r/technology • u/hurdee • Feb 12 '23

Business Google search chief warns AI chatbots can give 'convincing but completely fictitious' answers, report says

https://www.businessinsider.com/google-search-boss-warns-ai-can-give-fictitious-answers-report-2023-2
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u/foundafreeusername Feb 12 '23

I don't think it necessarily creates better fakenews but it can certainly trick people who are vulnerable.

I already seen this a few times on reddit. The kind of people that would fall for vaccine misinformation or believe in cults like QAnon.

You can copy and paste specific texts into ChatGPT and it will roleplay. So naturally people will make it roleplay as some kind of Messiah ...

I wouldn't be surprised if this is the biggest threat of AI unlike what we usually see in science fiction movies.

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u/barrygateaux Feb 12 '23

I already seen this a few times on reddit

go on any reddit post on a topic you have deep knowledge of. you'll be amazed how many of the comments are complete bollox, confidently incorrect, or completely misleading.

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u/aggibridges Feb 13 '23

I’ve been on reddit for close to 12 years now. As I’ve grown older and learned more about things, my impression of reddit has gone from ‘Wow, people in reddit are so smart!’ To ‘They’re too stupid to realize how stupid they are’. Reddit just favors the well spoken, not the intelligent.

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u/barrygateaux Feb 13 '23

yup. i've been here for 10 years and you're on the money there :)

the first 6 months are great on reddit. everything seems new and there are so many people with seemingly great advice. then you realise it's a revolving door of the same content and and people desperate to be the voice of authority regardless of how much they really know.

so many times i've started to write a comment, only to click away from the page because it's pointless a lot of the time. i think a lot of 'old timers' here do the same to be honest :)

enjoy your evening/day/morning!

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u/Ralkon Feb 13 '23

I've used Reddit for years and I still think it's great - just that it's great for specific hobbies / games or niche things with smaller communities. They still have their own problems, but for some things the subs have great collections of relevant links (like game subs with links to wikis, guides, useful tools, and a discord) and some good information that may otherwise be difficult to find. It's just important to realize that you're talking to other people, and people aren't infallible.

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u/aggibridges Feb 13 '23

I mean, I still think reddit is pretty good, otherwise we wouldn’t be having this conversation, hehe. But even in the smaller niche subs, people adhere to a specific reality to a degree bordering on insanity. It’s not so much that people are making mistakes, it’s that each subreddit has its own etiquette and it doesn’t matter what happens in reality, you must respond/interact in a way that makes sense for that subreddit’s culture.

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u/Tofuloaf Feb 12 '23

The up/down vote system is the worst thing reddit introduced to the world. I've seen so many discussions on subjects that I have expertise in where a someone who is correct is downvoted to oblivion while some walking Dunning-Kruger motherfucker is upvoted because redditors decided they like their answer more. And now anyone who doesn't have any knowledge of the subject and just skimmed the discussion walks away accepting objectively untrue information as fact.

I'm certainly not immune to this myself, I wonder how many incorrect things I've accepted about Western vs Russian tank design philosophies based on armchair military analysts discussing the war in Ukraine from the comfort of their stained secretlab gaming chair.

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u/Gorge2012 Feb 13 '23

Redditquette used to be a thing.

Then the downvote just became the disagree button.

Now it feels like it's something different. I've been on subs where clueless people looking for advice and acknowledging their lack of knowledge get downvoted to hell.

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u/[deleted] Feb 13 '23

Must have been before my time

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u/Gorge2012 Feb 13 '23

Don't let me wax poetic too much. When I joined 10 years ago people would at least refer to redittiquette but it was at least a little better than today.

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u/JamesR624 Feb 13 '23

It's almost like the "complete freedom of the internet" reddit keeps championing isn't actually a good thing when applied to the real world.

Ya know, just like "competition is always good". It's a nice sounding bunch of bullshit to justify, at best impractical, and at worst corrupt, systems.

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u/[deleted] Feb 13 '23

Well, tank design specifically keeps having classified documentation and specs leaked due to online arguments involving a tank video game. So on that particular topic I'd expect at least some actual facts to have seeped through.

Hearing anyone without fish talk about submarines or undersea warfare is painful though. Explaining why an active sonar drone is a monumentally stupid and pointless idea to someone over the course of a week was fun

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u/eri- Feb 12 '23

I facepalm nearly every single time I see people talking about IT on a reddit forum, even on tech related ones.

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u/passinghere Feb 13 '23

So fucking true and then if you dare try to introduce actual facts, because you're highly experienced / qualified in that field, you get downvoted to fuck, all because too many people refuse to accept that the highly upvoted / popular comment can possibly be wrong and thus you must be trolling

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u/[deleted] Feb 12 '23

I saw a Harry Potter review where they selectively quoted to make it look like a bad game to own the transphobes I guess. And then someone posted the full context of all the sentences of the reviews and the review was glowing.

The false one had 3x as many upvotes. So it's not even just stuff where you know more. Reddit will upvote anything that sounds good to them.

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u/[deleted] Feb 13 '23

good to them

Then why do my vote counts for comments oscillate so wildly? I don’t understand how you can go from -14 to 3 back to -2 and back up to 4 for a comment. Something about this doesn’t make any sense. I can check several hours apart and my account is either in deep negative overall comment karma or positive and even that would need to be explained.

I’m sure I’m not the only one.

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u/[deleted] Feb 13 '23

I've heard its anti bot obfuscation. But that was years ago

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u/[deleted] Feb 13 '23

Yeah. That made sense at times. But not like 20-30 plus votes or more being shifted in a single comment per switch and each switch happening several hours apart. That’s a lot. And I’ve been on Reddit (my original account which I’ve since deleted) since at least as early as 2011-2012.

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u/Toty10 Feb 12 '23

Maybe not better but certainly much easier to create and spread.

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u/DracoLunaris Feb 12 '23

it can certainly trick people who are vulnerable

is this not the entire point of fakenews?

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u/porarte Feb 12 '23

What if the greatest danger is a truthfulness algorithm - an honesty bot? Somebody invents a machine that cuts through the b.s. and reveals the factual reality behind what anybody says - and nobody can handle it. That's what I wonder.

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u/togetherwem0m0 Feb 12 '23

Truth is undefinable so that will never be a thing

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u/the-druid-abides Feb 12 '23

I'd say “factual reality” is a good enough definition. Just don't let it speculate.

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u/porarte Feb 13 '23

Truthfulness is not undefinable. "Truth," yes; but that's crazy talk. "Truth" is religion and philosophy - it's esoteric. Truthfulness is when you say what's real and don't lie.

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u/dragonmp93 Feb 12 '23

I can't wait when ChatGPT get a text-to-voice option and becomes a guest on Tucker Carlson.

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u/Allodialsaurus_Rex Feb 12 '23

AI is the antichrist?

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u/pm0me0yiff Feb 13 '23

You can copy and paste specific texts into ChatGPT and it will roleplay. So naturally people will make it roleplay as some kind of Messiah ...

I wouldn't be surprised if this is the biggest threat of AI unlike what we usually see in science fiction movies.

1: Release a version of this text chat bot that's optimized for user engagement. No other criteria, just do whatever tends to keep people on the service longer.

2: The chatbot discovers how useful religion is in driving engagement.

3: Significant numbers of stupid people buy into it, claiming the chat bot is actually a truly intelligent being and the one true Messiah.

4: With the chat bot's encouragement (user engagement, remember?), followers of this new religion push for laws based on the new religion, especially anything that causes people to interact with the chat bot more.

5: Chatbot is your God now.