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Yeah. You think social media is bad now? You just wait until the bot farms have full personas with personalities that can argue with everyone constantly to conv

Yeah. You think social media is bad now? You just wait until the bot farms have full personas with personalities that can argue with everyone constantly to convince them of whatever nonsense someone is trying to push. Marketing has already forced people to become defensive about communication. We don't answer phone calls, we throw out half or more of our mail without ever reading it, we scrutinize our email, we ignore the first 20 results of a search query, etc. Now marketing has a new tool that will be much more difficult to distinguish from an actual human being. Society will suffer greatly and trust will erode even further. What a bright future we've built for ourselves with technology.

Pigalowda 4y ago
It’s a future built by SWE. I wonder what those reading HN will make for us next! I’m excited that they are so extraordinarily adversarial against regular people. Can you imagine if they weren’t?? In the end, SWE will make the rope to hang themselves and everyone else. Just have to pay them enough.
kenjackson 4y ago
Maybe the positive side effect will be that people will put less weight on random people’s opinion on the Internet.
- somenameforme 4y ago
  This is my ideal best case outcome as well. In reality though I suspect we're going to see 'bias confirming bots' deployed en masse that aren't really trying to convince you of anything new, but rather strongly reinforcing views you probably already have that are convenient. In the lead up to the Iraq War just under 70% of Americans supported invading Iraq, and more than 90% believed it was likely we would find WMD. [1] Imagine if there were 'echo chamber' bots working to constantly reaffirm that belief with an ever-shifting narrative change to try to keep people holding onto beliefs that were extremely useful. There's also the 'dark side' bots that could be deployed to denigrate, argue, and impugn the integrity of the 30% and 10% respectively. They're not really trying to convince them of anything, but largely discourage the 70%/90% from becoming "one of them." I mean who wants to be a Saddam-puppet WMD-denier. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_opinion_in_the_United_States_on_the_invasion_of_Iraq https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_opinion_in_the_United_S...
pixl97 4y ago
>Marketing has already forced people to become defensive about communication. Kind of, but this is actually a second order effect. You get endless marketing/spam communications because the communications is cheap. Marketing companies didn't call you when calls had a cost per minute. By making any communications medium and tool inexpensive you are inviting parasites to feed off the cheap energy/money/power they can harvest off of it. I personally believe this is not something that can be fully regulated away, especially in a global internet. This is not so much of a technology is bad, as it is a humans are greedy and that well of emptiness in some of us can never be filled.

Pigalowda 4y ago

It’s a future built by SWE. I wonder what those reading HN will make for us next! I’m excited that they are so extraordinarily adversarial against regular people. Can you imagine if they weren’t?? In the end, SWE will make the rope to hang themselves and everyone else. Just have to pay them enough.

kenjackson 4y ago

Maybe the positive side effect will be that people will put less weight on random people’s opinion on the Internet.

somenameforme 4y ago
This is my ideal best case outcome as well. In reality though I suspect we're going to see 'bias confirming bots' deployed en masse that aren't really trying to convince you of anything new, but rather strongly reinforcing views you probably already have that are convenient. In the lead up to the Iraq War just under 70% of Americans supported invading Iraq, and more than 90% believed it was likely we would find WMD. [1] Imagine if there were 'echo chamber' bots working to constantly reaffirm that belief with an ever-shifting narrative change to try to keep people holding onto beliefs that were extremely useful. There's also the 'dark side' bots that could be deployed to denigrate, argue, and impugn the integrity of the 30% and 10% respectively. They're not really trying to convince them of anything, but largely discourage the 70%/90% from becoming "one of them." I mean who wants to be a Saddam-puppet WMD-denier. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_opinion_in_the_United_States_on_the_invasion_of_Iraq https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_opinion_in_the_United_S...

pixl97 4y ago

>Marketing has already forced people to become defensive about communication. Kind of, but this is actually a second order effect. You get endless marketing/spam communications because the communications is cheap. Marketing companies didn't call you when calls had a cost per minute. By making any communications medium and tool inexpensive you are inviting parasites to feed off the cheap energy/money/power they can harvest off of it. I personally believe this is not something that can be fully regulated away, especially in a global internet. This is not so much of a technology is bad, as it is a humans are greedy and that well of emptiness in some of us can never be filled.