Commenters warn of AI-driven propaganda at scale
5 Sep 18 4:25 PM · 8d ago · 6 comments · 1 source · development 5 of 6
Several commenters connect chatbot persuasiveness to concerns about automated, targeted propaganda and election manipulation, describing the combination of language generation, A/B testing and personal data as enabling a 'Pandora of propaganda.'
“Imagine this kind of method being deployed at scale to influence elections... no doubt it is already happening...”
pcrhLuciano Floridi Philosopher cited in the science.org articleTerra Blevins Northeastern Khoury College professorHeather Littlefield Northeastern linguistics professorSofia Teixeira Professor, Northeastern Network Science Institute London
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What people said 5 voices · best of 6 · verbatim
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LLMs are fine-tuned through human feedback. One way to improve for them would be to be more helpful, more factually correct, more capable of solving problems.This may be (much) harder to do than generating rhetoric that is convincing to a large majority of people, perhaps so convincing that it can be classified as a superstimulus that bypasses any…
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When you combine:- mechanizing language creation- A/B testing- rapid and automated iteration based on the aboveYou quickly realize that building propaganda engines is getting easier and easier.If you then fold in large amounts of data on individual's likes, dislikes and general political leanings you can build targeted propaganda tailored to each…
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I think this is a counter (a cynical, scary counter to be sure) to the charge that OpenAI/Anthropic etc are unsustainable and will run out of money and it's all going to fall down. These companies have amazing, unprecedented power.
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You can always walk away from an online conversation. There's a form of relentlessness, but it's more that an LLM is patient enough to debate you for as long as you wish to keep going.
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This is frankly quite worrisome for democracy.Imagine this kind of method being deployed at scale to influence elections... no doubt it is already happening...
All 6 developments of AI chatbots now out-persuade humans in debates, research… →
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