6 ms·

I think something that's become clear with propaganda is that it scales extremely well. If you could create propaganda 100x faster it's a meaningful capability,

I think something that's become clear with propaganda is that it scales extremely well. If you could create propaganda 100x faster it's a meaningful capability, and it's hard to estimate how dangerous that could really be.

Mirioron 6y ago
Has it? When it comes to nation states, do you really think that it would make a meaningful difference whether they hire 10000 people to create propaganda vs having a single AI algorithm? Yes, it would be a win in terms of cost, but creating propaganda is not a resource-limited endeavor for a large nation state.
- nickpeterson 6y ago
  There is a difference in controlling the message. It’s a lot easier to keep nefarious actions secret if a few people and a cluster of computers is doing the work vs thousands of people.
  - Mirioron 6y ago
    That's a good point.
- cwillu 6y ago
  Automated production of propaganda has scaling properties that an army of writers do not. Consider a twitter bot that responded to conservative twitter posts with a links and quotes from a liberal thinktank blog, whose articles were generated and saved on the fly to look like rebuttals, complete with references to seemingly already existing/back-dated articles laying the groundwork, also generated on the fly and saved. It's a game changer. [edit: clarified back-dated]
pdonis 6y ago
> I think something that's become clear with propaganda is that it scales extremely well. If this is indeed a problem, it's not a problem that's fixable by controlling the supply of propaganda (which for this discussion I am assuming to mean something like "false information that nevertheless convinces a lot of people of its truth"). It's only fixable by controlling the demand for propaganda--in other words, by reducing the number of people who can be convinced by it. To look at it another way: trying to control the supply of propaganda means some authority has to have the power to judge that certain statements are propaganda and suppress them. How does that authority decide what is propaganda and what isn't? All you've done is transfer the propaganda problem to that authority, and that might make it, if anything, even harder to solve. Propaganda spread by Facebook posts and tweets is one thing. Propaganda spread by a recognized authority, especially under the guise of controlling propaganda spread by someone else, is quite another. The only way out of this trap is for people to stop being convinced by anything that they cannot convince themselves of using their intelligence, common sense, and critical thinking skills.

Mirioron 6y ago

Has it? When it comes to nation states, do you really think that it would make a meaningful difference whether they hire 10000 people to create propaganda vs having a single AI algorithm? Yes, it would be a win in terms of cost, but creating propaganda is not a resource-limited endeavor for a large nation state.

nickpeterson 6y ago
There is a difference in controlling the message. It’s a lot easier to keep nefarious actions secret if a few people and a cluster of computers is doing the work vs thousands of people.
- Mirioron 6y ago
  That's a good point.
cwillu 6y ago
Automated production of propaganda has scaling properties that an army of writers do not. Consider a twitter bot that responded to conservative twitter posts with a links and quotes from a liberal thinktank blog, whose articles were generated and saved on the fly to look like rebuttals, complete with references to seemingly already existing/back-dated articles laying the groundwork, also generated on the fly and saved. It's a game changer. [edit: clarified back-dated]

pdonis 6y ago

> I think something that's become clear with propaganda is that it scales extremely well. If this is indeed a problem, it's not a problem that's fixable by controlling the supply of propaganda (which for this discussion I am assuming to mean something like "false information that nevertheless convinces a lot of people of its truth"). It's only fixable by controlling the demand for propaganda--in other words, by reducing the number of people who can be convinced by it. To look at it another way: trying to control the supply of propaganda means some authority has to have the power to judge that certain statements are propaganda and suppress them. How does that authority decide what is propaganda and what isn't? All you've done is transfer the propaganda problem to that authority, and that might make it, if anything, even harder to solve. Propaganda spread by Facebook posts and tweets is one thing. Propaganda spread by a recognized authority, especially under the guise of controlling propaganda spread by someone else, is quite another. The only way out of this trap is for people to stop being convinced by anything that they cannot convince themselves of using their intelligence, common sense, and critical thinking skills.