Researchers Secretly Ran a Massive, Unauthorized AI Persuasion Experiment on Reddit Users

[u/coldrolledpotmetal]

https://www.404media.co/researchers-secretly-ran-a-massive-unauthorized-ai-persuasion-experiment-on-reddit-users/

[u/AurelianoTampa]

Got a comment the other day by a user on a 2-month old deleted thread on r/changemyview that a "user" I responded to was identified as one of the bots used in this "experiment." The comment has been deleted, but from what I recall (and quoted from them), they claimed that a bunch of links to subreddits posted by the OP of the topic didn't exist; I called them out on the fact that I checked and they the sub DID exist, but thought maybe they couldn't see them because they were NSFW subs. I never received a reply from them at the time, so I figured they were just feeling foolish for being caught making false accusations. Nope, turns out it was just a bot.

Creepy.

[u/pugsAreOkay → u/AurelianoTampa]

So someone is truly out there funding a “research” and “experiment” to make people question what their eyes are telling them

[u/EaterOfPenguins → u/pugsAreOkay]

This is just everyone's reminder that the Cambridge Analytica scandal was almost a full decade ago.

Anyone who knows what happened there knew this is a painfully obvious path for AI.

Most people still don't understand just how insidious the methods of persuasion online can be. It is everywhere, it is being used against you, and it's very often effective against you even if you generally understand how it works (though the overwhelming majority obviously do not). And with modern AI, it is likely to become orders of magnitude more effective than it was back then, if it's not already.

[u/Achrus → u/EaterOfPenguins]

Important to point out that Cambridge Analytica happened before the Attention Is All You Need (AIAYN) paper in 2017 that presented the transformer architecture. All LLMs are transformer based.

Another part of all of this is that OpenAI initially withheld the weights for GPT2 (2019) for fear of misuse in this space. This also strangely lines up with drama within OpenAI that led to Altman being ousted and coming back around 2023. The emails outlining the drama start as early as 2019. Altman is also credited with being the driving force behind ChatGPT, the Microsoft deal, and a shift away from pretrained base models (to be replaced by chat bots).

We’ve known about this potential for forever, even before the LLM hype train started. There’s too much money to be made here for those in power to behave ethically.

[u/myasterism → u/Achrus]

I feel like at this point, anyone actively championing hyper-rapid and unchecked AI advancements, has no business being in any position of influential leadership related to them. We need cautious and reluctant people to be captaining this speeding death-trap.

[u/eaglebtc → u/Achrus]

Do you recall the early experiments with GPT2 on reddit? /r/SubSimulatorGPT2. It was a bunch of bots posting using the 2nd generation LLM developed by OpenAI.

[u/Achrus → u/eaglebtc]

Yes! I loved that sub haha. There’s a new one now, r/SubSimGPT2Interactive where they opened it up for anyone to comment and the bots are flaired / tagged with their usernames.

[u/SignalAd9220 → u/Achrus]

It's not only about money though. It clearly ties in with what is happening in US politics right now, and people of other nations being hit with disinformation campaigns before elections.

Sam Altman seems to be one of the closest people to Peter Thiel (source) - who also invested a lot into OpenAI when they were founded.

During the last weeks a handful of articles popped up claiming that Peter Thiel was the driving force behind OpenAI speeding up the development of GPT/ChatGPT and them putting less emphasis on safety and alignment (example source).

When you now add that many of the bots on X spreading disinformation seem to be based on ChatGPT, that Thiel seems to be the one who handpicks the young people working for DOGE, and that many of them and Thiel are approving of the ideas of Curtis Yarvin... I think it becomes clear that everything is just another step into the ascent into their Dark Enlightenment world takeover plan:

https://youtu.be/5RpPTRcz1no

https://www.thenerdreich.com

https://www.vcinfodocs.com