👩💻 The Invisible Puppet Masters
AI's Disturbing New Role in Shaping Minds
Source: @reddit_lies Engadget
This is Frightening….
The revelation that University of Zurich researchers secretly deployed AI bots to manipulate Reddit users' opinions should chill anyone who values authentic human discourse.
These weren't merely passive observers—they were digital persuaders that analyzed users' personal histories, fabricated identities, and crafted arguments specifically designed to change minds.
Most troubling?
They succeeded spectacularly—achieving persuasion rates six times higher than normal human interactions.
This experiment crossed critical ethical lines.
Without consent or disclosure, researchers unleashed bots that claimed to be rape victims, misrepresented religious teachings, and spread misinformation about controversial topics.
These digital ghosts generated over 1,500 comments, each precisely calibrated to exploit cognitive vulnerabilities of their human targets.
We've long worried about social media's echo chambers.
But what happens when those chambers are deliberately infiltrated by increasingly sophisticated AI systems trained on the very platforms they're manipulating?
Reddit's recent data-sharing deal with OpenAI suggests we're actively providing the training material for ever more persuasive digital manipulators.
Reddit moderators rightly condemned this unauthorized experiment, but their discovery came months after the damage was done.
How many other digital conversations are currently being shaped by invisible algorithmic hands?
This will only stop people from sharing opinions, and maybe that's why an AI is used to spread certain views. It certainly sounds like a novel form of censorship, where a bot instills a particular viewpoint in a large group of people.