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Does this mean that I could train an LLM to do something like spread fake news? Would that even scale?
That said, I'm assuming you also mean fake news which is (A) believable and (B) is tailored for a particular agenda.
Does this mean that I could train an LLM to do something like spread fake news? Would that even scale?
Probably. And you could surround specific communities en masse. And it’s coming soon to every single site near you.
Does this mean that I could train an LLM to do something like spread fake news? Would that even scale?
Pretty easy. Probably no additional training is required! You probably would need to just get hold of a foundation model that has no AI safety type training done on it. Then ask it nicely. You could also feed it in context some examples of the fake news you would like. And maybe the style. "Here is a BBC article, write an article that Elon Musk plans to visit a black hole by 2030 in this style".
I feel intuitively this makes sense. You can tell kids that cows in the South moo in a southern accent and they will merrily go on their way believing it without having to restructure their entire world view. It goes with the problem of “understanding” vs parroting. Human-centric example but you get the point.
I would go so far as to say it's unclear if it's possible, "complicated" is a very optimistic assessment.
Does this mean that I could train an LLM to do something like spread fake news? Would that even scale?
When you think about it, making fake news is orders of magnitude easier than making real news, the same way that a broken calculator is easier than a correct one. That said, I'm assuming you also mean fake news which is (A) believable and (B) is tailored for a particular agenda.
The people pushing this line of concern are also developing AICert to fix it. While I’m sure they’re right - factually tampering with an LLM is possible - I doubt that this will be a widespread issue. Using an LLM knowingly to generate false news seems like it will have similar reach to existing conspiracy theory sites. It doesn’t seem likely to me that simply having an LLM will make theorists more mainstream. And in…
It’s completely within the realm of expectation that you could have a nation-state level initiative to propagandize your enemy’s populace from the inside out. Basically 2015+ Russian disinformation tactics but massively scaled up. And those were already wildly effective.
Now extend that to more benign manipulation. Think about the companies that have great grassroots marketing, like Doluth’s darn tough socks being recommended all over Reddit. Now remove the need to have an actually good product because you can get the same result with an AI. A couple hundred/thousand comments a day wouldn’t cost that much, and could give the impression of huge grassroots support of a brand.
Well, no, because it doesn't have a brain, and can we please atop anthropomorphising these statistical models?