Because to a company using ML to impart control over your behavior, you are a $. They want to extract value from you, just like every other company, government, etc... If they become really, really good at this, you are going to have a low standard of living (because you are being mined for value), and make noncoherent decisions constantly (you will no longer be rational, nor have a functional personality).
To some degree, this has already been happening for decades, since psychologists began formalising advertising into a science. Look at the increasing percentage of lower class families and how diminished their average value is. This isn't caused by time localized events, like a 5 year recession or a housing market bubble. This is the result of extremely fine-tuned and effective advertising, that has caused cultural shifts towards greater and more irrational consumerism.
ML allows the advertisers to be much much more effective; they no longer even have to manually understand their market to manipulate it. Again, look at the growing disparity between the richest 1% and the rest of the schmucks. That 1% is soaking up the profits of extremely effective advertising, which the rest of us are paying for.
To some degree, this has already been happening for decades, since psychologists began formalising advertising into a science. Look at the increasing percentage of lower class families and how diminished their average value is. This isn't caused by time localized events, like a 5 year recession or a housing market bubble. This is the result of extremely fine-tuned and effective advertising, that has caused cultural shifts towards greater and more irrational consumerism.
ML allows the advertisers to be much much more effective; they no longer even have to manually understand their market to manipulate it. Again, look at the growing disparity between the richest 1% and the rest of the schmucks. That 1% is soaking up the profits of extremely effective advertising, which the rest of us are paying for.