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Facebook Discovers Fake AI-Generated Profiles

nytimes.com

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Re: Facebook Discovers Fake AI-Generated Profiles

#71

Post by TeMPOraL »

roywiggins wrote: post #68
ekianjo wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "When everyone has a printing press [i.e., Facebook], the ones with the best ideas are the ones people listen to." Should be: "When everyone has a printing press, the most persuasive ones are the ones people listen to"

That's a tautology!

A good tautology can be helpful in revealing errors in reasoning. Like here, the sentence "ones with the best ideas are the ones people listen to" sounds reasonable; the equivalent statement "best reasoning is the most persuasive" is clearly wrong.

Re: Facebook Discovers Fake AI-Generated Profiles

#72

Post by wruza »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #59
lotsofpulp wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People don’t want to pay for good journalism, nevermind spending time to read and evaluate if it is or isn’t good journalism. Maybe it’s not even realistic for everyone to do that.

People also don't want to pay for good government. As a rule, people don't want to pay for anything that benefits them in a second-order way with non-immediate consequences - even if objectively the benefits are real. It's a classic economic monkey trap. Holding onto something now is "better" than letting go and getting a bigger benefit later. Which suggests that perhaps we should be doing more to eliminate monkey tr…

>People also don't want to pay for good government.

Maybe because it’s already a paid service and its quality still has to be observed. But if you take their government from them, returning that substantial income cut, they instantly want it back.

This doesn’t have to invalidate your point, but this particular comparison seems pretty shaky. (Or it’s not and I’m missing something.)

Re: Facebook Discovers Fake AI-Generated Profiles

#73

Post by jedberg »

throwawaybbb wrote: post #69
jedberg wrote: post #4

It's ironic that as we move into a world where anyone can be a "journalist" and anyone can have a voice, we need professional journalists more than ever. Now a journalist will not only need training in writing well, conveying a story with facts, and investigating, but they will also need to become experts in identifying fake source material. In a world where anyone can make a video or photo of anyone doing anything,…

Ironic that all journalists got the Iraq war wrong without the need for fake news. We don't need real journalists, we need a way to pay for news that makes accurate reporting profitable.

Good journalism is still no match for a functioning US intelligence apparatus intent on disinformation.

Re: Facebook Discovers Fake AI-Generated Profiles

#74

Post by Cookingboy »

throwawaybbb wrote: post #69
jedberg wrote: post #4

It's ironic that as we move into a world where anyone can be a "journalist" and anyone can have a voice, we need professional journalists more than ever. Now a journalist will not only need training in writing well, conveying a story with facts, and investigating, but they will also need to become experts in identifying fake source material. In a world where anyone can make a video or photo of anyone doing anything,…

Ironic that all journalists got the Iraq war wrong without the need for fake news. We don't need real journalists, we need a way to pay for news that makes accurate reporting profitable.

The cynical side of me: accurate reporting isn’t profitable because there is very little demand for accurate reporting from the general public.

People want to read/watch news they want to believe or agree with, and instinctively they shun away from facts that causes cognitive dissonance with them. What they want is to believe their preferred news sources are objective, but they will do everything they can to avoid doing actual due diligence to verify that objectivity.

That’s why if we leave it to purely market economy, completely objective, facts based journalism will never be as profitable as sensationalism based stuff you see these days.

Re: Facebook Discovers Fake AI-Generated Profiles

#75

Post by wwweston »

roywiggins wrote: post #68
ekianjo wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "When everyone has a printing press [i.e., Facebook], the ones with the best ideas are the ones people listen to." Should be: "When everyone has a printing press, the most persuasive ones are the ones people listen to"

That's a tautology!

True.

And a good tautology like this one can at least help people realize the difficulties in distinguishing merit from success.

Which puts it up a step from overconfident generalizations.

Re: Facebook Discovers Fake AI-Generated Profiles

#76

Post by sjg007 »

btown wrote: post #13
nemild wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the scariest quotes for me was Facebook's Little Red Book in 2012 (a book handed out to every employee) that had this quote: > "When everyone has a printing press [i.e., Facebook], the ones with the best ideas are the ones people listen to." In retrospect, it gives a ton of insight into the flawed beliefs within the company. https://twitter.com/nemild/status/1006533287378968576 https://www.businessinsider.com/…

I can see this being a naïve but realistic take given what we knew in ~2008. In 2012 it should have been clear that this model could be gamed. And it's on Facebook that their culture wouldn't allow them to see that.

It's sophomoric at best even in 2008. The quote itself and the fact that the book itself is called the "Little Red Book". It's almost a straight up comic irony.

Re: Facebook Discovers Fake AI-Generated Profiles

#77

Post by bryan_w »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #15
rvz wrote: post #5

And so it appears that the inevitable has 'finally happened'. Mark Zuckerberg's website is now a place not to be trusted as a source of news, finding friends and meeting others if there's a possibility of AI generated profiles being proliferated on the website. I've heard that meeting real humans outdoors makes it less likely to be deceived. Their authenticity is vouched via word of mouth and experience by other huma…

Require manual profile validation for new Facebook accounts? Probably would get downvoted if I said SSN + a credit check. Phone number required + needs to be validated + can not be reused + can not be Twilio. Prove your address? Prove your ISP cable bill? I don't know. Everything I guess, people here are going to tell me it's an invasion of privacy and they don't trust Facebook to do it. But they'll let CreditKarma h…

To make the problem trickier, even if you do have a "Verified human" today, they are likely to download virus.exe tomorrow and become part of the next bot net

Re: Facebook Discovers Fake AI-Generated Profiles

#78

Post by perl4ever »

ekianjo wrote: post #66
nemild wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the scariest quotes for me was Facebook's Little Red Book in 2012 (a book handed out to every employee) that had this quote: > "When everyone has a printing press [i.e., Facebook], the ones with the best ideas are the ones people listen to." In retrospect, it gives a ton of insight into the flawed beliefs within the company. https://twitter.com/nemild/status/1006533287378968576 https://www.businessinsider.com/…

> "When everyone has a printing press [i.e., Facebook], the ones with the best ideas are the ones people listen to." Should be: "When everyone has a printing press, the most persuasive ones are the ones people listen to"

The ideas that survive are the ones that reproduce themselves by being copied from one mind or other storage facility to another.

Where it all goes wrong is that it is very expensive to test an idea and determine whether it is good, whereas an idea that is very attractive to repeat and copy without testing is much fitter and the more it resists testing the better it is.

This is why the whole framework for protecting IP is broken as well - we incentivize coming up with ideas, but ideas are worthless - it's evaluating and testing ideas that is valuable.

Re: Facebook Discovers Fake AI-Generated Profiles

#79

Post by sjg007 »

throwawaybbb wrote: post #69
jedberg wrote: post #4

It's ironic that as we move into a world where anyone can be a "journalist" and anyone can have a voice, we need professional journalists more than ever. Now a journalist will not only need training in writing well, conveying a story with facts, and investigating, but they will also need to become experts in identifying fake source material. In a world where anyone can make a video or photo of anyone doing anything,…

Ironic that all journalists got the Iraq war wrong without the need for fake news. We don't need real journalists, we need a way to pay for news that makes accurate reporting profitable.

Journalists were lied to and have very little means of independent investigation. The "fake news" here was actually the lie pandered by the White House. The fact that the House and Senate went a long with it is concerning but I imagine you only have to get the House and Senate intelligence committees onboard to get the rest of them to tag along.

Re: Facebook Discovers Fake AI-Generated Profiles

#80

Post by sjg007 »

rvz wrote: post #5

And so it appears that the inevitable has 'finally happened'. Mark Zuckerberg's website is now a place not to be trusted as a source of news, finding friends and meeting others if there's a possibility of AI generated profiles being proliferated on the website. I've heard that meeting real humans outdoors makes it less likely to be deceived. Their authenticity is vouched via word of mouth and experience by other huma…

Well real people can be fake as well.
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