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No but obviously everyone is persuadable fundamentally. Our beliefs are just patterns of neurons firing and some type and vector of information will cause them

No but obviously everyone is persuadable fundamentally. Our beliefs are just patterns of neurons firing and some type and vector of information will cause them to fire a different way. We’ve never had the technical ability to have interactive, 1:1 personalized messaging at scale. Now we do.

bee_rider 3y ago
I don’t think everyone is persuadable, at least, not necessarily by AI. For example, if some evil AI is out there persuading people to do bad things by texting and emailing them supernaturally compelling evil messages (which seems pretty generous, to assume that such a message is even possible), one could become impossible to persuade by just not checking email or text and only interacting in-person. I am more worried that there exist many easily persuadable people. These people are already convinced to do evil things by social media and other advertisements, but AI might be able to coordinate them more cleverly than advertisers.
- layer8 3y ago
  This is, of course, very hypothetical, but you’d also have to stop interacting with people who do check their email and text, and who thus could be persuaded by the AI to persuade you.
  - bee_rider 3y ago
    I think that is an even more difficult message for the AI to craft. It needs to come up with a supernaturally compelling message and then transmit it over human! We’re a very lossy medium, haha. I dunno. Maybe I’m just not hypothesizing well enough. You’d think that if this ever became a problem there would be significant pushback. But then again, maybe the AI could be really helpful for multiple generation and then do very subtle evil things. I dunno.
    - kevindamm 3y ago
      The media these AI are trained on are already artifacts of humans trying to get humans to convince each other of things... so maybe not very far-fetched.
    - ethanbond 3y ago
      It can’t be that hard, humans have achieved it on several occasions. See: The Bible, the Torah, the Quran. Just messages that have been written down and convinced people to convince people to convince people, with all sorts of extreme behaviors in both positive and negative directions in service of that goal.
- krisoft 3y ago
  > AI might be able to coordinate them more cleverly than advertisers Of course these two might not be different. There is no reason to think advertisers and con artists and politicians and their ilk would not use AI to reach the same goals they always wanted to reach but more efficiently.

bee_rider 3y ago

I don’t think everyone is persuadable, at least, not necessarily by AI. For example, if some evil AI is out there persuading people to do bad things by texting and emailing them supernaturally compelling evil messages (which seems pretty generous, to assume that such a message is even possible), one could become impossible to persuade by just not checking email or text and only interacting in-person. I am more worried that there exist many easily persuadable people. These people are already convinced to do evil things by social media and other advertisements, but AI might be able to coordinate them more cleverly than advertisers.

layer8 3y ago
This is, of course, very hypothetical, but you’d also have to stop interacting with people who do check their email and text, and who thus could be persuaded by the AI to persuade you.
- bee_rider 3y ago
  I think that is an even more difficult message for the AI to craft. It needs to come up with a supernaturally compelling message and then transmit it over human! We’re a very lossy medium, haha. I dunno. Maybe I’m just not hypothesizing well enough. You’d think that if this ever became a problem there would be significant pushback. But then again, maybe the AI could be really helpful for multiple generation and then do very subtle evil things. I dunno.
  - kevindamm 3y ago
    The media these AI are trained on are already artifacts of humans trying to get humans to convince each other of things... so maybe not very far-fetched.
  - ethanbond 3y ago
    It can’t be that hard, humans have achieved it on several occasions. See: The Bible, the Torah, the Quran. Just messages that have been written down and convinced people to convince people to convince people, with all sorts of extreme behaviors in both positive and negative directions in service of that goal.
krisoft 3y ago
> AI might be able to coordinate them more cleverly than advertisers Of course these two might not be different. There is no reason to think advertisers and con artists and politicians and their ilk would not use AI to reach the same goals they always wanted to reach but more efficiently.