NEW: Researchers secretly ran a massive, unauthorized AI persuasion experiment on Reddit users in a large debate subreddit. The bots' answers mined the original posters' identity and post history to generate its answers & created identities such as "rape survivor" www.404media.co/researchers-... - ThreadSky

jasonkoebler.bsky.social • 1 day ago

NEW: Researchers secretly ran a massive, unauthorized AI persuasion experiment on Reddit users in a large debate subreddit. The bots' answers mined the original posters' identity and post history to generate its answers & created identities such as "rape survivor"

https://www.404media.co/researchers-secretly-ran-a-massive-unauthorized-ai-persuasion-experiment-on-reddit-users/

Comments

mofette.bsky.social•1 day ago

"We got loads of upvotes" in a platform where people regularly make things up for supposed internet points, it's really not the bragging rights they think they are.
I use reddit, I assume almost everything is a creative writing experiment and use it as a form of entertainment

mofette.bsky.social•1 day ago

Apart from the legends who ask for help on very specific issues they've had with tech, and get them solved, leaving the answer on the internet for us to find later. Those people are invaluable.

clepkowski.bsky.social•1 day ago

The gloating about how “highly effective at changing minds” their bots were—while sidestepping that they were presenting outright lies and fabrications as authentic personal stories—is yet another example of how hollow our collective ethics have become.

pollypoplar.bsky.social•1 day ago

How encouraging that the humans developing AI possess such great integrity and concern for the humanity it is supposed to serve./s

nailsthatglow.com•1 day ago

Reddit is just bots now.
That is my takeaway.

wildgorillaman.bsky.social•1 day ago

Dead internet theory remains undefeated

ghostyspook.bsky.social•4 hours ago

I know people
Can lie online but the choice of what they were lying about…fake male rape survivor gets into peoples brains and they use it to impact the way they treat women offline

maggiepye.bsky.social•1 day ago

📌

planecrazy.bsky.social•1 day ago

I'm not sure in what context these would be called "researchers" but it wouldn't be in any kind of academic context. Wonder what their institution's IRB had to say about experimenting on human subjects without their consent?

tuomaspernu.bsky.social•1 day ago

I think it's pretty clear: soon trust in all online interactions is gone.

linwail.bsky.social•1 day ago

I hate this so much. Forum spaces like Reddit are so helpful for me.

mktsutherland.bsky.social•6 hours ago

📌

jasonkoebler.bsky.social•6 hours ago

A lot of updates here. Reddit is issuing "formal legal demands" against the researchers who ran this experiment. The university is investigating how the research was done, and the researchers say they are not going to publish their findings:

https://www.404media.co/reddit-issuing-formal-legal-demands-against-researchers-who-conducted-secret-ai-experiment-on-users/

jasonkoebler.bsky.social•1 day ago

The researchers claim to be from the University of Zurich, but are now refusing to identify themselves, while arguing that what they did was ethical even though it broke numerous Reddit and subreddit rules and did this without any sort of permission

bluerlights.bsky.social•3 hours ago

"claim to be from UZH"
Their affiliation is not in doubt.
Switzerland has fairly strong privacy laws. The researchers have no obligation to identify themselves, neither legally nor culturally.

bluerlights.bsky.social•3 hours ago

Reddit admin have said they will be taking action, and UZH also said they are looking into this. Hopefully there will be consequences that aren't of the online harassment campaign variety.

jasonkoebler.bsky.social•3 hours ago

at the time this article was published there was no formal confirmation that they were from UZH. Things have changed since then and this is clear in my second article about this

tlcesq.bsky.social•19 hours ago

This is what DOGE is doing with our data. Can’t wait.

drastic.bsky.social•1 day ago

Very few things say "we're confident we're being ethical" more clearly than "we are refusing to identify ourselves."

drkpgoessling.bsky.social•1 day ago

I'd like to see the Ethics Review of this study, based on the 'sensitivity' of the topics, I really can't imagine how it got approved.

siro300104.bsky.social•39 minutes ago

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't AI content pretending not to be against EU law, and most likely someone from the EU interacted with that shit?

jasonkoebler.bsky.social•1 day ago

Rarely does anything make me go "wow" anymore, but wow

twohitgood.bsky.social•1 day ago

naming and shaming individuals who facilitated this, at minimum.

jodyshenn.bsky.social•1 day ago

of course they made sure to get the statutory rape laws info in the bots https://bsky.app/profile/jeffhorwitz.bsky.social/post/3lnr76xwats2a

north-easton.bsky.social•1 day ago

Holy hell.

williamcb.bsky.social•1 day ago

V interesting story. It *feels* like a violation to me and I find myself wanting to know how the internal ethics review process at Zurich thought about it. But really, manipulating the opinions of the audience is Elon Musk's game. If you don't like this, you really, really should hate X.

dom96.picheta.me•1 day ago

This is a crazy story. But totally predictable: you have no idea whether the account replying to you online is an LLM or not anymore.

We need to move to only human spaces ASAP.

rueserpente.bsky.social•5 hours ago

I hear you. This is exactly why I have largely withdrawn from social media over the last 5-6 years. Too many fake accounts. I don’t want to spend time interacting with a troll, bot, or sock puppet. I feel jaded, but then stories like this reinforce my reserve.

dom96.picheta.me•4 hours ago

This is exactly what I’m trying to fix by building @onlyhumanhub.com. The challenge unfortunately is that the only way to verify humanity at scale is by using passports. But I think it’s worth it to know you are talking to a human.

rueserpente.bsky.social•4 hours ago

It really sucks to have had my trust eroded so far, but yeah.

ceciliacopeland.bsky.social•1 day ago

2.0 of this.
https://www.wired.com/2014/06/everything-you-need-to-know-about-facebooks-manipulative-experiment/

kaimthaler.bsky.social•1 day ago

Thanks for reporting this out. Seriously bad from the researchers and from the university IRB not stopping this beforehand

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