AI SOCIAL MEDIA COULD TOTALLY MANIPULATE YOU

[littlemissmartypants]

AI SOCIAL MEDIA COULD TOTALLY MANIPULATE YOU
Deep learning specialist: And the scary thing is, the AI needed is not especially advanced
MIND MATTERS NOVEMBER 26, 2018

François Chollet, a deep learning researcher at Google (which owns Deep Mind; whose AI program AlphaGo beat the world-ranked Go champion a couple of years ago) was featured here recently because he is skeptical of general superhuman artificial intelligence.

But that’s not the only problem he has been thinking about. He has also done some thinking about “the highly effective, highly scalable manipulation of human behavior that AI enables, and its malicious use by corporations and governments.” For example, social media companies, which have been recording everything you do, can show you mainly content that promotes ideas that medium owner wants you to have. If you express approved views, you will get likes that could be from bots. If you deviate, you could be shown mainly negative responses “(maybe acquaintances, maybe strangers, maybe bots)” on the theory that you will shut up or change your mind. In the social bubble, you may believe that the medium owner’s preferred views are far more prevalent than they are. Then there is Argument personalization:

… the algorithm may observe that exposure to certain pieces of content, among people with a psychological profile close to yours, has resulted in the sort of view shift it seeks. It may then serve you with content that is expected to be maximally effective for someone with your particular views and life experience. In the long run, the algorithm may even be able to generate such maximally-effective content from scratch, specifically for you.
FRANCOIS CHOLLET, “WHAT WORRIES ME ABOUT AI” AT MEDIUM

Readers familiar with The Two Towers will recall that that’s precisely what Worm-Tongue did to King Theoden: The king heard nothing but what was conveyed to him from his would-be overlord by Worm-tongue, until someone separated him, rather forcibly as it happens, from his “social medium of choice.”

But now, here’s the part that really concerns Chollet:

Remarkably, mass population manipulation — in particular political control — arising from placing AI algorithms in charge of our information diet does not necessarily require very advanced AI. You don’t need self-aware, superintelligent AI for this to be a dire threat — current technology may well suffice. Social network companies have been working on it for a few years, with significant results.
FRANÇOIS CHOLLET, “WHAT WORRIES ME ABOUT AI” AT MEDIUM

Snip. More at the link.
http://mindmatters.ai/2018/11/ai-social-media-could-totally-manipulate-you/

[harumph]

1. Not if you take the position that all media has an agenda

But most people cling to the idea that some media is truthful and
other media is false. Children/teens should be trained in propaganda
methods to better recognize it.