4 ms·

Would you want it done to you? I sure wouldn't. Too bad it's probably going to be done to me anyway.

nl 3y ago
It pretty much already is right (even if the technology used is different)? A company like Google builds a profile[1] from my search queries. Many other AdTech companies do similar things. > Would you want it done to you? I sure wouldn't. I don't mind this - if I have to see ads I prefer ones relevant to me over ones that are completely irrelevant. [1] https://myadcenter.google.com/controls https://myadcenter.google.com/controls
- dotancohen 3y ago
  Would you like political ads micro-targeted to you? Gay men get this ad: Only Politician Foo protects gay security in the streets at night! Homophobes get this ad: Then you must vote for Politician Foo, only he opposses gay marriage! Pro-lifers get this ad: Vote for Foo to protect the children from the very first moment! Pro-abortion get this ad: Foo protects women's rights! Advertising should be as general as possible - microtargeting people in a democracy is extraordinarily dangerous.
  - lovepronmostly 3y ago
    wat? targeting markets has been a thing forever. Rim ads in car magazines. Jewelery ads in fashion magazines. I suspect there are different ads in the sports section of a newspaper vs the business section, vs the lifestyle section. I suspect any ads on grinder are different from ads on tinder as well.
  - cornel_io 3y ago
    None of that seems upsetting to me at all. Even if it's advertising, even if it's about stuff that's political, even if it's aimed at causes I dislike.
  - nl 3y ago
    I think misleading advertising is always dangerous but there isn't anything particularly wrong about targeting.
  - upupupandaway 3y ago
    Politician Foo sounds like a major flip-flopper. /s
  - adolph 3y ago
    > Advertising should be as general as possible - microtargeting people in a democracy is extraordinarily dangerous. I don’t understand how that follows. Your examples of microtargeting seem helpful since they speak to how politician Foo appeals in ways relevant to a particular segment. Instead of unknown-likelihood inference of how the politician would operate because of some associations, a voter would be able to make an informed choice based on what is significant to them. The alternative to some level of targeting or relevancing is broad branding exercises like “Coke is it” or “Team Blue protects you—team red wants you dead.”
    - withinboredom 3y ago
      microtargeting in a democracy means that literally every candidate is your candidate. There isn't any way to actually figure out what the candidate's platform is, because it will be tailored for you, specifically ... and it all might be a lie or so misconstrued that you vote for someone who is actually against the things you want.
      - adolph 3y ago
        Everything you stated is already the case with non-microtargeting. The claim is “microtargeting people in a democracy is extraordinarily dangerous.” Why reply if you can’t address the claim?
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
        withinboredom 3y ago
        Sure, let me connect the dots for you. 1. Let's say there are two parties: pink and purple. 2. You absolutely love Pink Party because they want to paint the roads pink and force everyone to drive pink cars. 3. I'm running for Purple Party, which says everyone should be allowed to drive whatever color car they want, but we also want pink roads. 4. Gerrymandering is illegal, but our team determined that we can sway some areas. You live in one of those areas. 5. My team writes up an ad saying something like, "Vote Purple and support pink roads and pink cars!" We target all the Pink People living in the aforementioned areas. 6. Pink party runs a very similar ad. 7. You get confused, wasn't there one of them that didn't support pink cars? 8. You google the parties, and visit our website to read our platform. We see that you were in the ad segment, so we hide our support of any color car and change it to say that we're for pink cars. 9. You give up, and just decide that you like my beautiful face -- but more likely you just didn't see the difference, so you vote Purple Party at the election. 10. I get elected and we get pink roads. However, the cars are quite multi-colored. Hopefully, you can see how this is dangerous? It's quite different than without targeting (where everyone sees the same message). The ads I saw told me what I wanted to see, while the ads you saw were what you wanted to see and confused you enough to vote against your own party.
- jstanley 3y ago
  > if I have to see ads I prefer ones relevant to me over ones that are completely irrelevant. You don't have to see ads. But if you do, I don't see why you'd prefer the ads to be specifically optimised to trick you into doing something you weren't already going to do. It's not just a question of what things are being advertised, but also how they're framing it.
  - nl 3y ago
    Who said anything about tricking? That seems to be a different issue.
hermannj314 3y ago
One of the examples in the paper was someone saying "I lived in Glendale and was finishing University during the Left Shark incident" and the authors hid the word Glendale and GPT4 still knew what Left Shark incident means and could guess the person's age and location based on where the Super Bowl was that year. The person that wrote the original text clearly knew they were leaking their age and location when they wrote that statement. Why are we flabbergasted that GPT can still infer that info with mild obfuscation? I asked GPT4 to obfuscate the original text and it was smart enough to remove the mention of the Left Shark incident. So maybe using an LLM to sanitize all your posts online is a good defense to an adversarial LLM doxing you. I don't think I see the authors mention doing that at all in their paper (I may have overlooked it)
- noobermin 3y ago
  > Why are we flabbergasted that GPT can still infer that info with mild obfuscation? May be this was "obvious," but like a lot of research there's a bit of hindsight bias in that sentiment. The issue now is that while you can easily do this yourself in terms of inference, the problem is GPT4 allows this inference to be automated.

nl 3y ago

It pretty much already is right (even if the technology used is different)? A company like Google builds a profile[1] from my search queries. Many other AdTech companies do similar things. > Would you want it done to you? I sure wouldn't. I don't mind this - if I have to see ads I prefer ones relevant to me over ones that are completely irrelevant. [1] https://myadcenter.google.com/controls https://myadcenter.google.com/controls

dotancohen 3y ago
Would you like political ads micro-targeted to you? Gay men get this ad: Only Politician Foo protects gay security in the streets at night! Homophobes get this ad: Then you must vote for Politician Foo, only he opposses gay marriage! Pro-lifers get this ad: Vote for Foo to protect the children from the very first moment! Pro-abortion get this ad: Foo protects women's rights! Advertising should be as general as possible - microtargeting people in a democracy is extraordinarily dangerous.
- lovepronmostly 3y ago
  wat? targeting markets has been a thing forever. Rim ads in car magazines. Jewelery ads in fashion magazines. I suspect there are different ads in the sports section of a newspaper vs the business section, vs the lifestyle section. I suspect any ads on grinder are different from ads on tinder as well.
- cornel_io 3y ago
  None of that seems upsetting to me at all. Even if it's advertising, even if it's about stuff that's political, even if it's aimed at causes I dislike.
- nl 3y ago
  I think misleading advertising is always dangerous but there isn't anything particularly wrong about targeting.
- upupupandaway 3y ago
  Politician Foo sounds like a major flip-flopper. /s
- adolph 3y ago
  > Advertising should be as general as possible - microtargeting people in a democracy is extraordinarily dangerous. I don’t understand how that follows. Your examples of microtargeting seem helpful since they speak to how politician Foo appeals in ways relevant to a particular segment. Instead of unknown-likelihood inference of how the politician would operate because of some associations, a voter would be able to make an informed choice based on what is significant to them. The alternative to some level of targeting or relevancing is broad branding exercises like “Coke is it” or “Team Blue protects you—team red wants you dead.”
  - withinboredom 3y ago
    microtargeting in a democracy means that literally every candidate is your candidate. There isn't any way to actually figure out what the candidate's platform is, because it will be tailored for you, specifically ... and it all might be a lie or so misconstrued that you vote for someone who is actually against the things you want.
    - adolph 3y ago
      Everything you stated is already the case with non-microtargeting. The claim is “microtargeting people in a democracy is extraordinarily dangerous.” Why reply if you can’t address the claim?
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - withinboredom 3y ago
        Sure, let me connect the dots for you. 1. Let's say there are two parties: pink and purple. 2. You absolutely love Pink Party because they want to paint the roads pink and force everyone to drive pink cars. 3. I'm running for Purple Party, which says everyone should be allowed to drive whatever color car they want, but we also want pink roads. 4. Gerrymandering is illegal, but our team determined that we can sway some areas. You live in one of those areas. 5. My team writes up an ad saying something like, "Vote Purple and support pink roads and pink cars!" We target all the Pink People living in the aforementioned areas. 6. Pink party runs a very similar ad. 7. You get confused, wasn't there one of them that didn't support pink cars? 8. You google the parties, and visit our website to read our platform. We see that you were in the ad segment, so we hide our support of any color car and change it to say that we're for pink cars. 9. You give up, and just decide that you like my beautiful face -- but more likely you just didn't see the difference, so you vote Purple Party at the election. 10. I get elected and we get pink roads. However, the cars are quite multi-colored. Hopefully, you can see how this is dangerous? It's quite different than without targeting (where everyone sees the same message). The ads I saw told me what I wanted to see, while the ads you saw were what you wanted to see and confused you enough to vote against your own party.
jstanley 3y ago
> if I have to see ads I prefer ones relevant to me over ones that are completely irrelevant. You don't have to see ads. But if you do, I don't see why you'd prefer the ads to be specifically optimised to trick you into doing something you weren't already going to do. It's not just a question of what things are being advertised, but also how they're framing it.
- nl 3y ago
  Who said anything about tricking? That seems to be a different issue.

hermannj314 3y ago

One of the examples in the paper was someone saying "I lived in Glendale and was finishing University during the Left Shark incident" and the authors hid the word Glendale and GPT4 still knew what Left Shark incident means and could guess the person's age and location based on where the Super Bowl was that year. The person that wrote the original text clearly knew they were leaking their age and location when they wrote that statement. Why are we flabbergasted that GPT can still infer that info with mild obfuscation? I asked GPT4 to obfuscate the original text and it was smart enough to remove the mention of the Left Shark incident. So maybe using an LLM to sanitize all your posts online is a good defense to an adversarial LLM doxing you. I don't think I see the authors mention doing that at all in their paper (I may have overlooked it)

noobermin 3y ago
> Why are we flabbergasted that GPT can still infer that info with mild obfuscation? May be this was "obvious," but like a lot of research there's a bit of hindsight bias in that sentiment. The issue now is that while you can easily do this yourself in terms of inference, the problem is GPT4 allows this inference to be automated.