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AI Generated Propaganda

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Re: AI Generated Propaganda

#81

Post by dahart »

throwuwu wrote: post #64
jmondi wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A healthy amount of skepticism is good. You can easily take your skepticism too far and turn into a tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorist who doesnt believe anything and has a completely cynical view on the world. I know a few of these...

A healthy amount being defined as 90% https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon's_law

Interesting thought. Sturgeon’s Law is normally referring to the quality of things created honestly, like sci fi novels, and not to the level of dishonesty or disinformation. I’ll have to think about whether those are actually different, but I feel like it’s relevant in the sense that Sturgeon’s Law is normally tautological: you can decide for sci fi novels what percent of them you would define as “good”, and the rest are “crap”. 90% always works, but so does 80% or 98%, the top group is always better than the bottom group by definition. So in that sense, saying that 90% of information might be dishonest and justify skepticism isn’t supported by Sturgeons Law, I think.

Re: AI Generated Propaganda

#82

Post by amerkhalid »

mabbo wrote: post #17

To those saying "Oh I can tell it's fake, obviously!", consider: will your parents/grandparents? And will you still be able to tell in five years, when this tech has had 20 new iterations, each addressing the very tells that right now let you notice it's fake? I know, I know, photoshop and fake pictures have always been around. But now, everyone can do it in 30 seconds. That changes things.

It works other way too. This elder person I know refuses to believe anything bad about his motherland by claiming it is fake news/propaganda. Even when it is reported by the biggest news agencies in both, his motherland and the west.

Re: AI Generated Propaganda

#83

Post by AnimalMuppet »

vintermann wrote: post #70

I have a theory that propagandists' jobs are safer than they would seem. Thing is, when you're arguing online with some political consultant who four years ago was convinced Joe Biden was senile (because they supported Amy Klobuchar), who is now just as convinced he's sharp as a razor and ready for another term, are they really trying to convince you with their arguments ? No, I don't think so. I think the whole poin…

But who are they signaling to when they do this? Not the person they're arguing with. Not me, either, if I'm reading the conversation. To me, they're signaling "I refuse to actually consider anything the other person says. All I will do is argue and repeat my talking points. I might as well be a robot."

They're signaling to the people who pay them, and to the people who might hire them in the future, not to their readers. To their readers, they're kind of anti-signaling. I mean, are many people genuinely persuaded by whoever can yell the longest? (Because that's what they're doing. They always reply with something, and that something is never an indication that the other side might have even a shred of a point. But is anyone actually persuaded by some "brick wall" posting the last word at the end of some long back-and-forth?)

Re: AI Generated Propaganda

#84

Post by nkjnlknlk »

amerkhalid wrote: post #82
mabbo wrote: post #17

To those saying "Oh I can tell it's fake, obviously!", consider: will your parents/grandparents? And will you still be able to tell in five years, when this tech has had 20 new iterations, each addressing the very tells that right now let you notice it's fake? I know, I know, photoshop and fake pictures have always been around. But now, everyone can do it in 30 seconds. That changes things.

It works other way too. This elder person I know refuses to believe anything bad about his motherland by claiming it is fake news/propaganda. Even when it is reported by the biggest news agencies in both, his motherland and the west.

The ageism is silly (though not uncommon on HN). Plenty of young people are in the same boat and in the west! It's nothing new. Discerning propaganda has always been extremely difficult.

Re: AI Generated Propaganda

#85

Post by jbattle »

I have little fear about AI generating propaganda. It's cheap to write a crappy article and fake a photo or two - or choose a real photo but twist the story around the photo.

What I worry about is "artificial / generated consent". You read some upsetting story, and your skeptical brain holds it at arms length. Then you read commentary in a forum you trust and you see message after message of thoughtfully worded support for some position. I think reading gobs of "informed real people" commentary is far more persuasive - and subtly so - than reading an article from someone you KNOW is pushing a specific perspective.

I like to believe I'm an independent thinker, but a big part of my process is to seek out many different points of view and judging which feel well supported and well reasoned. Consensus DOES play a role in my judgement forming. If consensus is easily faked, yikes.

Re: AI Generated Propaganda

#87

Post by dragonwriter »

tinideiznaimnou wrote: post #71
dragonwriter wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To those saying "Oh I can tell it's fake, obviously!", consider: will your parents/grandparents? Well, my parents and grandparents are dead, so probably not. But, when they were alive, they had enough experience of the real world that they would be suspicious of bandages worn outside of clothes, the printed document wrapped around the arm, and the gauze that rather than wrapping fully around the head seamless merge…

>But, when they were alive, they had enough experience of the real world that they would be suspicious of bandages worn outside of clothes, the printed document wrapped around the arm, and the gauze that rather than wrapping fully around the head seamless merges into the forehead. Would they have noticed them at the quick glance that this image invites? Assume an astute person but with media literacy based on: * news…

> Would they have noticed them at the quick glance that this image invites?

Probably; I mean, it took me more than a quick glance to even figure out that the thing that looked like a discontinuous strip of printed cash register receipts with red stains across the outside of his sweater was probably supposed to be bandages, even with the priming effect of reading the text. And the document wrapped partly around his arm is quite jarring.

But, ultimately, may main point isn’t that AI images are categorically unconvincing—I’ve generated more convincing AI images. But AI barely matters; the same training data that enables AI image generation contains thousands of images that can be used, without modification, with a false caption to the same effect — and not just in theory, but this is actively done all the time. While AI may increase the risk of convincing fake imagery of specific individuals (though that, too, has been common before AI image generation), the kind of generic propaganda highlighted here is both simple and a hundreds-of-times-a-day thing with more convincing imagery without AI.

Re: AI Generated Propaganda

#88

Post by Imnimo »

Is the accompanying story untrue, or is this just a case of someone using an AI tool to create a generic stock image for an otherwise-truthful article, and then the provenance of the image being lost?

Re: AI Generated Propaganda

#89

Post by jl2718 »

No amount of propaganda can defeat what’s been implanted by teachers in school. It takes almost zero technology to require a child to believe a lie as a condition of their freedom. Don’t bother with AI; just put it on a test. Belief of anything beyond that point is controlled by cognitive dissonance.

Re: AI Generated Propaganda

#90

Post by clankyclanker »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #83
vintermann wrote: post #70

I have a theory that propagandists' jobs are safer than they would seem. Thing is, when you're arguing online with some political consultant who four years ago was convinced Joe Biden was senile (because they supported Amy Klobuchar), who is now just as convinced he's sharp as a razor and ready for another term, are they really trying to convince you with their arguments ? No, I don't think so. I think the whole poin…

But who are they signaling to when they do this? Not the person they're arguing with. Not me, either, if I'm reading the conversation. To me, they're signaling "I refuse to actually consider anything the other person says. All I will do is argue and repeat my talking points. I might as well be a robot." They're signaling to the people who pay them, and to the people who might hire them in the future, not to their rea…

I think you've got it: the point isn't persuasion, the point is exhaustion and disengagement. If you can keep shouting until the other side goes home, your opinions become more prevalent. You can then make your opinions so prevalent that other folks assume there's no point to engaging (voting? commenting?) because of how outnumbered contrary opinions are. At that point, your opinion has become reality. It relies on psychological tricks to subvert the one-voice-one-vote rule (c.f., State Street).
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