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Disrupting a covert Iranian influence operation

openai.com

51–60 of 155 posts

Re: Disrupting a covert Iranian influence operation

#51
post #48

Given that any self hosted open source model would have worked just as well. I can’t see this good faith post as anything more than forwarding open ais long campaign for regulatory capture.

Self-hosting LLMs is expensive at scale. It's cheaper to use VC subsidized model inference like the OpenAI APIs.

There are plenty of VC-subsidized inference provider which uses open source LLM for much cheaper than OpenAI (which isn't really VC-subsidized at this point but Microsoft-subsidized).

Re: Disrupting a covert Iranian influence operation

#52
post #48

Given that any self hosted open source model would have worked just as well. I can’t see this good faith post as anything more than forwarding open ais long campaign for regulatory capture.

Self-hosting LLMs is expensive at scale. It's cheaper to use VC subsidized model inference like the OpenAI APIs.

My anecdata is most teams I've talked to say its below OpenAI at scale, and vLLM is a beast. It's interesting to hear the opposite, there's lots of cheaper providers, but the "VC dollars" argument can go "turtles all the way down", I suppose. Still, reality seems to differ.

Re: Disrupting a covert Iranian influence operation

#53
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks exceedingly good to be Ai-generated. Also, it appears to be slightly pro-Trump, which doesn't sound like in Iran's interest.

[flagged]

Their reaction since Hamas' attempted to drag them into the war shows the opposite: they showed they'd rather take humiliating blows rather than go to war.

Re: Disrupting a covert Iranian influence operation

#54

I don't think people should jump to any "this is the level Iran is at?" conclusions. Many nations employ "patriotic citizens" in an informal and semi-formal fashion along with trained propaganda and "infowar" experts. I know of China and Israel doing this but I'd assume it's everywhere.

Iran is definately putting out mass propaganda especially on social media.

Israel has one of if not the largest propaganda/bot campaigns on the entire planet, followed by either Russia or China. It's definately working for them so they won't be stopping anytime soon.

Re: Disrupting a covert Iranian influence operation

#55
post #47
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn’t pass the sniff test. Each of these countries has domestically developed, strong LLMs. And even if they did not, they’d have absolutely no issue running the larger FOSS ones. You don’t need GPT4 to generate political drivel.

It takes a lot of GPU to run the larger FOSS LLMs. The OpenAI API is still the cheapest way to get high-quality LLM generations.

Tell that to someone else. I run LLaMA70B in my garage. Works fine, cost is negligible.

Re: Disrupting a covert Iranian influence operation

#56

I wonder if it would be possible to get a list of countries that can have influence operations using ChatGPT and countries that can't.

I hope they put the same restrictions on Israel but I doubt it. Multiple core OpenAI team members have expressed pro-Israel comments, some very murderous and ugly, so I doubt their ability to be unbiased here.

Re: Disrupting a covert Iranian influence operation

#57
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks exceedingly good to be Ai-generated. Also, it appears to be slightly pro-Trump, which doesn't sound like in Iran's interest.

From the article: > Some of the X accounts posed as progressives, and others as conservatives. My impression is that these influence campaigns know that they need to produce a LOT of content that appears to reflect different opinions and perspectives if they're going to appear to be "real" - that way they can build trust with an audience before attempting to influence them in one direction or another.

[deleted]

Re: Disrupting a covert Iranian influence operation

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iran wants Democrats, Russia wants Republicans. It's easy to see which one is more successful. Every time you blame something on Russia, people come out of the woods "explaining" why Russia is actually the victim (Russia is ALWAYS the victim, is what I've learned from this people).

Russia definitely has a non zero amount of people supporting or apologizing it's actions all around the world. It's dangerous to assume all of the content you see is simply some shady operation or fake, having controversial opinions on any topic is nothing new, millions of Americans don't believe in the moon landings. In general I don't think it's a good idea to discuss politics online, and I feel like many talk too…

In regard to local issues being way more impactful in one's life:

If one is from, or has close contacts in or from the regions affected by geopolitics -- then this is unfortunately very much not the case.

As disappointed as I am with local politicians -- they aren't bombing my friends into the ground, or forcing them to move halfway across the planet indefinitely. Or causing these to deal with significant emotional anguish, even if they aren't forced to move, or directly under threat.

While a solid contingent on HN regularly either apologies for / minimizes their actions, or just seems to shoot from its hip based on their hunch as to what is happening, without any indication of having done much research or questioning their sources. Or even just thinking logically about the various narratives they're reading. For most of them it seems to be more about ideological abstractions than anything real and concrete, in any case.

So that, plus the simple fact that this is a global community is why geopolitics floats to the top, as it were.

Whether talking about it online is productive or helpful in any way is another matter altogether. Turns out it's generally not easy to talk about these things in person, even with people one knows rather well (as most of the time they'd prefer to talk about pretty much anything but "the situation").

Being as the "shit" in question is all too real for them.

Re: Disrupting a covert Iranian influence operation

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks exceedingly good to be Ai-generated. Also, it appears to be slightly pro-Trump, which doesn't sound like in Iran's interest.

It is clear to me that Russia, Iran, North Korea are playing a zero-sum game. Anything that creates chaos in US politics (or European politics) is in their interest. Donald Trump represents chaos.

> Donald Trump represents chaos.

Very strange perspective when talking about the only US president of our times that didn't start a war, made historical diplomatic advances with North Korea, made a deal with talibans to end war in Afghanistan. I'm probably forgetting a few but his track record is impressive.

Re: Disrupting a covert Iranian influence operation

#60
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Trump has always been much weaker in diplomacy with nations that are historically antagonistic to the US. He'll have a meeting with their leader, let them flatter him, and come away convinced that they're "very nice" and make a lot of concessions. He's basically an admirer of Putin at this point.

The Abraham accords were and are a good development he implemented. The Obama administration in 2015 attempted to bribe Iran into not enriching uranium by effectively paying them $100 billion.

Can you cite a source on that? That doesn’t match my understanding of the events.
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