> When one gets to be a certain age one begins to become attuned to this tendency of others' emotions to manipulate you

This is incredibly optimistic, which I love, but my own experience with my utterly deranged elder family, made insane by TV, contradicts this. Every day they're furious about some new things fox news has decided it's time to be angry about: white people being replaced (thanks for introducing them to that, tucker!), "stolen" elections, Mexicans, Muslims, the gays, teaching kids about slavery, the trans, you name it.

I know nobody else in my life more emotionally manipulated on a day to day basis than them. I imagine I can't be alone in watching this happen to my family.

With AI you can do A/B testing (or multi-arm bandits, the technique doesn't matter) to get into someone's mind.

Most manipulators end up getting bored of trying again and again with the same person. That won't happen if you are a dealing with a machine, as it can change names, techniques, contexts, tones, etc. until you give it what its operator wants.

Maybe you're part of the X% who will never give in to a machine. But keep in mind that most people have no critical thinking skills nor mental fortitude.

I think we often get better at detecting the underlying emotion with which the person is communicating, seeing beyond the one they are trying to communicate in an attempt to manipulate us. For example, they say that $100 is their final price but we can sense in the wavering of their voice that they might feel really worried that they will lose the deal. I don't think this will help us pick up on those cues because there are no underlying real emotions happening, maybe even feeding us many false impressions and making us worse at gauging underlying emotions.