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It seems like with this, Meta is doubling down on the Facebook platform's use as a dark influencer in politics. It's bad for humanity to enable advanced profili

It seems like with this, Meta is doubling down on the Facebook platform's use as a dark influencer in politics. It's bad for humanity to enable advanced profiling and general targeting of demographics, but it's a whole other level if the communication itself can be targeted at the individual level. We're headed for a reality where I don't know if my friends' friends are real or not, and they each entice me with arguments tailor-made to my sensibility to change my mind in ways that serve someone else's purposes. Not to sound alarmist, but this is beyond Manhattan Project-levels of "maybe this won't turn out well for us."

machiaweliczny 4y ago
This is already done but more subtle. Probably the reason why Elon bought twitter.
ilaksh 4y ago
Like I mentioned on Twitter the other day, this is the age of mass information manipulation, biowarfare, and 5,000 ton orbital rockets. Maybe the AIs will eventually get smart enough to save us from ourselves.
mliker 4y ago
how in the world do you draw such a conclusion from an otherwise interesting and advancing piece of technology. every tech has drawbacks, we can't hold back as a species just because there are drawbacks. we need to build around them.
- blackbear_ 4y ago
  What you say is true. But I urge you to consider Facebook's business model and what may be pushing them to work on these things. In other words, how can facebook use this to increase user engagement among each other and with ads? The purpose of ads is to convince people about something. It therefore makes sense that facebook tries to make it easy to create convincing ads. And we already know the nefarious purposes some ads are done for.
- gcanyon 4y ago
  Exactly the way it was with the analogy I made: nuclear reactions are "an otherwise interesting and advancing piece of technology." But I think it's inarguable that the negative potential of nuclear reactions has provided a significant counterargument to the (undeniable) positives derived from it. I'm not arguing that one side outweighs the other -- adding up all the positives and negatives of nuclear technology would be a significant undertaking -- I'm simply saying that the researchers at Los Alamos didn't fully understand the ramifications of what they were creating, and it was potentially the case that the negatives would far outweigh the positive. One example is that so far we have managed to avoid global nuclear war. But no one could have predicted in 1945 what the likelihood of us avoiding it were. Similarly with this technology: no one can predict whether this will be a mix of positive and negative, or overwhelmingly one or the other. That's true of most technologies, but to be clear, this is not the invention of Post-It Notes. It is absolutely the case that technology like this could fundamentally change the course of human history -- for good or bad. And I'm not saying we should try to shove it back in the box. I'd be curious if that has ever worked. Nuclear, sort of? South Africa gave it up, after all. But to do that here would be futile and I'm confident actually push toward negative outcomes. All I'm saying is that we should be cautious in our approach, not that we shouldn't proceed. In other words, I think "... we can't hold back as a species just because there are drawbacks. we need to build around them." -- we're in agreement :-)
booleandilemma 4y ago
But you'll also have your own community-driven, open source AI advisor counseling you on what decisions you should make.
SteveDR 4y ago
Do you think people are incapable of sticking to their beliefs when they’re faced with counterarguments? Isn’t that kind of a pre-requisite for believing in democratic representation?
- gcanyon 4y ago
  > Do you think people are incapable of sticking to their beliefs when they’re faced with counterarguments? Heh, there are two ways to take your point. So: I hope most people are capable of discerning poor/invalid counterarguments and holding to their beliefs. I hope most people are capable of being persuaded by valid counterarguments and changing their minds. My point was that on the margins there are people who make the right choice for the wrong reasons: they are persuaded to a valid position by sub-standard arguments, or hold their valid position despite generally compelling arguments. And technology like this will (eventually) change that equation. Whoever the AI serves, their position, right or wrong, will be overweight in the public opinion because everyone gets exposed to the custom-made, specific-to-their-mental-susceptibilities arguments from sources they trust, because on other issues those sources agree with them. There are none so imprisoned as those who cannot see the cage. (not sure who said that first, can't be original with me)
chaosbolt 4y ago
>Not to sound alarmist, but this is beyond Manhattan Project-levels of "maybe this won't turn out well for us." Yep, but I feel like we're past the event horizon and all we can do for now is enjoy the spaghettification. It already feels like the internet isn't real anymore, Google has become unusable for real search except to find user reviews on reddit or other consumer things, it says it has a billion results but stops at page 40 and everything it shows is from big news sites who all write the same way, the comments on reddit all look the same and if you put an ip address collector in a link in any political sub like r/politics or r/news most clicks on your link will come from AWS servers, Youtube doesn't show any counter culture videos and you have to dig hard to even find videos from people you're subbed to, etc. Now you have politicians supporting this censorship, AI advanced enough to converse with you and deceive you without you realizing it, and tech leaders willing to play ball, so yeah nothing we can do anymore except for taking it. I still remember when comformist was an insult, now people outscream each other to show who's more of a comformist.
- charcircuit 4y ago
  >says it has a billion results but stops at page 40 Ranking sites is expensive. You should refine your query to narrow down the possible candidates instead of going through more pages.
- gcanyon 4y ago
  Almost no one goes to the second page. Nobody goes to page 40. As others have pointed out, if you actually do hit page 40, it means you should have refined your search terms. It's not censorship, it's just practicality and common sense. I've often found that a particular search goes sideways for me, but I think (hope) that's because my standards have increased over time, not because Google has actually gotten worse. Or because there's simply more to choose from. Interestingly, I still remember one of the searches I used with a friend to validate that Google was better than Alta Vista and Excite: to find out how the level of the ocean is different across the Panama Canal. No other search engine could answer that back in 2000(?). Today I search for: different levels atlantic pacific Panama canal And find plenty of information on the subject, regardless of whether I use Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, or Yahoo! Swisscows returns reasonable results, if fairly down the page. Yandex gives poor results.

machiaweliczny 4y ago

This is already done but more subtle. Probably the reason why Elon bought twitter.

ilaksh 4y ago

Like I mentioned on Twitter the other day, this is the age of mass information manipulation, biowarfare, and 5,000 ton orbital rockets. Maybe the AIs will eventually get smart enough to save us from ourselves.

mliker 4y ago

how in the world do you draw such a conclusion from an otherwise interesting and advancing piece of technology. every tech has drawbacks, we can't hold back as a species just because there are drawbacks. we need to build around them.

blackbear_ 4y ago
What you say is true. But I urge you to consider Facebook's business model and what may be pushing them to work on these things. In other words, how can facebook use this to increase user engagement among each other and with ads? The purpose of ads is to convince people about something. It therefore makes sense that facebook tries to make it easy to create convincing ads. And we already know the nefarious purposes some ads are done for.
gcanyon 4y ago
Exactly the way it was with the analogy I made: nuclear reactions are "an otherwise interesting and advancing piece of technology." But I think it's inarguable that the negative potential of nuclear reactions has provided a significant counterargument to the (undeniable) positives derived from it. I'm not arguing that one side outweighs the other -- adding up all the positives and negatives of nuclear technology would be a significant undertaking -- I'm simply saying that the researchers at Los Alamos didn't fully understand the ramifications of what they were creating, and it was potentially the case that the negatives would far outweigh the positive. One example is that so far we have managed to avoid global nuclear war. But no one could have predicted in 1945 what the likelihood of us avoiding it were. Similarly with this technology: no one can predict whether this will be a mix of positive and negative, or overwhelmingly one or the other. That's true of most technologies, but to be clear, this is not the invention of Post-It Notes. It is absolutely the case that technology like this could fundamentally change the course of human history -- for good or bad. And I'm not saying we should try to shove it back in the box. I'd be curious if that has ever worked. Nuclear, sort of? South Africa gave it up, after all. But to do that here would be futile and I'm confident actually push toward negative outcomes. All I'm saying is that we should be cautious in our approach, not that we shouldn't proceed. In other words, I think "... we can't hold back as a species just because there are drawbacks. we need to build around them." -- we're in agreement :-)

booleandilemma 4y ago

But you'll also have your own community-driven, open source AI advisor counseling you on what decisions you should make.

SteveDR 4y ago

Do you think people are incapable of sticking to their beliefs when they’re faced with counterarguments? Isn’t that kind of a pre-requisite for believing in democratic representation?

gcanyon 4y ago
> Do you think people are incapable of sticking to their beliefs when they’re faced with counterarguments? Heh, there are two ways to take your point. So: I hope most people are capable of discerning poor/invalid counterarguments and holding to their beliefs. I hope most people are capable of being persuaded by valid counterarguments and changing their minds. My point was that on the margins there are people who make the right choice for the wrong reasons: they are persuaded to a valid position by sub-standard arguments, or hold their valid position despite generally compelling arguments. And technology like this will (eventually) change that equation. Whoever the AI serves, their position, right or wrong, will be overweight in the public opinion because everyone gets exposed to the custom-made, specific-to-their-mental-susceptibilities arguments from sources they trust, because on other issues those sources agree with them. There are none so imprisoned as those who cannot see the cage. (not sure who said that first, can't be original with me)

chaosbolt 4y ago

>Not to sound alarmist, but this is beyond Manhattan Project-levels of "maybe this won't turn out well for us." Yep, but I feel like we're past the event horizon and all we can do for now is enjoy the spaghettification. It already feels like the internet isn't real anymore, Google has become unusable for real search except to find user reviews on reddit or other consumer things, it says it has a billion results but stops at page 40 and everything it shows is from big news sites who all write the same way, the comments on reddit all look the same and if you put an ip address collector in a link in any political sub like r/politics or r/news most clicks on your link will come from AWS servers, Youtube doesn't show any counter culture videos and you have to dig hard to even find videos from people you're subbed to, etc. Now you have politicians supporting this censorship, AI advanced enough to converse with you and deceive you without you realizing it, and tech leaders willing to play ball, so yeah nothing we can do anymore except for taking it. I still remember when comformist was an insult, now people outscream each other to show who's more of a comformist.

charcircuit 4y ago
>says it has a billion results but stops at page 40 Ranking sites is expensive. You should refine your query to narrow down the possible candidates instead of going through more pages.
gcanyon 4y ago
Almost no one goes to the second page. Nobody goes to page 40. As others have pointed out, if you actually do hit page 40, it means you should have refined your search terms. It's not censorship, it's just practicality and common sense. I've often found that a particular search goes sideways for me, but I think (hope) that's because my standards have increased over time, not because Google has actually gotten worse. Or because there's simply more to choose from. Interestingly, I still remember one of the searches I used with a friend to validate that Google was better than Alta Vista and Excite: to find out how the level of the ocean is different across the Panama Canal. No other search engine could answer that back in 2000(?). Today I search for: different levels atlantic pacific Panama canal And find plenty of information on the subject, regardless of whether I use Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, or Yahoo! Swisscows returns reasonable results, if fairly down the page. Yandex gives poor results.