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Social Media, AI, and the Battle for Your Brain

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Re: Social Media, AI, and the Battle for Your Brain

#51

Post by jprete »

avgcorrection wrote: post #44

It’s funny. I keep getting back to reading pieces like this.[1] Then we talk about how this is terrible. And it is. But apparently we’re all powerless to stop it. Because we’re gonna be complaining about the same thing next year. Why? Because it’s something that people do “freely”. (Like smoking cigarettes (except where are the nicotine patches?).) Do something about it? Well why don’t you take a three month leave fr…

I've found it very effective to remove quick access to sites - bookmarks, browser navbar suggestions, etc. This is the last site I visit on a regular basis - I have a bunch of bookmarks of actually useful things here. I'll watch YT for maybe half an hour at a time, but I repeatedly tell it to never recommend channels that look like clickbait and I am actually feeling like YT is running out of content. I unfollowed everyone and everything on FB years ago and never visit anymore.

When I started to deliberately avoid dopamine traps, the Internet got a lot less engrossing.

Re: Social Media, AI, and the Battle for Your Brain

#52

Post by ehnto »

daxfohl wrote: post #49
ketchupdebugger wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before only "dumb" people gets fallen into the trap. Its like getting scammed by a Nigerian "prince" scam. Now its much harder to tell apart fake and real. Pictures and videos can be AI generated so potentially you could be sold on an event that didn't happen. Or you can be convinced a real event was fake. It would be much easier to assume all footage of 9/11 was AI generated and fake because its unfathomable to thin…

IDK, put a TPM or something on cameras and media players display an "untrusted" watermark if the key doesn't match. Or something. I have a hard time believing we won't figure something out. But even if not: gullible people will be duped regardless, most people have some semblance of a BS detector they are able to fine tune based on the amount of BS in their environment, and the rest just believe what they want to bel…

I think you are underestimating how this misinformation will get distributed. You may not fall for an obivous AI post on a spam account, but if you have a trusted news source or individuals you trust, they might end up using AI to help them research and write articles, or get their info from sources who did. Now you are twice or three times removed from the source of the information, and someone you trust is your source. It wasn't even nefarious, it's just how information moves, and AI is now a source for many people.

Maybe you are a hyper diligent fact checker, and the sole originator of carefully considered opinions. Almost no one else is, even the smart people. Political discourse over the past 5 years is proof enough, it is not difficult to influence smart people.

Re: Social Media, AI, and the Battle for Your Brain

#53

Post by OldHunter69X »

jstarfish wrote: post #50
OldHunter69X wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I highly recommend anybody who finds the written version of this compelling, to listen to the actual full clip on YouTube that is the radio exchange between these characters. For me, it was very chilling when I first heard it, and still is chilling anytime I relisten to it. Only ever played MGS5 but those games have spawned alot of highly interesting and a lot of times, deeply personal discourse. Each game certainly…

I don't think he had anything to do with Survive. That was a Konami cash grab after they threw him out. His social commentary continued into Death Stranding. It had the 90s optimism of connecting everyone; literally bringing America Online in the aftermath of a deadly virus. (It was surreal playing through it before COVID.) It's looking like the sequel's theme is "...maybe this wasn't a good idea." I can't wait to se…

I do not believe he did either from my understanding of how it went down. My bad if my wording implied otherwise.

I played Death Stranding too, and very much so enjoyed the atmosphere and presentation. The story was charmingly creative and the initial intrigue from marketing was some of the best at the time. That optimism you mentioned, that pro "teamwork makes the dream work" quality to the game, was very nice too.

Also really liked some of the music, my mental jukebox still ques up like three of the tracks. I tend to really like music from each of the games, despite only having played one of them like I'd mentioned haha .

I'm as curious as ever to see what his next project is like!

Re: Social Media, AI, and the Battle for Your Brain

#54

Post by thegrim33 »

deadbabe wrote: post #7

I think this is an opportunity for traditional news networks to re-emerge as trusted news sources, by reporting only true and verified events. The days of going on social media looking for news are over, when people can quickly spin up fake articles with photos of some famous landmark on fire or in ruins it becomes too frustrating to discern between fact and fiction.

Two issues:

1) For many people, myself included, the mainstream media's reputation is so extremely damaged that anything short of a full, complete, tear down and from scratch rebuild of the entire industry won't in the slightest bit convince me to even give them a second chance. I've already moved on.

2) Even if a network literally posts only verifiable true facts, even if they have a panel of 1000 scientists and 1000 experts and 1000 people of different political persuasions that all agree with each other that the printed facts are "true", the organization can still easily lie and manipulate the population by simply selectively choosing which stories to cover and which to ignore, depending on which stories benefit their ideologies or hurt their rival ideologoies. Just "telling the truth" isn't remotely enough, they need to be both politically and ideologically neutral, they need to cover all events impartially and equally.

Re: Social Media, AI, and the Battle for Your Brain

#55

Post by plutoh28 »

avgcorrection wrote: post #44

It’s funny. I keep getting back to reading pieces like this.[1] Then we talk about how this is terrible. And it is. But apparently we’re all powerless to stop it. Because we’re gonna be complaining about the same thing next year. Why? Because it’s something that people do “freely”. (Like smoking cigarettes (except where are the nicotine patches?).) Do something about it? Well why don’t you take a three month leave fr…

We just can’t stop developing methods of hijacking our brains… it’s the holy grail of business. All we can do is try our best to recognize it, avoid it, and keep kids away from it.

Re: Social Media, AI, and the Battle for Your Brain

#56

Post by topherclay »

thegrim33 wrote: post #54
deadbabe wrote: post #7

I think this is an opportunity for traditional news networks to re-emerge as trusted news sources, by reporting only true and verified events. The days of going on social media looking for news are over, when people can quickly spin up fake articles with photos of some famous landmark on fire or in ruins it becomes too frustrating to discern between fact and fiction.

Two issues: 1) For many people, myself included, the mainstream media's reputation is so extremely damaged that anything short of a full, complete, tear down and from scratch rebuild of the entire industry won't in the slightest bit convince me to even give them a second chance. I've already moved on. 2) Even if a network literally posts only verifiable true facts, even if they have a panel of 1000 scientists and 100…

>they need to cover all events impartially and equally.

A 100% accurate map of the territory is just the territory itself, and is useless as a map.

Re: Social Media, AI, and the Battle for Your Brain

#57

Post by unraveller »

thegrim33 wrote: post #54
deadbabe wrote: post #7

I think this is an opportunity for traditional news networks to re-emerge as trusted news sources, by reporting only true and verified events. The days of going on social media looking for news are over, when people can quickly spin up fake articles with photos of some famous landmark on fire or in ruins it becomes too frustrating to discern between fact and fiction.

Two issues: 1) For many people, myself included, the mainstream media's reputation is so extremely damaged that anything short of a full, complete, tear down and from scratch rebuild of the entire industry won't in the slightest bit convince me to even give them a second chance. I've already moved on. 2) Even if a network literally posts only verifiable true facts, even if they have a panel of 1000 scientists and 100…

Changing anything would be admitting fault, and a self-professed authority never does that. Not when they can just latch on to other ways of virtue signalling as a kind of reputation repair substitute, much like what their advertising space does for other companies.

Re: Social Media, AI, and the Battle for Your Brain

#58

Post by avgcorrection »

plutoh28 wrote: post #55
avgcorrection wrote: post #44

It’s funny. I keep getting back to reading pieces like this.[1] Then we talk about how this is terrible. And it is. But apparently we’re all powerless to stop it. Because we’re gonna be complaining about the same thing next year. Why? Because it’s something that people do “freely”. (Like smoking cigarettes (except where are the nicotine patches?).) Do something about it? Well why don’t you take a three month leave fr…

We just can’t stop developing methods of hijacking our brains… it’s the holy grail of business. All we can do is try our best to recognize it, avoid it, and keep kids away from it.

Assuming that the holy grail of businesses is the holy grail of society—even above the welfare of your children.

Re: Social Media, AI, and the Battle for Your Brain

#59

Post by daxfohl »

ehnto wrote: post #52
daxfohl wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IDK, put a TPM or something on cameras and media players display an "untrusted" watermark if the key doesn't match. Or something. I have a hard time believing we won't figure something out. But even if not: gullible people will be duped regardless, most people have some semblance of a BS detector they are able to fine tune based on the amount of BS in their environment, and the rest just believe what they want to bel…

I think you are underestimating how this misinformation will get distributed. You may not fall for an obivous AI post on a spam account, but if you have a trusted news source or individuals you trust, they might end up using AI to help them research and write articles, or get their info from sources who did. Now you are twice or three times removed from the source of the information, and someone you trust is your sou…

I'm not a diligent fact checker at all. I just think that disinformation is already all over the place, and essentially always has been, that I don't think AI will have as much effect here as much as people are saying. The gullible will continue to be gulled, the unconvinceable will continue to be set in their ways, the general population will recalibrate their BS meters to account, and life will go on as it always has. Including reporters continuing to say we've never been more divided than .

Re: Social Media, AI, and the Battle for Your Brain

#60

Post by anileated »

stronglikedan wrote: post #12
paulpauper wrote: post #5

The fake news problem is huge on twitter now, as if it could not get worse. I've seen people unashamedly post stuff that is literally false, not something false in a satirical or parody sense. It's becoming increasingly hard to separate fact form fiction. It will get to the point where in which the determination of truth is by some consensus process online in by competing fake or unreliable sources.

> The fake news problem is huge on twitter now Not really, considering the community notes generally call it out falsehoods very quickly. What a great system - Don't censor people, but do call them out for BS. Twitter is better than ever now, and people can finally get all the info to form their own opinions.

Twitter community notes can be and are used to spread misinformation just like tweets themselves. It was only a matter of time until whoever wants to control the narrative learned how to influence the notes.

Sometimes misleading notes are corrected, but in those cases they are just silently updated with no history preserved so there is no accountability.

The one thing that could actually help identify bias (labeling tweets from accounts biased by association with, e.g., various governments, so that readers are aware and make their own judgements) Elon has killed almost immediately.

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