if Congress would do its job. The right has been working their way to this perfect scenario for decades with gerrymandering at the state level, Congress refusing to accept a SCOTUS nominee from POTUS holding out that the next POTUS would be their guy, and all of the other nonsense that has happened to get us to this spot.
The courts are either ignoring the problem, supporting the problem, or just being ignored. They courts themselves have no power to enforce their rulings. The ones that would enforce the courts decisions are doing what the Trump tells them to.
The problem is, the current admin has shown how pliable the courts are. And, this weakens them, in that, there is less of a belief of impartiality.
Conjoin that with AI able to generate billions of videos, saying anything anyone wants, and you have a real issue. 99.99% of the population can't tell or even realises much of what they watch on youtube is AI, and... it will get less distinguishable, to the point that no one, at all, will be able to tell.
Not you, I, or anyone at all.
There are already endless AI personalities on youtube, each building followers. If I wanted to upset the apple cart, I'd spawn 1000 or more "people", each with a different appearance and manner of speaking. All would dance to my tune, and all would be the most honest, trustworthy source possible.
Until, of course, I wanted to upset the apple cart. Then I'd ensure that all these personalities, insisted that all the court decisions post-office, are lies, mistruths, and designed to punish and harm and "take out the right's power".
Imagine if you have someone you've watched for 2 years. On hundreds of points, they've been blisteringly honest, never lying, always truthful. Then?
On this one thing, they manipulate you.
Who do you trust? The most honest person you've ever seen, or the impartiality of the courts?
This is the sort of long game you can play with fake personalities. No disloyalty. No breaking ranks. No bad days, or mistakes.
I've fought for a free internet. I've fought for the right to anonymous posting. To be a voice, without an identity. But? That time is over, or we won't have a democracy. I've pivoted 180, I cannot see a democratic society with this level of manipulation continuing.
> I've fought for a free internet. I've fought for the right to anonymous posting. To be a voice, without an identity. But? That time is over, or we won't have a democracy.
The con is claiming that this has anything to do with anonymity. There are 8 billion people. Someone with money can get a hundred, or a thousand, or ten thousand of them to lend their names to bots. The cost of a random human name is less than the cost of the years worth of tokens they'd be putting under it. Sacrificing anonymity over that is a fraud.
On top of that, we shouldn't pretend this is a new issue. In 1975 the local magnate owned the local newspaper and radio station and had relatively unbiased coverage of issues until it came to the ones that affect their own business dealings or the political ambitions of their associates.
And your disaster scenario doesn't even work when people are getting information from multiple sources. If the sources are >50% lies and exaggerations then you can spot check a small sample of the stories and notice that. (Sadly all too many current outlets fail this test.) But if, as you posit, they offered unbiased coverage almost all of the time then their coverage would be similar to every other source offering mostly unbiased coverage, until they try to mislead you, and then your "reliable sources" would be saying different things from one another because less than 100% of them are controlled by the one trying to manipulate you, which is a major red flag that somebody is lying to you.
The actual problem is that people don't bother to do the spot checks when the source is telling them the pretty lies they want to hear. Which is nothing new and has very little to do with AI.
