7 ms·

This has been a concern of mine for a while; I have also published absolute garbage just to see how far I can take it. I've published music under various pseudo

by gzer0 4y ago

This has been a concern of mine for a while; I have also published absolute garbage just to see how far I can take it. I've published music under various pseudonyms, books underneath different pen-names... the list goes on. I've retracted such publications, but it is frightening if one person like myself had the curiosity to try, what is already out there, and, what a well-funded nation-state actor could do. ---- Post-truth, like post-modernism, does not mean an absolute absence of truth, but a decline in confidence in common knowledge, making your own truth the center of your life, rather than a set of values shared by a community. We now believe that our own truth is somehow better than the "centralized" or "official" truth. We are now free from the institutions and authorities that controlled the truth. But this is an illusion, because the very definition of truth requires trust in something other than you. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/j5gyp5/the_search_for_truth_in_a_posttruth_society/ https://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/j5gyp5/the_sear...

coldtea 4y ago
>and, what a well-funded nation-state actor could do. Release crap books nobody will read, or fill Soundcloud with bad music?
- RF_Savage 4y ago
  I think NKRFZ had a video about a weird genre of pro-war fiction that is published en mass in Russia and promoted quite alot, but which does not really sell.
  - coldtea 4y ago
    Pro-war fiction? That's like the standard movie for several decades from Rambo to Michael Bay's epics and Top Gun Maverick, and in movie form that has far wider appeal, 10000x the audiences, and is way more glamorous! "weird pro war fiction" would be very low in effectiveness...
    - oriolid 4y ago
      Reminds me of the "long tail effect". One work of weird pro war fiction is not enough, but different customised propaganda for every niche might be something.
    - rideontime 4y ago
      michael bay and top gun, sure, but rambo? I don't remember that having a particularly pro-war attitude.
      - coldtea 4y ago
        That's because you've erased Rambo 2+ from your memory :)
      - OOPMan 4y ago
        That's because it's about PTSD. I suspect the commenter is either ignorant or just decided to roll in all the terrible sequels...
        Dracophoenix 4y ago
        The first one, yes. But in every sequel to the original, he's transformed into the stereotypical loose-cannon action hero.
        coldtea 4y ago
        Rambo is a franchize. Why not roll in all the sequels? All those were huge when we were kids, and Rambo was synonymous with "macho super-soldier killings thousands on his own with bazookas", not "PTSD soldier back home from Vietnam is persecuted by local authority figures".
    - OOPMan 4y ago
      The original Rambo was actually anti-war. Did you even watch it?
      - coldtea 4y ago
  - vanderZwan 4y ago
    That assumes selling is the point. What if drowning out other voices is the real goal?
    - coldtea 4y ago
      Then they're doing a bad job at it :)
      - vanderZwan 4y ago
        That's good to hear at least :) But I imagine that abusing SEO to ensure search results don't show people the results they actually want to see (or maybe "need to see", but that's quite the can of worms to open) is a legitimate tactic in any propaganda machine.
m463 4y ago
I was going to say who does this... but then I thought of github projects.
spyaye 4y ago
Are you the same gzero who was featured in the Snowden leaks? If so, long time no see. Hope all is well.
sneak 4y ago
Ahh yes, the nation-state funded military-fake-book complex, destabilizing nations the world over. We really need to watch out for nation-states using incoherent technobabble!
- archon1410 4y ago
  Yeah, not sure what the new concern here is. "Nation-states" always have had the ability to manufacture truth out of nothing, they've been doing this since before there were any computers. Why would they need the help of GPT-3? Why would they want to spam incoherent hallucinations? What would they gain out of that when they already have the ability to "manufacture consent" at scale? It's not even a democratisation of bullshit, non-state actors also don't need GPT-3 to spam nonsense. PR and advertising is all about that and has a history of hundreds if not thousands of years. Maybe the new thing here is that people now realise lying is easy.
- Cthulhu_ 4y ago
  The commenter does have a point though; there's a lot of low effort high volume spam on the internet that reinforce certain narratives that cause division, on subjects like gender identity, generational differences, favorite TV shows, wokeism, Brexit, classism, racism, etc. There's actors on both sides of those debates, not because they're particularly leaning towards one or the other, but because the division is causing political shifts and internal strife. This has already led to the EU starting to fall apart - the UK is out of the EU, Hungary and Poland no longer meet the criteria for having backslid into totalitarianism or at the very least, no longer having a division between the legal and executive branches of law. And it's causing lines to be drawn in the US as well, with calls for secession rising. But the US has been an "us vs them" type of "democracy" for a while now, it probably didn't take much to entrench the sides more deeply. Anyway, that's online discourse, I'm sure it extends to books too, just less obviously.
  - Jiro 4y ago
    I am not convinced that Brexit or anti-EU sentiment is primarily driven by spam.
  - 4y ago
cowtools 4y ago
I don't think it's that scary. I mean it's basically spam isn't it? The only thing new is the volume in which you can produce surface-level-indistinguishable spam. It is now cheaper to produce lots of flowery, meaningless text that is full of definitions. I suspect that the future of literature is more concise and externally-meaningful writing. Amazon is a terrible marketplace insofar as the rating system isn't sybil proof. this crap slips through the cracks.
- fullstackchris 4y ago
  Yes, for now. But what will these models look like in something like 5-10 more years?
  - colonwqbang 4y ago
    Well, what does it matter? What if a market develops for autogenerated junk literature. People can buy and read what they like best. Today a lot of literature is published that I might consider to be "junk". But there are people buying and reading it and enjoying it and that's fine. Maybe it could create a new genre of literature that is tailored to the reader's interests.
    - Eisenstein 4y ago
      But that 'junk' literature you are describing that people like isn't inherently designed to be deceitful in the sense that people who want something else are its target. When you replace 'catering to a certain audience by being good at doing something they want' with 'catering to a certain audience by being good at selling them something they don't want' then you have created a system in which supply and demand is no longer operating properly.
      - Dracophoenix 4y ago
        If the product is what's desired, why does the creator or the intent of the creator behind it matter? Danielle Steele has written same erotic story for decades and still sells millions. Hallmark makes the same kind of movie every Christmas involving a city girl tired of the city and a farm boy or lumberjack who wants to settle down. I don't see what's wrong with the next big erotic hit or regurgitated romance flick being composed and directed by an AI.
jerrygoyal 4y ago
how much money did that make though
fl0id 4y ago
From a culture perspective, I don't think the author worries about nation states. They could always do that. But with GPT etc alsmost everybody can do that.
parentheses 4y ago
It can’t be hard to curate and edit the output of the AIs. I imagine that is already happening. AI does the heavy lifting making the cost of production possibly an order of magnitude lower. Couple that with some other AI tools like unifying voice across many sections and fixing grammar mistakes, a nation-state could create a very effective propaganda machine to manipulate their enemies with basic language proficiency.
hot_gril 4y ago
I did this (wrote pseudo-random crap, not using an AI) in high school English class for a poetry assignment. The teacher said it was amazing work and the best he's read in a long time. He even wrote about it in the progress report sent to my parents. I don't know if he fell for it or if he was just pulling my leg even harder. The man had a sense of humor.

by gzer0 4y ago

coldtea 4y ago

>and, what a well-funded nation-state actor could do. Release crap books nobody will read, or fill Soundcloud with bad music?

RF_Savage 4y ago
I think NKRFZ had a video about a weird genre of pro-war fiction that is published en mass in Russia and promoted quite alot, but which does not really sell.
- coldtea 4y ago
  Pro-war fiction? That's like the standard movie for several decades from Rambo to Michael Bay's epics and Top Gun Maverick, and in movie form that has far wider appeal, 10000x the audiences, and is way more glamorous! "weird pro war fiction" would be very low in effectiveness...
  - oriolid 4y ago
    Reminds me of the "long tail effect". One work of weird pro war fiction is not enough, but different customised propaganda for every niche might be something.
  - rideontime 4y ago
    michael bay and top gun, sure, but rambo? I don't remember that having a particularly pro-war attitude.
    - coldtea 4y ago
      That's because you've erased Rambo 2+ from your memory :)
    - OOPMan 4y ago
      That's because it's about PTSD. I suspect the commenter is either ignorant or just decided to roll in all the terrible sequels...
      - Dracophoenix 4y ago
        The first one, yes. But in every sequel to the original, he's transformed into the stereotypical loose-cannon action hero.
      - coldtea 4y ago
        Rambo is a franchize. Why not roll in all the sequels? All those were huge when we were kids, and Rambo was synonymous with "macho super-soldier killings thousands on his own with bazookas", not "PTSD soldier back home from Vietnam is persecuted by local authority figures".
  - OOPMan 4y ago
    The original Rambo was actually anti-war. Did you even watch it?
    - coldtea 4y ago
- vanderZwan 4y ago
  That assumes selling is the point. What if drowning out other voices is the real goal?
  - coldtea 4y ago
    Then they're doing a bad job at it :)
    - vanderZwan 4y ago
      That's good to hear at least :) But I imagine that abusing SEO to ensure search results don't show people the results they actually want to see (or maybe "need to see", but that's quite the can of worms to open) is a legitimate tactic in any propaganda machine.

m463 4y ago

I was going to say who does this... but then I thought of github projects.

spyaye 4y ago

Are you the same gzero who was featured in the Snowden leaks? If so, long time no see. Hope all is well.

sneak 4y ago

Ahh yes, the nation-state funded military-fake-book complex, destabilizing nations the world over. We really need to watch out for nation-states using incoherent technobabble!

archon1410 4y ago
Yeah, not sure what the new concern here is. "Nation-states" always have had the ability to manufacture truth out of nothing, they've been doing this since before there were any computers. Why would they need the help of GPT-3? Why would they want to spam incoherent hallucinations? What would they gain out of that when they already have the ability to "manufacture consent" at scale? It's not even a democratisation of bullshit, non-state actors also don't need GPT-3 to spam nonsense. PR and advertising is all about that and has a history of hundreds if not thousands of years. Maybe the new thing here is that people now realise lying is easy.
Cthulhu_ 4y ago
The commenter does have a point though; there's a lot of low effort high volume spam on the internet that reinforce certain narratives that cause division, on subjects like gender identity, generational differences, favorite TV shows, wokeism, Brexit, classism, racism, etc. There's actors on both sides of those debates, not because they're particularly leaning towards one or the other, but because the division is causing political shifts and internal strife. This has already led to the EU starting to fall apart - the UK is out of the EU, Hungary and Poland no longer meet the criteria for having backslid into totalitarianism or at the very least, no longer having a division between the legal and executive branches of law. And it's causing lines to be drawn in the US as well, with calls for secession rising. But the US has been an "us vs them" type of "democracy" for a while now, it probably didn't take much to entrench the sides more deeply. Anyway, that's online discourse, I'm sure it extends to books too, just less obviously.
- Jiro 4y ago
  I am not convinced that Brexit or anti-EU sentiment is primarily driven by spam.
- 4y ago

cowtools 4y ago

I don't think it's that scary. I mean it's basically spam isn't it? The only thing new is the volume in which you can produce surface-level-indistinguishable spam. It is now cheaper to produce lots of flowery, meaningless text that is full of definitions. I suspect that the future of literature is more concise and externally-meaningful writing. Amazon is a terrible marketplace insofar as the rating system isn't sybil proof. this crap slips through the cracks.

fullstackchris 4y ago
Yes, for now. But what will these models look like in something like 5-10 more years?
- colonwqbang 4y ago
  Well, what does it matter? What if a market develops for autogenerated junk literature. People can buy and read what they like best. Today a lot of literature is published that I might consider to be "junk". But there are people buying and reading it and enjoying it and that's fine. Maybe it could create a new genre of literature that is tailored to the reader's interests.
  - Eisenstein 4y ago
    But that 'junk' literature you are describing that people like isn't inherently designed to be deceitful in the sense that people who want something else are its target. When you replace 'catering to a certain audience by being good at doing something they want' with 'catering to a certain audience by being good at selling them something they don't want' then you have created a system in which supply and demand is no longer operating properly.
    - Dracophoenix 4y ago
      If the product is what's desired, why does the creator or the intent of the creator behind it matter? Danielle Steele has written same erotic story for decades and still sells millions. Hallmark makes the same kind of movie every Christmas involving a city girl tired of the city and a farm boy or lumberjack who wants to settle down. I don't see what's wrong with the next big erotic hit or regurgitated romance flick being composed and directed by an AI.

jerrygoyal 4y ago

how much money did that make though

fl0id 4y ago

From a culture perspective, I don't think the author worries about nation states. They could always do that. But with GPT etc alsmost everybody can do that.

parentheses 4y ago

It can’t be hard to curate and edit the output of the AIs. I imagine that is already happening. AI does the heavy lifting making the cost of production possibly an order of magnitude lower. Couple that with some other AI tools like unifying voice across many sections and fixing grammar mistakes, a nation-state could create a very effective propaganda machine to manipulate their enemies with basic language proficiency.

hot_gril 4y ago

I did this (wrote pseudo-random crap, not using an AI) in high school English class for a poetry assignment. The teacher said it was amazing work and the best he's read in a long time. He even wrote about it in the progress report sent to my parents. I don't know if he fell for it or if he was just pulling my leg even harder. The man had a sense of humor.