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I don't believe it, even though I'd like to. I don't really care much for the technology because of its societal impact. I am a bit surprised that it hasn't be

I don't believe it, even though I'd like to. I don't really care much for the technology because of its societal impact. I am a bit surprised that it hasn't been more weaponized yet for elections and wars. But it will be, no doubt about it.

_heimdall 2y ago
Militaries move really slow when it comes to adopting entirely new tech, at least in open warfare. We likely won't see much from them until we suddenly have fighter jets flown by AI in the battlefield and autonomous systems handling at least a portion of the weapons targeting process.
- somenameforme 2y ago
  I'm fairly certain he's referring to war propaganda, not bot driven war systems. A bot that drops a bomb on its own people 1% of the time is pretty useless. A propaganda bot that says viable nonsense 1% of the time is awesome because it just adds even more plausible deniability.
probably_wrong 2y ago
Are you sure it isn't? Can you categorically say that (for instance) the current anti/pro-palestinian discourse is not fueled by armies of AI bots? How about Russia/Ukraine? If they were easy to spot then they wouldn't be good bots, would they? At a less subtle level, AI is deciding right now whose apartments should be bombed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39918245 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39918245
somenameforme 2y ago
I'm fairly certain it's being extensively used simply because the opposite seems basically impossible to imagine. You have these bots capable of endlessly writing semi-believable comments that can dynamically adjust to context, to spin whatever you want to your desired narrative. It's unimaginable that the military and government aren't already extensively using these systems. There's no laws against it (not that that seems to even matter that much anymore), there's no real cost if caught (as e.g. has happened with "influencers" being asked to make political points by politicians while also not disclosing that), and so on. It's basically near zero risk, low cost, high perceived reward, and completely doable. It's happening. This could easily explain why social media, sites such as YouTube, and others increasingly often seem to follow cues from the political establishment more than general public sentiment as reflected in polls, "real life" actions, etc.. Of course there could also be biases driving such things, but those biases did not seem to exist, certainly not to the same degree, in the times before LLMs.

_heimdall 2y ago

Militaries move really slow when it comes to adopting entirely new tech, at least in open warfare. We likely won't see much from them until we suddenly have fighter jets flown by AI in the battlefield and autonomous systems handling at least a portion of the weapons targeting process.

somenameforme 2y ago
I'm fairly certain he's referring to war propaganda, not bot driven war systems. A bot that drops a bomb on its own people 1% of the time is pretty useless. A propaganda bot that says viable nonsense 1% of the time is awesome because it just adds even more plausible deniability.

probably_wrong 2y ago

Are you sure it isn't? Can you categorically say that (for instance) the current anti/pro-palestinian discourse is not fueled by armies of AI bots? How about Russia/Ukraine? If they were easy to spot then they wouldn't be good bots, would they? At a less subtle level, AI is deciding right now whose apartments should be bombed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39918245 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39918245

somenameforme 2y ago

I'm fairly certain it's being extensively used simply because the opposite seems basically impossible to imagine. You have these bots capable of endlessly writing semi-believable comments that can dynamically adjust to context, to spin whatever you want to your desired narrative. It's unimaginable that the military and government aren't already extensively using these systems. There's no laws against it (not that that seems to even matter that much anymore), there's no real cost if caught (as e.g. has happened with "influencers" being asked to make political points by politicians while also not disclosing that), and so on. It's basically near zero risk, low cost, high perceived reward, and completely doable. It's happening. This could easily explain why social media, sites such as YouTube, and others increasingly often seem to follow cues from the political establishment more than general public sentiment as reflected in polls, "real life" actions, etc.. Of course there could also be biases driving such things, but those biases did not seem to exist, certainly not to the same degree, in the times before LLMs.