AI makes it cheap and easy to create propaganda at scale.

The logical end of the ‘Solution to bad speech is better speech’ has arrived in the age of state-sponsored social media propaganda bots versus AI-driven bots arguing back

  • zephyreks@lemmy.caEnglish
    5324·
    1 year ago

    Ah yes, American truths like “Iraq has WMDs and that’s why invading them is the fair and just thing to do,” “abortion is bad for human rights,” “the US isn’t collecting all of your internet traffic because that would be a violation of privacy,” and “this CIA-funded coup of a democratically-elected government will definitely help spread democracy around the world.”

    This researcher has built a pro-America AI disinformation machine for $400. I expect that, like most American media, it will start citing “independent think tanks” like Atlantic Council (which, coincidentally, is staffed mostly by ex-US intelligence and receives funding from US intelligence agencies) and use reports gathered by “independent sources” such as the US 4th PsyOps Airborne (which, per their recent recruiting videos, admits to orchestrating large-scale protests including Euromaidan, Tiananmen Square, and others).

    • mea_rah@lemmy.worldEnglish
      153·
      1 year ago

      Have you seen any tweet this bot generated that would contain misinformation? Because I haven’t.

      What is the context for Iraq WMDs? I haven’t seen it anywhere in the article?

      • zephyreks@lemmy.caEnglish
        63·
        1 year ago

        Is anyone arguing that, at the time of the Iraq War, it wasn’t considered a “truth” in America that Iraq was developing WMDs and that anything to the contrary was considered disinformation?

        • mea_rah@lemmy.worldEnglish
          32·
          1 year ago

          So is the bot not pointing out obvious lies with links to factual data or what is your point? Can you link me to an example of bot using shaky arguments?

          And the WMD claims stood on shaky legs from very beginning, many countries like Germany opposed use of force in Iraq. Perhaps we’d benefit from bot correcting false narratives in real time had this technology been available at the time.

          • zephyreks@lemmy.caEnglish
            4·
            1 year ago

            The bot doesn’t know what’s “real” or not though - it’s a large language model, not a model of the real world. All it knows is what it’s been told in its training data.

        • Manifish_Destiny@lemmy.worldEnglish
          83·
          1 year ago

          That’s because they aren’t.

          Chemical weapons cause severe agony, but tend to kill a limited number of people.

          • orrk@lemmy.worldEnglish
            63·
            1 year ago

            According to the UN:

            Weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) constitute a class of weaponry with the potential to:

            • Produce in a single moment an enormous destructive effect capable to kill millions of civilians, jeopardize the natural environment, and fundamentally alter the lives of future generations through their catastrophic effects;

            • Cause death or serious injury of people through toxic or poisonous chemicals;

            • Disseminate disease-causing organisms or toxins to harm or kill humans, animals or plants;

            • Deliver nuclear explosive devices, chemical, biological or toxin agents to use them for hostile purposes or in armed conflict.

            So, they were WMDs

            • thenightisdark@lemmy.worldEnglish
              61·
              1 year ago

              By this definition, 9/11 proves that a jumbo jet is a WMD. I don’t know if I can call a jumbo jet a WMD.

              • orrk@lemmy.worldEnglish
                12·
                1 year ago

                9/11 only had its effect because they hit the twin towers, chemical weapons can kill entire areas

                • zephyreks@lemmy.caEnglish
                  31·
                  1 year ago

                  How the fuck are 14 155mm shells filled with mustard gas and a few kilograms of expired growth media going to kill millions of people?

            • zephyreks@lemmy.caEnglish
              61·
              1 year ago

              Iraq had those same stores of chemical weapons since the 1980s and was in the slow and arduous process of dismantling them (it had dismantled something like 90-95% of its WMDs by 2003 and was not stockpiling replacements). Given the lack of new production, many of the chemical weapons supposedly in Iraq’s stockpile would have turned harmless due to the short shelf life of chemical weapons.

              By and large, people used this imagined idea that Iraq was still developing nuclear weapons as the justification for the invasion. American media ran stories about how aluminum tubes “used for uranium enrichment” were being imported by Iraq. American media brought out Iraqi defectors of questionable credibility who talked about Iraq’s burgeoning nuclear capability. American intelligence claimed that Iraq was actively seeking nuclear weapons development. Of course, all of these claims were entirely false.