Researcher builds anti-Russia AI disinformation machine for $400

World News@lemmy.world – 317 points – 1 years ago

Researcher builds anti-Russia AI disinformation machine for $400

The logical end of the 'Solution to bad speech is better speech' has arrived in the age of state-sponsored social media propaganda bots versus AI-driven bots arguing back

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Ah yes, American truths like "Iraq has WMDs and that's why invading them is the fair and just thing to do," "abortion is bad for human rights," "the US isn't collecting all of your internet traffic because that would be a violation of privacy," and "this CIA-funded coup of a democratically-elected government will definitely help spread democracy around the world."

This researcher has built a pro-America AI disinformation machine for $400. I expect that, like most American media, it will start citing "independent think tanks" like Atlantic Council (which, coincidentally, is staffed mostly by ex-US intelligence and receives funding from US intelligence agencies) and use reports gathered by "independent sources" such as the US 4th PsyOps Airborne (which, per their recent recruiting videos, admits to orchestrating large-scale protests including Euromaidan, Tiananmen Square, and others).

Have you seen any tweet this bot generated that would contain misinformation? Because I haven't.

What is the context for Iraq WMDs? I haven't seen it anywhere in the article?

Is anyone arguing that, at the time of the Iraq War, it wasn't considered a "truth" in America that Iraq was developing WMDs and that anything to the contrary was considered disinformation?

So is the bot not pointing out obvious lies with links to factual data or what is your point? Can you link me to an example of bot using shaky arguments?

And the WMD claims stood on shaky legs from very beginning, many countries like Germany opposed use of force in Iraq. Perhaps we'd benefit from bot correcting false narratives in real time had this technology been available at the time.

The bot doesn't know what's "real" or not though - it's a large language model, not a model of the real world. All it knows is what it's been told in its training data.

For some reason the 5000+ chemical weapons removed from Iraq never seem to count as WMDs.

That's because they aren't.

Chemical weapons cause severe agony, but tend to kill a limited number of people.

According to the UN:

Weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) constitute a class of weaponry with the potential to:

Produce in a single moment an enormous destructive effect capable to kill millions of civilians, jeopardize the natural environment, and fundamentally alter the lives of future generations through their catastrophic effects;
Cause death or serious injury of people through toxic or poisonous chemicals;
Disseminate disease-causing organisms or toxins to harm or kill humans, animals or plants;
Deliver nuclear explosive devices, chemical, biological or toxin agents to use them for hostile purposes or in armed conflict.

So, they were WMDs

Iraq had those same stores of chemical weapons since the 1980s and was in the slow and arduous process of dismantling them (it had dismantled something like 90-95% of its WMDs by 2003 and was not stockpiling replacements). Given the lack of new production, many of the chemical weapons supposedly in Iraq's stockpile would have turned harmless due to the short shelf life of chemical weapons.

By and large, people used this imagined idea that Iraq was still developing nuclear weapons as the justification for the invasion. American media ran stories about how aluminum tubes "used for uranium enrichment" were being imported by Iraq. American media brought out Iraqi defectors of questionable credibility who talked about Iraq's burgeoning nuclear capability. American intelligence claimed that Iraq was actively seeking nuclear weapons development. Of course, all of these claims were entirely false.

By this definition, 9/11 proves that a jumbo jet is a WMD. I don't know if I can call a jumbo jet a WMD.

9/11 only had its effect because they hit the twin towers, chemical weapons can kill entire areas

I don't understand the point you're making. If airplanes hitting a building can do the same damages chemical weapons.....

Chemical weapons can kill entire areas just like planes hitting buildings. I'm a licensed pilot.

what killed people was the damage to the buildings not the planes themselves, if the twin towers had been a chemical plant (especially one making something like phosgene, mustard gas or chlorine gas) in the middle of NY, the death toll would have made 9/11 look like a wet fart

The chemical plant cannot be a WMD.

Places cannot be WMD. This is inherent in the word weapon a weapon is not a place. The w in WMD makes it not a place

hey, I was arguing with the logic of planes are a WMD because 9/11, pointing out that if plans would be a WMD because the WTC towers collapsing killing a lot of people, a chemical plant would be way worse.

but in effect a plane is not much different from the larger cruise missiles