Comment on OpenAI: Our models are more persuasive than 82% of Reddit users
faltryka@lemmy.world 1 year agoThis is the buried lede that’s really concerning I think.
Their goal is to create AI agents that are indistinguishable from humans and capable of convincing people to hold certain positions.
Some time in the future all online discourse may be just a giant AI fueled tool sold to the highest bidders to manufacture consent.
Their goal is to create AI agents that are indistinguishable from humans and capable of convincing people to hold certain positions.
A very large portion of people, possibly more than half, do change their views to fit in with everyone else. So an army of bots pretending to have a view will sway a significant portion of the population just through repetition and exposure with the assumption that most other people think that way.
So if a bunch of accounts on lemmy repeat an opinion that isn’t popular with people I meet IRL then that could be an attempt to change public opinion using bots on lemmy?
In the case of Lemmy, it is more likely that the members of communities are people because the population is small enough that a mass influx of bots would be easy to notice compared to reddit. Plus the Lemmy comminities tend to have obvious rules and enforcement that filters out people who aren’t on the same page.
For example, you will notice some general opinions on .world and .ml and blahaj will fit their local instance culture and trying to change that with bots would likely run afoul of the moderation or the established community members.
It is far easier to utilize bots as part of a large pool of potential users compared to a smaller one.
It just has to be proportional. Reports on these bot farms have shown that they absolutely go into small niche areas to influence people. Facebook groups being one of the most notable that comes to mind.
It’s no surprise that social media companies are working on AI their platforms are no longer social, they are just tools to control public opinion.
Other governments and oligarchs will pay any money to have that kind of power.
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 1 year ago
It already is, at least on Armenia and Azerbaijan.