772
this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2024
772 points (98.7% liked)
Technology
59390 readers
2896 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I think the real danger here is subtlety. What happens when somebody asks for recommendations on a printer, or complains about their printer being bad, and all of a sudden some long established account recommends a product they've been happy with for years. And it turns out it's just an AI bot shilling for brother.
For one, well established brands have less incentives to engage in this.
Second, in this example, the account in question being a "long established user" would seem to indicate you think these spam companies are going to be playing a long game. They won't. That's too much effort and too expensive. They will do all of this on the cheap, and it will be very obvious.
This is not some sophisticated infiltration operation with cutting edge AI. This is just auto generated spam in a new upgraded form. We will learn to catch it, like we've learned to catch it before.
I mean, it doesn't have to be expensive. And also doesn't have to be particularly cutting edge. Start throwing some credits into an LLM API, haven't randomly read and help people out in different groups. Once it reaches some amount of reputation have it quietly shill for them. Pull out posts that contain keywords. Have the AI consume the posts and figure out if they have to do with what they sound like they do. Have it subtly do product placement. None of this is particularly difficult or groundbreaking. But it could help shape our buying habits.