[HN Gopher] Unauthorized Experiment on CMV Involving AI-Generate...
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Unauthorized Experiment on CMV Involving AI-Generated Comments
Author : pavel_lishin
Score : 34 points
Date : 2025-04-27 13:48 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (simonwillison.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (simonwillison.net)
| montroser wrote:
| > I think the reason I find this so upsetting is that, despite
| the risk of bots, I like to engage in discussions on the internet
| with people in good faith. The idea that my opinion on an issue
| could have been influenced by a fake personal anecdote invented
| by a research bot is abhorrent to me.
|
| I like Simon's musings in general, but are we not way past this
| point already? It is completely and totally inevitable that if
| you try to engage in discussions on the internet, you will be
| influenced by fake personal anecdotes invented by LLMs. The only
| difference here is they eventually disclosed it, but aren't
| various state and political actors already doing this in spades,
| undisclosed?
| gryfft wrote:
| I keep seeing this take, and it makes me mad. "The house is on
| fire, didn't you expect people to start burning to death?
| People will inevitably die, why discuss when it happens?"
|
| Engineering is fundamentally about exercising the power of
| intelligence to change something in the physical world. Posts
| to the effect of "<bad thing> is inevitable and unstoppable, so
| it isn't worth talking about" strike me as the opposite of the
| hacker ethos!
| drjasonharrison wrote:
| I think the other thing to keep discussing is that doing
| research, or otherwise using an LLM, to manipulate people's
| emotions without disclosure, is unethical.
|
| By the way, people die in house fires from toxic smoke
| inhalation and a lack of oxygen. Engineers created smoke
| detectors and other devices to lower the risk of fire due to
| electrical shorts, gas leaks, etc., and to create fire
| suppression systems.
|
| People still die because they didn't replace batteries,
| didn't follow electrical cord/device warnings, or left
| candles or other heat sources unattended. We discuss these
| events as warnings and reminders that accidents kill when
| warnings are not followed, when inattentiveness allows
| failure to propagate, and as a reminder that rarely occurring
| events still kill innocent people.
|
| Maybe this will motivate people to meet in person, until that
| is also corrupted with cyber brain augmentation and in-person
| propaganda actors, rather than relying on only online
| anecdotes.
| simonw wrote:
| Sure, but that doesn't mean I'm not furious when it happens.
| drjasonharrison wrote:
| I see this as further discounting the importance of anecdotes
| and personal experiences when making decisions that affect
| populations.
|
| Yes, we know that personal stories can be compelling, and
| communicating with someone with different experiences from ours
| can be enlightening. Still, before applying these learnings to
| larger groups, we should remember that individual experiences
| do not capture the entire population.
| robmerki wrote:
| Unfortunately there is no way to combat this, and it seems like
| the end of the internet we once knew. Even with a "proof of
| human" technology, people could still just paste whatever AI-
| generated text they wanted, under their "real" account.
|
| This has likely been going on since the first ChatGPT was
| released.
| gnabgib wrote:
| Discussion (212 points, 1 day ago, 144 comments)
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43806940
| bitshiftfaced wrote:
| The subreddit has question-askers give feedback to whether their
| view was changed. The askers are aware of how their response
| might appear publicly. This makes me wonder if "appeal to
| identity" is especially effective, at least superficially if not
| actually. The fine-tuning might've been reacting to this.
| knowitnone wrote:
| "This project yields important insights, and the risks (e.g.
| trauma etc.) are minimal." They can't possibly measure the
| insights or claim that the trauma is minimal.
| ivape wrote:
| More of the same? Reddit's genesis included fake accounts and
| content. I don't doubt upvotes and the frontpage is fully
| curated:
|
| https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/reddi...
|
| We all have an expectation that these message boards are like the
| forums of the 2000s, but that's just not true and hasn't been for
| a long time. We will never see that internet again it seems,
| because AI was the atomic bomb on all this astroturfing and
| engineered content. Educating people away from these synthetic
| forums is appearing near impossible.
| strathmeyer wrote:
| > The idea that my opinion on an issue could have been influenced
| by a fake personal anecdote invented by a research bot is
| abhorrent to me.
|
| Then stop basing your opinion on issues on personal anecdotes
| from complete strangers. This is nothing new.
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(page generated 2025-04-27 23:01 UTC)