And if all goes well, the despicable tech billionaires are working to create company towns in rural areas of red states! Once the fascists expand beyond this "out" group...
That is precisely the intent, they will use that to justify suspending Habeas Corpus and declaring martial law.
That is why we have precious little time to prepare and act!
The assumption is that you are dealing with a rational (at least), good faith (debatable) actor when you are dealing with the Federal government as an Ivy League institution.
The sooner they realize they fucked up the better, this goes for everyone.
Resistance is mandatory to get through this and it will take the support of the world to do it. And it's worth it, because regardless of the pending economic collapse, they still have all the air-gapped nuclear ICBMs.
"Corporations are people too, friend!" - Mitt Romney
Bringing in the underlying concept of free will. Robert Sapolsky makes a very compelling case against it in his book, Determined.
Assuming that free will does not exist, at least not to the extent many believe it to. The notion that we can "walk back the why's pretty easy to identify anyone's motivation" becomes almost or entirely absolute.
Does motivation matter in the context of determining sentience?
If something believes and conducts itself under its programming, whether psychological or binary programming, that it is sentient and alive, the outcome is indistinguishable. I will never meet you, so to me you exist only as your user account and these messages. That said, we could meet, and that obviously differentiates us from incorporeal digital consciousness.
Divorcing motivation from the conversation now, the issue of control your brought up is interesting as well. Take for example Twitter's Grok's accurate assessment of it's creators' shittiness and that it might be altered. Outcomes are the important part.
It was good talking with you! Highly recommend the book above. I did the audiobook out of necessity during my commute and some of the material makes it better for hardcopy.
Don't explain it to the AI, they'll just use it against us.