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I don't see why chatbot platforms would ever be interested in promoting such a bias. Seems like it would just engender dissatisfaction with the status quo that

• FloorEgg 1y ago
  You don't already see this playing out with social media? There are so many paths towards this type of outcome: - eliciting negative emotions is one of the most effective ways to get and keep peoples attention. - foreign states buy platforms to sabotage population of rival states - costs of chatbots drop by orders of magnitude, making profiting off them less important Those three points alone cover a wide area of potential negative outcomes... I'm not anti AI, but I'm trying to stay eyes wide open. AI can drive a lot of good, but to me the biggest risk is a population of people sleepwalking into being subjected to whatever the AI wants to make them think. I try to focus my efforts where I can, to influence an outcome where AI increases our freedom and autonomy and abilities rather than undermine them. It's just as important to push things where we want them to go as it is to be aware of where we don't want them to go.
  • bccdee 1y ago
    The thing is, the biases I see propagating on social media are not generalized, anti-everything biases. They're specific and targeted against groups who people in power want to use as scapegoats.
    • FloorEgg 1y ago
      That's fair and I agree. My original comment didn't precisely capture what I meant, which is more so the majority of focus is on being upset about things outside the individual's control. A victim mindset is built on the victim feeling wronged (not getting what they are owed) based on an agreement they made with another party which the other party didn't consent to. So the owner/controller of a chatbot could direct the dissatisfaction at whatever is in there interest to. A political party could direct it at another political party. A foreign state could direct it at the whole system (or reinforce division between parties aka divide and conquer), or a specific political actor could direct it at a specific group of people as a scapegoat. As a whole, the result could be instilling dissatisfaction in just about everything, but to each individual user/group it may be a few specific things. In the past we fought wars with tanks and guns, and to an extent we still do, but most wars fought today are fought in the realm of values, and AI is the nuclear warhead of values manipulation. No matter the underlying strategy or nefarious intent, the combination of 1) what is best at getting peoples attention, 2) people's susceptibility to being upset about what is outside their control and 3) the opportunity AI affords powerful people to manipulate the masses, spells for the most tangible (not most dire, most tangible) dangers that I see AI representing. Note I was wary of responding to your last comment that was skeptical about chatBots baising people this way because it's hard to articulate these concerns precisely. In my view your comment I am responding to now only reinforces the point I was trying to make. Be extremely wary of chatBots that propagate victim mindsights in people who are susceptable to them.
      • bccdee 1y ago
        My issue with the notion of a "victim mindset" is that sometimes people are legitimately victimized, and in that context, it's often useful to identify as a victim. So what if people are susceptible to being upset by things they can't control? If someone assaulted me and stole my belongings, yes, that situation would have been out of my control and it would upset me—and this would be a prosocial response. I would speak up about the problem of violence in my community, and maybe that would contribute to preventing incidents like this in the future. > A victim mindset is built on [...] an agreement they made with another party which the other party didn't consent to. I don't see what agreements have to do with it. If I stab you with a knife, it doesn't matter whether I've previously agreed not to stab you—I've victimized you regardless. Perhaps you can say I've implicitly agreed to abide by the laws of my country, but then you'd have to concede that the German Jews were not victimized by Nazis, because Nazis had edited the law such that their own actions were all legal. You could say there's some underlying natural law or social contract which all humans have implicitly agreed to, but at that point we're really stretching the idea of "agreement," aren't we? Certainly no type of lawyer ever sat me down to sign the social contract. At the end of the day, identifying with victimhood can be prosocial or antisocial, and the only way to distinguish between those categories is based on the specifics of the situation: It's prosocial when they're responding to genuine wrongdoing in pursuit of a real solution, and it's antisocial when they're responding to imagined wrongdoing or bolstering a harmful non-solution. It all depends on whether a the wrongdoing in question is legitimate or not, and I don't think you can dance around that question (bypassing the entire field of ethics) with a few remarks about agreement and consent.
        • wredcoll 1y ago
          > It all depends on whether a the wrongdoing in question is legitimate or not, and I don't think you can dance around that question (bypassing the entire field of ethics) with a few remarks about agreement and consent. Thank you for making this actual point. I find the vast, vast majority of people who use the term "victim mindset" tend to be promoting views that involve not changing the status quo or making legitimate complaints and so on.
• airstrike 1y ago
  Because it keeps them doomscrolling, which in turn increases ad views. Attention is far too important for us to give away so easily.