AI Might Start Selling Your Choices Before You Make Them, Study Warns (courthousenews.com)
- Reference: 0175809293
- News link: https://slashdot.org/story/24/12/31/2014246/ai-might-start-selling-your-choices-before-you-make-them-study-warns
- Source link: https://www.courthousenews.com/ai-might-start-selling-your-choices-before-you-make-them-study-warns/
> Researchers from the University of Cambridge's Leverhulme Center for the Future of Intelligence say -- in [2]a paper published Monday in the Harvard Data Science Review journal -- the rise of generative AI, such as chatbots and virtual assistants, comes with the increasing opportunity for persuasive technologies to gain a strong foothold.
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> "Tremendous resources are being expended to position AI assistants in every area of life, which should raise the question of whose interests and purposes these so-called assistants are designed to serve," Yaqub Chaudhary, a visiting scholar at the Center for Future of Intelligence, said in a statement. When interacting even causally with AI chatbots -- which can range from digital tutors to assistants to even romantic partners -- users share intimate information that gives the technology access to personal "intentions" like psychological and behavioral data, the researcher said.
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> "What people say when conversing, how they say it, and the type of inferences that can be made in real-time as a result, are far more intimate than just records of online interactions," Chaudhary added. In fact, AI is already subtly manipulating and influencing motivations by mimicking the way a user talks or anticipating the way they are likely to respond, the authors argue. Those conversations, as innocuous as they may seem, leave the door open for the technology to forecast and influence decisions before they are made. "We caution that AI tools are already being developed to elicit, infer, collect, record, understand, forecast, and ultimately manipulate and commodify human plans and purposes," Chaudhary said.
[1] https://www.courthousenews.com/ai-might-start-selling-your-choices-before-you-make-them-study-warns/
[2] https://doi.org/10.1162/99608f92.21e6bbaa
So, an AI version of hover-to-click? (Score:1)
If you can show people ads in their various information feeds, the next logical step is to click for them.
Gaslight (1944) (Score:2)
We are all going to need defenses against what the AIs tell us is real. We already need them, but we will need more defenses when we are surrounded by many voices whose motivations are not in our interest.
Best way to poison AI? (Score:4, Insightful)
It occurs to me that there might be a way to feed LLMs enough false and contradictory data to make them both less reliable, and less effective at anticipating and manipulating people's responses and actions. We need to be engaging in this kind of guerilla warfare if we're going to hinder the corporatocracy's efforts to make the general population more cattle-like than we already are. Sadly, I don't see that happening.
Getting old kinda sucks, but there are times when I envy those who are even older than I am. They may miss a lot of the brutally dystopian shit that I foresee happening in the next decade or two. And a lot of that shit will be excreted by that thing - whatever it is - that we miscall "AI".
Re: (Score:2)
Poison the data pool. Start now and be relentless. I wish I knew enough to write a "How To" book on the subject.
Re: (Score:2)
I want an AI assistant that talks to corporate AI for me.
Maybe I could tell it that I want some product for under X Euro, and it can keep negotiating day and night until it gets me one.
Maybe OK (Score:2)
I might like it if my fridge told me what I want to eat and how to make it with the ingredients on hand.
Re: (Score:2)
So you are ok with it suggesting an unhealthy meal because the makers of the ingredients in your fridge paid your AI to suggest their products a head of the more healthy things in the fridge?
So what (Score:1)
Commercial and government entities are already guessing my future decisions and conditioning my prospects for loans, educational opportunities, and ability to purchase firearms (for example) on their estimates of my choices.
This process is already opaque and only sort-of-right. Why should I be up in arms over it becoming slightly more sort-of-right and just as opaque?
Re: (Score:2)
AI monitoring us and influencing us is small potatoes compared to the tech that is coming in the future. Cognitive-enhancing implants will make us smarter in various ways, and people will get them because they need them to be competitive in the labor market. They will come with assurances of safety and privacy, which will be lies, and these devices will be used by the elite shadow government to control us. By the time anyone figures this out, it will be far too late.
Then AI will literally be directing ou
Fold, Spindle, Mutilate. (Score:2)
Some of you may be old enough to remember the words "Do not Fold, Spindle or Mutilate" on punchcards.
No, I didn't program on punchcard -- i'm old, but not that old. Missed it by 10 or 15 years
BUT -- when I was little, pre-1980's, we got our power bill in PR in the form of an IBM punchcard, and I remember the words.
My most depraved fantasy right now is to take the concept of "AI" and fold it, spindle it, and mutilate it. As it surely will do to us. Terminator does come to mind.
Augmented Idiocy is the name
I worry that those machines teach our children now (Score:2)
AI is going to subtly but strongly promote Big Tech to them, lesson after lesson, year after year, and turn them into slave who will forever accept any abuse from tech monopolies, and go with whatever they say without a second thought. The same way McDonald's subtly created generations of adults addicted to fast food - and will never be held accountable for the damage they did and the lives they ruined.
Why wouldn't they? It's not like AI teachers are run by philanthropic non-profits. This is Big Tech's gold
Re: (Score:2)
Cannot tell if you are serious, or what really saying. Let me get help ...
Key Points:
- Criticism of AI in Education: The poster is worried that AI-driven teaching tools will subtly indoctrinate children to trust and depend on Big Tech, leading to long-term societal and individual harm.
- Comparison to McDonald's: They draw a parallel between Big Tech's influence and McDonald's alleged role in fostering unhealthy eating habits and societal dependence on fast food. This analogy suggests skepticism about corpo
Surveillance Capitalism (Score:2)
This is just the logical next step for [1]Surveillance Capitalism [wikipedia.org]
TLDR: Surveillance Capitalism is the amassing by Big Tech companies of vast quantities of individual behavioral data (usually without the individual's knowledge or consent) and, by data mining it, predicting and even directing future behavior for profit. This involves web tracking, app tracking, social media usage, data from smart devices, and more.
People's AI usage will just be another data stream for the prediction and influencing algorithms.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism
This should be illegal. (Score:2)
Combine this with custom per-user for online shopping for disastrous results. With digital price tags and user profiling, an aisle in store can change it's prices in order extract the most from every customer. People will find prices rising for everything they are about to want or need, just they need it.
When you don't need it, bottled water will be pennies. When you're thirsty, the prices will jump to $10. Hoarding can also be predicted, so the prices will be low when you're broke, and prices will rise
Re: (Score:2)
It may be able to do those things but it has no idea what is creating.
A great example was a picture a friend sent me from her new phone. A cat swimming with a fish it had caught. Lovely photo that on the face of it was real. The cat looked perfect, with the just the head sticking out of the water and water had the ripples with the expected reflections. At first glance just a normal pretty photo. One catch, the cat's fur was dry, right down the water line. Anyone who as seen a real cat in water know
Look at Windows to see how this will be accepted (Score:2)
AI assistants are going the have same issue as OSes. You hear Windows users complaining about changes to the OS they don't like, without realising Windows feature changes are not driven by what users want, they are driven by the need to return more money to shareholders. Linux breaks that relationship but from history we most people will stay with what they have.
Likewise when Big Tech offers you an AI assistant you should not act surprised if it is tuned to server the needs of Big Tech ahead of your ow
Comedians predicted this (Score:2)
Shocking, but Ronny Chieng predicted this in 2019 of all things, as [1]Amazon Before [youtube.com]. Who knew an absurdist critique of American consumerism 5 years ago might actually become reality. We live in a sad world.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGEAiUeiaKs