Technology

I hate how these kinds of things are always framed. The implied message is always that "AI" can autonomously decide to go of the rails. Similar to the Moltbot craze. The agents have to be told to go do the things they do. They don't have free will.

Using a combination of network science and large language models, the same underlying technology that powers systems like ChatGPT, the researchers created and monitored synthetic bot agent personas, their posts, and their interactions with one another, simulating what a coordinated AI-powered social media network might look like.

So yeah, LLMs can used nefariously to great effect. They're essentially more sophisticated bots.

Automated psyop brain rot robot.

Is AI stealing influencer jobs?

Imagine it is two weeks before a major election in a closely contested state. A controversial ballot measure is on the line. Suddenly, a wave of posts floods X, Reddit, and Facebook, all pushing the same narrative, all amplifying each other, all generating the appearance of a massive grassroots movement. Except none of it is real. ...Trust in the information people encounter on X, Facebook, and Reddit, already eroded, could fall even farther.

It's much more difficult to be propagandized by any means, including autonomous AI, when you're not freely offering up your own time and devices daily to have it fed to you, individualized just for you by means of your own data, which you are also donating to the cause of propagandizing you.

I get why people do, there are lots of good reasons, but at a certain point the good outweighs the bad. And there's no time like the present to make a change.

So if you're reading this and you are still interacting with these centralized corporate-owned propaganda sites regularly, maybe it's time to rethink that strategy.

A somewhat more hopeful take is that this strategy could be weaponized against misinformation too.

Excited to see smear campaigns that become increasingly surreal and disturbing

well shit, first writing hit pieces, now this.