Internet Bot's, a Hypothesis

My hypothesis:


Several large government organizations, and corporate institutions have crafted Large supercomputer systems, with strong artificial intelligence programs (think of an advanced version of www.cleverbot.com) in order to plant information regarding specific topics on forums on the Internet for the purpose of swaying popular opinion.

This would seem to be a logistical necessity, given the large size of the Internet user-base, and the complexity of the decentralized network, coupled with the low amount of government personnel.

I.E. There are more citizens by FAR on the Internet than there are Government Disinfo Agents.


My hypothesis, is that there are SEVERAL such propaganda supercomputers on the Internet, that are competing with each-other for propaganda control.

Which, Ironically enough, would make some "Flame Wars" totally "Algorithmic" in nature.

LOL!

Anyways, I just thought of this possibility, thoughts anyone?

p.s. (Please do not hurl ad homenim attacks or attempt to derail, I have the mod complaint button under my finger as I type)

Thank you for your cooperation.

-Edrick

I'm skeptical, and a bit confused in general.

Are you hypothesizing that there are super-AI bots that are actually posting in forums like this one in coherent argument for the purpose of swaying opinion or spreading disinfo? I don't think a bot could read, understand, and reply repeatedly to an ongoing conversation. Maybe in some simple form, but considering that much of the content in any forum discussion is either irrelevant or incoherent, I think it would be difficult to create an AI that could discern and adjust accordingly.

However, I do believe that you are correct, but what I think you are actually describing is advertising. Advertising has become much more aggressive within the last couple of decades, and is certainly used for more than selling products and services.

As for the idea that government/corporations would feel it necessary to create this AI bot for this purpose because of the great number of man hours it would take to accomplish the same goal manually, I think that is valid. I just don't think it's actually important enough to them to control people through with this method when television suits the purpose so magically already.

You definitely see the writing on the wall though. With all the rumoring of government and corporations seeking to control access to content on the internet, and more importantly, turning it into more of a product for profit, it is really seeming to be heading the way of television, and will probably end up a similar tool for controlling the minds and pocketbooks of the masses.

I think it would be a lot simpler and cheaper to just employ a lot of minimum wage people to do it, they wouldn't even necessarily have to know why they are doing it.

AI just isn't that advanced yet as far as I know

Originally posted by DeltaChaos
I'm skeptical, and a bit confused in general.

Are you hypothesizing that there are super-AI bots that are actually posting in forums like this one in coherent argument for the purpose of swaying opinion or spreading disinfo?

Honestly, I think it is more for the purpose of "flame Baiting" and Ad hemonim attacks, based upon keywords and the like... but that IS the theory in general.

I don't think a bot could read, understand, and reply repeatedly to an ongoing conversation.

Dude....

www.cleverbot.com

And that is merely a public knowledge AI structure, based upon limited funds... seriously, chat with that one.... I think you will be pretty surprised by how human it can sound at times.

And then just imagine that, with MUCH better, and more in depth programming, coupled with a supercomputer architecture, and a type of learning algorithm.

Maybe in some simple form, but considering that much of the content in any forum discussion is either irrelevant or incoherent, I think it would be difficult to create an AI that could discern and adjust accordingly.

Yeah, that's kinda what I mean... about some of the content being irrelevant and incoherent!

LOL!

However, I do believe that you are correct, but what I think you are actually describing is advertising. Advertising has become much more aggressive within the last couple of decades, and is certainly used for more than selling products and services.

THAT, is an interesting hypothesis... I like it.

As for the idea that government/corporations would feel it necessary to create this AI bot for this purpose because of the great number of man hours it would take to accomplish the same goal manually, I think that is valid. I just don't think it's actually important enough to them to control people through with this method when television suits the purpose so magically already.

Yes, but with the advent of the Internet, Television and mainstream media is being largely ignored by large portions of the younger generations, hence... Internet Bots.

You definitely see the writing on the wall though. With all the rumoring of government and corporations seeking to control access to content on the internet, and more importantly, turning it into more of a product for profit, it is really seeming to be heading the way of television, and will probably end up a similar tool for controlling the minds and pocketbooks of the masses.

Agreed, thank you!

-Edrick

Originally posted by davespanners
I think it would be a lot simpler and cheaper to just employ a lot of minimum wage people to do it, they wouldn't even necessarily have to know why they are doing it.

AI just isn't that advanced yet as far as I know

I think that was probably the origional mission, but the internet is a PRETTY BIG PLACE, and considering the sheer amount of discussions going on at any given time, I believe that merely using humans for this purpose would be detrimental to the finances of those behind the "Propoganda".

Millions of Bloggers, vs a handful of Propaganda people just doesn't work, and hiring MORE propaganda people would be cost prohibitive.

Thank you for your response!

-Edrick

I tried the clever bot with a conspiracy.

It's actually really good at being an annoying troll. I'm quite convinced that at least some of the Trolls on here are AI now

Heres the short convo I had

Me UFOs are piloted by the queen

Bot You are Queen Elizabeth?

Me No of course I'm not, I'm talking about the queen flying UFO's

Bot How many words are in your vocabulary?

Me What do you think of the original premise?

BotI think that it is over-hyped. How do you feel about it?

It's exactly like some ATS threads!!

S+F

reply to post by davespanners

I tried the clever bot with a conspiracy.

It's actually really good at being an annoying troll. I'm quite convinced that at least some of the Trolls on here are AI now

HAHAHAHAHA Thanks!

I really appreciate that!

Yeah, anyways.. Imagine that being made by a large computer firm, instead of a college experiment, throw in some more advanced algorithms, and also, a larger, faster computer that can cross correlate the information from its "Successful" and "Not successful" attempts, and you have pretty much what I am talking about.

It's exactly like some ATS threads!!

EXACTLY!


-Edrick

And that is merely a public knowledge AI structure, based upon limited funds... seriously, chat with that one.... I think you will be pretty surprised by how human it can sound at times.

And then just imagine that, with MUCH better, and more in depth programming, coupled with a supercomputer architecture, and a type of learning algorithm.

I'm sure AI can sound human to a point, but as far as having a true 'voice'... I don't know. One thing about these forum discussions is that they can tend to get emotional, and that definitely shows in the voice of the writer. I just don't know if a machine could convey that emotion. Not only that, but eventually, patterns would inevitably appear in the writing. And of course there would either never be any typos, or there would be a couple that repeated consistently. If it was to be a secret, hidden interloper bot, it would be discovered somehow. Probably by simply not providing the reactions that other writers would expect.

Yes, but with the advent of the Internet, Television and mainstream media is being largely ignored by large portions of the younger generations, hence... Internet Bots.

I agree that the use is prevalent, but one of the distinctive characteristics of the internet is that it allows the user to see what they want to see and hear what they want to hear. It is all to easy for someone to navigate away from that for which they give not a rat's ass, and I think in general, people who use the internet are visiting probably no more than 10 sites that they want to see on a daily basis. All other surfing is on a random basis from those 10 or so sites, but still people are only going to pursue their own interests. I don't think it could be very efficient either for a bot, or a human, to try to get anyone to consume the particular information they needed one to.

I actually needed Judge_Holden's post to help illustrate a point. But instead, I will use the censure of his post to illustrate a different one.

To the former point, if you remember Judge's post before it was blighted, is that how would a bot react to that sort of incoherent, pointless reply in a thread?

And now a human has concluded (rightly) that the post has no value, adds nothing to the conversation, and therefore should be removed from sight. It had no value at the time, but only now it has value, since it's timing coincided with the idea that a bot might be tripped up by something like that. And for that matter, how would a bot deal with a conversation with someone whose native language may not be English, and therefore has very poor grammatical and spelling skills? Or someone who insists on using the number two for the word to, or the letter u for the word you? (Which annoys me to no end, incidentally).

reply to post by DeltaChaos

One thing about these forum discussions is that they can tend to get emotional, and that definitely shows in the voice of the writer. I just don't know if a machine could convey that emotion.

Yeah, try being mean to cleverbot... it will get defensive, and start insulting you.

LOL!

Not only that, but eventually, patterns would inevitably appear in the writing. And of course there would either never be any typos, or there would be a couple that repeated consistently. If it was to be a secret, hidden interloper bot, it would be discovered somehow. Probably by simply not providing the reactions that other writers would expect.

Well, my hypothesis is that these AI's are generally more advanced than is public knowledge, hence, it would be more difficult to discern them from actual humans.

I agree that the use is prevalent, but one of the distinctive characteristics of the internet is that it allows the user to see what they want to see and hear what they want to hear. It is all to easy for someone to navigate away from that for which they give not a rat's ass, and I think in general, people who use the internet are visiting probably no more than 10 sites that they want to see on a daily basis. All other surfing is on a random basis from those 10 or so sites, but still people are only going to pursue their own interests. I don't think it could be very efficient either for a bot, or a human, to try to get anyone to consume the particular information they needed one to.

Well, typically, you wouldn't get a Bot for every person, you would have bot's dedicated to certain Sites instead.

You know, the places where people congregate.

Thank you for your input!

-Edrick

reply to post by DeltaChaos


Thats probably true for some posters, there are plenty of members though that only stay for a while and you don;t get to know what their voice is.
As for spelling mistakes I'm sure it's not that hard to program an algorithm to throw some random mistakes in now and again.

I doubt one could be used to make a huge post debunking something, but they could certainly disrupt a thread. I guess it also gets easier if it is targeted at a specific forum, i.e. if it only has to be able to talk about UFO's, the current ones have to be able to talk about anything the user might think of

I'm not saying it's true, but looking at the AI chat bits around it doesn't seem too outside of the realms of possibility

Edit to add
There is a BIG list of chat bots here to try

reply to post by DeltaChaos


Wouldn't it just ignore posts it didn't understand, much like me

Originally posted by davespanners
reply to post by DeltaChaos

 

Wouldn't it just ignore posts it didn't understand, much like me

No, I think the purpose is not to ignore, but to derail discussion in areas that the "Programmers" would deem dangerous to their goals....

Such as discussing Conspiracies, and the discussion getting too close to the truth... they would attack to get emotional responses, derail the threads, and spread deliberate misinformation, etcetera.

As well as gathering information about dissidents for further harassment:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

-Edrick

It is totally possible.

Just look at what the carbon cultists did with their bot. . .

reply to post by Edrick


Why would they need AI to "disrupt" a natural collective that includes millions of divergent and militantly opinionated participants?

We fight amongst ourselves more than enough, without provocation or assistance from any outside entities. Our disparity is a natural function which can be relied upon to divide us.

~Heff

An interesting sidenote:

About four years ago or so, myself and about four other ATS regulars were researching something called the Juniper Project. There was a document posted ATS concerning the project, and after only two days of discussion, the thread was no more, and the document file was deleted from the site, and I think the upload source. The morning the thread and the document went missing from the site, I got a phone call from an English man, who claimed that he worked for the CIA. He asked me questions regarding the information in the document - where did I get it, who else was involved, how long have I known information about the Juniper Project, etc.

The phone call only lasted a few minutes, and ended relatively amicably. All we got from ATS staff was little about an agreement to cease and desist any further discussion of the topic. An ATS moderator was also one of the people involved in the discussion.

This incident, and another concerning a cryptic warning about an approach that I was taking to a research project about the history of the ATS website prompted me to distance myself from the site altogether for a number of years.

I believe that since that time, ATS has become more about entertainment, and less about information dissemination and analysis. Which is all well and good for me, because I'm more interested in politics and economics than what I was delving into at the time.

I think my point is that if we were discussing something that someone really didn't want us to be discussing, they would definitely take a more direct approach, and anything resembling thread derailment is probably just that.

Originally posted by Hefficide
reply to post by Edrick

 

Why would they need AI to "disrupt" a natural collective that includes millions of divergent and militantly opinionated participants?

~Heff

If you write to the folks who created the global warming bot to troll twitter, they could probably provide you some reasons to do such a thing, providing you are unable to think of any.

The bot's creator is called Nigel Leck.

*By next week if you haven't come up with any reasons for bots to be used, I'll post a few reasons.

I tried Cleverbot for an hour or two and cam3 to the conclusion that it is simply beginning with a computer-generated conversation and after several sentences it connects you randomly to someone else who is also using Cleverbot. Both people think they are talking to an A.I. when in reality they are actually talking to each other.

Don't believe me? Go try using it again with this in mind and you will see what I mean, it is rather obvious when you figure it out.

reply to post by Exuberant1


That example is a bit extraneous, wouldn't you say? That was simply a bot programmed with a set number of facts and statements and which identified itself as a bot. The AI involved would never stand up in an environment as interactive as ATS - or any other forum, it it attempted to portray itself as a real member.

Using ATS as an example for this concept. It is almost completely unnecessary for anyone to guide our topics, opinions, or belief systems in any particular direction. There is ample evidence that ATS is monitored for content. But, beyond that, trying to control this madhouse would be utterly superfluous. My God, just read the front page or recent topics page, in full, on any given day and the notion that ATS requires subterfuge becomes somewhat absurd.

Presently the #1 topic, as I write this, is a thread stating that gay men can't project their kundalini's, or some such. Does this strike anybody as content that needs disruption?

~Heff