for sure, the vested interests of the fine-tuners is rarely discussed, though i would go even further, since I hold the controversial view that no technology is value-agnostic. gradient descent reward functions do more than what they are programmed to do. how much more is hard to say, but there are certainly positive feedback loops, like the one you describe, present in both post-training and RL.

there does seem to be something structural here that simultaneously encourages less critical thinking as well as stronger opinions, rooted in emotion rather than evidence. since both of these factors support clicking on, and then shouting about, things you don't understand, they both work in service of an attention economy and, by extension, the metrics that fund more development.

what really bothers me is that existential risk is now a meme, which normalises and diminishes the communication around much more serious and imminent issues, like the need for preservation of ecological resources or the absence of systems thinking amongst the ruling class, both of which have a much higher percentage than the machine of leading to mass suffering.