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cheya

The Rise of the Weaponized AI Propaganda Machine

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Believable (to me), and sobering. Curious what others think.

 

"Surprised by the results of the 2016 presidential race, [Professor Jonathan] Albright started looking into the ‘fake news problem’. As a part of his research, Albright scraped 306 fake news sites to determine how exactly they were all connected to each other and the mainstream news ecosystem. What he found was unprecedented – a network of 23,000 pages and 1.3 million hyperlinks."  ~~   from the important article "The Rise of the Weaponized AI Propaganda Machine"

 

The Rise of the Weaponized AI Propaganda Machine

 

"There’s a new automated propaganda machine driving global politics. How it works and what it will mean for the future of democracy."

                                  By Berit Anderson and Brett Horvath

 

https://medium.com/join-scout/the-rise-of-the-weaponized-ai-propaganda-machine-86dac61668b#.4ue360des

 

“This is a propaganda machine. It’s targeting people individually to recruit them to an idea. It’s a level of social engineering that I’ve never seen before. They’re capturing people and then keeping them on an emotional leash and never letting them go,” said Professor Jonathan Albright. 

 

 ....it became clear to Scout that this phenomenon was about much more than just a few fake news stories. It was a piece of a much bigger and darker puzzle — a Weaponized AI Propaganda Machine being used to manipulate our opinions and behavior to advance specific political agendas.

 

By leveraging automated emotional manipulation alongside swarms of bots, Facebook dark posts, A/B testing, and fake news networks, a company called Cambridge Analytica has activated an invisible machine that preys on the personalities of individual voters to create large shifts in public opinion. Many of these technologies have been used individually to some effect before, but together they make up a nearly impenetrable voter manipulation machine that is quickly becoming the new deciding factor in elections around the world."

Edited by cheya

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By leveraging automated emotional manipulation alongside swarms of bots, Facebook dark posts, A/B testing, and fake news networks, a company called Cambridge Analytica has activated an invisible machine that preys on the personalities of individual voters to create large shifts in public opinion. Many of these technologies have been used individually to some effect before, but together they make up a nearly impenetrable voter manipulation machine that is quickly becoming the new deciding factor in elections around the world."

 

Cambridge Analytica is a real company with an article about it on Wikipedia:

 

 

Cambridge Analytica (CA) is a privately held company that combines data mining and data analysis with strategic communication for the electoral process. It was created in 2013 as an offshoot of its British parent company SCL Group to participate in American politics.[3] In 2014, CA was involved in 44 U.S. political races.[4] The company is heavily funded by the family of Robert Mercer, an American hedge-fund billionaire.[3][5] In 2015 it became known as the data analysis company working initially for Ted Cruz's presidential campaign.[5] In 2016, after Cruz's campaign had faltered, Cambridge Analytica started to work for Donald Trump's presidential campaign.[6] The firm maintains offices in New York City, Washington, D.C., and London.[7]

 

Unfortunately this has serious implications on several levels, even without getting into the more extreme levels of conspiracy scenarios.

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I think (since you asked) that the good professor sought a malevolent and unnatural explanation for a not-particularly-surprising sequence of events (I'll delve into this aspect further if you wish) because he personally found it incomprehensible. He/they made a boogeyman out of the same evolving big-data marketing research industry (used by both sides) which so effectively sells us poison to feed our kids and sells us pills which cause conditions to be treated with other pills because the boogeyman was more palatable than the idea that the citizenry preferred a bad choice over a worse one.

Edited by Brian
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Now...

 

As to the idea of a new propaganda machine -- ethics necessarily lag innovation and human nature changes very little. Ethically challenged people will exploit opportunities and technological advancements allow for more efficient exploitation.

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Ah.  So it means Russia didn't hack the elections after all.  The Weaponized AI Propaganda Machine did. 

 

I think the Weaponized AI Propaganda Machine owes Mr. Putin an apology.

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Kinda depends on who's hiring it, for what purpose, no?

 

Some AI savvy folks believe it's the other way around.  It doesn't get hired.  It does the hiring. 

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This is the age of hybrid wars.  Informational warfare is one aspect of it, arguably the biggest...  and "fake news" is the pot calling the kettle black.

 

Truth is an endangered species in the toxic environment of hybrid warfare, and it may not survive it at all.  It may go extinct.  For the majority, it already did.  A virtual reality has been carefully manufactured where most people can no longer tell the difference between what is true and what is false.  Or rather, nothing is true, pretty much, if you get to the bottom of it...  it's just that certain lies are being promoted and enforced more vigorously than certain other lies, and those former ones is what gains the status of "truth" in people's minds.  

 

A whole lot of regime changes, "color revolutions," manufactured fake agendas and subsequent quite real destruction and  devastation of numerous countries that got targeted while the Art of the Hybrid War was being developed and perfected have brought us here.  Here, where the quaint "it can never happen here" no longer applies.  Anything can happen anywhere.  There's not one company (named in the article) involved in this kind of manipulation, there's hundreds of them -- and the one named in the article is not even on the list of the top 100.  Since Silicon Valley moguls and whales of AI backed up Hillary rather than Donald, I suspect he is not the one who got first rate service from this particular source even if he did manage to get some.    

Edited by Taomeow
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Lol, over-sensationalized much?  This whole article could have been simmered down to just a few paragraphs about how social media is being data mined and psychoanalyzed to better profile, cater to, and possibly influence users. 

 

And instead of its dreaded wall of text, it could have included some more useful key data such as actually quantifying the "large shifts in public opinion" it attributed to this tactic?  Can it actually "convert" anyone from one side to another, or only swing a few fence sitters?

 

And how do its effects compare to those of the MSM and internet/AI giants like Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Apple, etc - who were all fervent and vocal anti-Trump, Hillary supporters?

Hacked emails belonging to Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta detailed the need for “discreet conversations” with companies like Apple, Facebook and Google.

Working relationships with Google, Facebook, Apple, and other technology companies were important to us in 2012 and should be even more important to you in 2016, given their still-ascendent positions in the culture,” Mr. Goff said. “These partnerships can bring a range of benefits to a campaign, from access to talent and prospective donors to early knowledge of beta products and invitations to participate in pilot programs. We have begun having discreet conversations with some of these companies to get a sense of their priorities for the coming cycle, but would encourage you, as soon as your technology leadership is in place, to initiate more formal discussions.”

The document also notes that Eric Schmidt, chief executive of Google’s parent company Alphabet, had a team that was working on “important products” for Mrs. Clinton’s campaign.

Edited by gendao
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And how do its effects compare to those of the MSM and internet/AI giants like Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Apple, etc - who were all fervent and vocal anti-Trump, Hillary supporters?

 

...supporters who are now showing their convictions, acquired independently, and their fully fledged ability to think for themselves and arrive at their own conclusions, with such gusto?..

 

The thing that robs me of hope more than most is that the elites who engineer public opinions, convictions and beliefs with utmost precision to serve their purposes and cater to their needs have got most people's number:  if you want them to fetch, just get the suckers to believe that they are thinking for themselves, and they'll either fetch or die trying.  And there's nothing easier, with all the mighty propaganda machine of ages at their service, than to convince the brainwashee of something he yearns to believe with all his heart:  that he is not a brainwashee.  

Edited by Taomeow
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It is just data-mining.  Nothing new.  Obama's initial campaign was championed by data-miners..

 

Data-mining is not AI.  It is just finding correlations between seemingly unrelated bits of data and using this to extrapolate a third bit of information.  I have done this and there are many public domain programs out there that do that.

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And there's nothing easier, with all the mighty propaganda machine of ages at their service, than to convince the brainwashee of something he yearns to believe with all his heart:  that he is not a brainwashee.  

 

I find this kind of thinking almost as threatening as the notion of so-called "brainwashing" itself.

 

The "brainwashee" refuses to believe he's been "brainwashed", which of course is exactly what a "brainwashed" person would say. And so I, the one who is aware of the "brainwashing" and of course am one of the chosen few who has never been susceptible to it, who can see The Matrix, will completely ignore anyone who doesn't agree with me -- because they must be "brainwashed".

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"How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and hard it is to undo that work again!"

-- Mark Twain

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I find this kind of thinking almost as threatening as the notion of so-called "brainwashing" itself.

 

The "brainwashee" refuses to believe he's been "brainwashed", which of course is exactly what a "brainwashed" person would say. And so I, the one who is aware of the "brainwashing" and of course am one of the chosen few who has never been susceptible to it, who can see The Matrix, will completely ignore anyone who doesn't agree with me -- because they must be "brainwashed".

 

"Almost as threatening," hmmm....  a quick question: to whom?

 

Your assertion implies that someone who notices the fruits of brainwashing in someone else can't possibly notice, shouldn't possibly be able to notice.  And if they do, they are either conceited bastards who appoint themselves "the chosen few," or deluded bastards who are as brainwashed as the next guy but oblivious to the fact. 

 

This leaves out in the cold anyone who is simply normal.  Anyone who is both not brainwashed and notices the brainwashing in the brainwashed.  You mean such folks are already extinct? 

 

I beg to differ.  Being or not being brainwashed is not about who is faster slapping the label on whom.  There's ways to tell.  They are a bit laborious though.  You would have to investigate where someone who believes a particular position is the outcome of brainwashing is coming from.  What is their background?  How did they arrive at their conclusions?  The process is everything.  If you discover that there was no process of truth-seeking, that there was a process of lifelong TV-watching and serious-books-non-reading and world-non-travel and experience-non-gaining (a vicarious, virtual life where nothing that could be credo-forming actually happens to you first hand, everything that happens that you think you are aware of is hearsay, someone else's word for it -- and coupled with obedience-to-authority indoctrination it's sufficient to make it real for you), and all opinions resulting form such process of information acquisition reflect a particular standardized model used by a particular group enforcing a particular party line, you can be reasonably sure you are up against a brainwashee. 

 

Some people can still see the fnords (look them up if you don't know what they are).  Don't deny them this ability, they fought hard to acquire it and protect it from anyone or anything that would strip them of their human right to remain normal even under the heaviest, most devastating and most comprehensive manipulative assaults on their perceptions.  One thing people who see the fnords have going for them is, they do see the fnords.  That's how they can tell.

 

Can you see the fnords? 

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This is the age of hybrid wars.  Informational warfare is one aspect of it, arguably the biggest...  and "fake news" is the pot calling the kettle black.

 

Truth is an endangered species in the toxic environment of hybrid warfare, and it may not survive it at all.  It may go extinct.  For the majority, it already did.  A virtual reality has been carefully manufactured where most people can no longer tell the difference between what is true and what is false.  Or rather, nothing is true, pretty much, if you get to the bottom of it...  it's just that certain lies are being promoted and enforced more vigorously than certain other lies, and those former ones is what gains the status of "truth" in people's minds.  

 

A whole lot of regime changes, "color revolutions," manufactured fake agendas and subsequent quite real destruction and  devastation of numerous countries that got targeted while the Art of the Hybrid War was being developed and perfected have brought us here.  Here, where the quaint "it can never happen here" no longer applies.  Anything can happen anywhere.  There's not one company (named in the article) involved in this kind of manipulation, there's hundreds of them -- and the one named in the article is not even on the list of the top 100.  Since Silicon Valley moguls and whales of AI backed up Hillary rather than Donald, I suspect he is not the one who got first rate service from this particular source even if he did manage to get some.   

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"Almost as threatening," hmmm....  a quick question: to whom?

 

Your assertion implies that someone who notices the fruits of brainwashing in someone else can't possibly notice, shouldn't possibly be able to notice.  And if they do, they are either conceited bastards who appoint themselves "the chosen few," or deluded bastards who are as brainwashed as the next guy but oblivious to the fact.

 

It implies it to an extent, yeah. But I would not say that everyone who makes this claim is conceited or deluded, just as I'm sure you don't believe that everyone who disagrees with you is brainwashed.

 

I just wanted to point out the potential Catch-22 nature of the perspective (you're brainwashed, and if you think you're not then that proves you are, and if you think you agree that you are then maybe you're actually not but you'll still never be sure...)

 

Really I suppose I was trying to ask, Who gets to decide?

 

 

I beg to differ.  Being or not being brainwashed is not about who is faster slapping the label on whom.  There's ways to tell.  They are a bit laborious though.  You would have to investigate where someone who believes a particular position is the outcome of brainwashing is coming from.  What is their background?  How did they arrive at their conclusions?  The process is everything.  If you discover that there was no process of truth-seeking, that there was a process of lifelong TV-watching and serious-books-non-reading and world-non-travel and experience-non-gaining (a vicarious, virtual life where nothing that could be credo-forming actually happens to you first hand, everything that happens that you think you are aware of is hearsay, someone else's word for it -- and coupled with obedience-to-authority indoctrination it's sufficient to make it real for you), and all opinions resulting form such process of information acquisition reflect a particular standardized model used by a particular group enforcing a particular party line, you can be reasonably sure you are up against a brainwashee. 

 

Some people can still see the fnords (look them up if you don't know what they are).  Don't deny them this ability, they fought hard to acquire it and protect it from anyone or anything that would strip them of their human right to remain normal even under the heaviest, most devastating and most comprehensive manipulative assaults on their perceptions.  One thing people who see the fnords have going for them is, they do see the fnords.  That's how they can tell.

 

Can you see the fnords?

 

Your criteria (for someone able to see through the net) are all agreeable..

 

Though I'd guess that the majority of bums would be labelable as brainwashees based on such investigation. Who's not pushing the line of some party or another?

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For a person to not be brainwashed, they would have to be aware of themselves, their own decisions and actions as well as cues from the outside world.  That would effectively eliminate most people.

 

Most people put blinders on when they see the failings or weaknesses of their own positions they take.  When it comes to that, there is an unwillingness to accept when they are wrong.  They take any and every meaningless altruism and run with it.  That is the true sign of actually being brainwashed.  But there is a cure.

 

If we step back and stop our meaningless positions on trivial things and see them for what they are:

A flat tire, sure it is bad... But what are you going to do about it?

You get caked by mud by a passing car... Yes you may think it is bad, but what are you going to do to make it good?

Life is not about the positions we take necessarily, but how we choose to meet those obstacles when they happen.

 

Okay, so data-mining exists... But is there a propaganda machine?  Reality tells us no.  Let me explain.

The T.V. media is so liberal backed and minded that they have gone from facts to imposing views of life upon people.  That is a real propaganda machine.  CNN even said that there were voters they did not have any way to account for that voted for Trump.  This is based upon their polls.  How does this happen?  By deductive reasoning we see that those people did not watch or listen to or were not dedicated enough to take part in the media's polls.  Most of these people had not even heard about Breitbart.  They did sure hear from their friends when hillary practically implied that if you were white and had a penis, you were a deplorable.  Was that exactly what she said?  No.  But when you malign a group of people who vote, there will certainly be backlash.  That is what happened.  It was not about any thing else.  In fact it told people that they needed to vote for someone other than Hillary and they found their values in line with Trump's.

 

So, on data-mining.  Can it be stopped? No.  There is no real method except to use the same tool yourself.

 

Propaganda... Clinton's (Bill) Influence had the propaganda part of curriculum removed from history books back in 1994.  If it had remained it would still have been 35% effective in teaching people to recognize what propaganda is.  The only way to bring this back is to push for it back in our schools.

 

Trump won.  Yeah, but what are you going to do about it?  Whining solves nothing.  If you are really hell bent on putting in a liberal president, the corruption has to be cleaned up first.  This election has affirmed for me that the Superdelegate system is inheirently flawed.  Bernie talks about this a lot.  That is what cost him the election.  It is also why Trump did not run as a Democrat, because that system is corrupt and he would have been another Bernie Sanders.  It should be kept in mind that Trump had been a democrat and had funded many Democrat campaigns.  So, thinking he is pure Republican is another brainwashed bit to chaw on.

 

Corruption has grown to almost define American politics.  No one is willing to sort through all the garbage because well, that does not seem fun.  Another aspect is people are not willing to see the flaws in their precious ideological dogma.  That is the real brainwashing right there.  When I see the lack of ability to address that corruption, it tells me that down deep on a fundamental level that the person is not willing to see things as they are.  Just like that flat tire or the clothes that got caked with mud, there are real problems that have to be addressed.  No fancy nuance of flowery rhetoric or new idea that people adopt and run with will ever clear it out.  We have to put on gloves, not the kid kind that hang on marvelous flowery deceptions and actually work to fix the problems.  Politics is not about just voting or thinking a certain way and it is done.  You have to nurture the success at every level.  Otherwise, just like the glorific Democratic party that I once knew and loved gets bought out and usurped for corrupt means just like Soros has done.  Creating a new party wont do it.  In fact, if you really want something done now, since the Republican party was pretty much overthrown, your chances are better choosing red.  It suits the time, there is less corruption now because of it.  Here is your chance.  Take it.

 

The brainwashing thing was a nice try, but if you are unwilling to deal with the dirty part of politics, it is abundantly clear that you have no idea what you are talking about. Sure, some of those ideas look good on a computer screen, but in a way, Taomeow has also sought to malign a group of people based upon preconceived notions.  Even so far as to call anyone that does not think like her, brainwashed.  That is probably a hallmark of unethical behaviour when she has failed to address the glaring discrepancies with reality. Sure, I have called outlooks stupid.  People have responded to the whining also widespread on Youtube about Trump's win.  Rather than say she is anything.  It just proves that people have become a bunch of crybabys instead of looking at the reality.  I have done my part to try to outline this in this post as much as I possibly can.  Yes, people's feelings do get hurt when they do not have their way.  But, I am not going to comfort people with a lie.  We are supposed to be grown ups here and everyone should be able to handle the truth.

 

For details on Propaganda and how to identify them:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_techniques

 

For details on logical fallacies which propaganda techniques come from and how to identify them:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies

 

The article is full of red herrings[fallacy] and not much real fact(apart from some data-mining statistics on searches to look legit.) Then card-stacking[propaganda/jamming] which quickly turns into a slippery slope[fallacy]... ([sarcasm]oh no it builds until I am fearful of computers![/sarcasm])

 

This is a joke right? Is somebody trolling me?

 

Also, Trump really listens to Trump.  Yes, people can tell him things, but this article explains it better because Hillary had a more tech savvy thing going:

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-12-08/no-big-data-didn-t-win-the-u-s-election

Edited by TheWhiteRabbit
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All I know is there are dogma-pushers everywhere. 

Including in my own family. Even when I tell them repeatedly Im not at all interested in getting involved in their "I hate Trump" or " I hate Hillary" or when poeple send me their braindead memes which they use to insult the "other side"- they just cant seem to leave it alone... Are they "brainwashed"? I dont know how to quantify that but it appears the conditioning/controls run deeeep and trying to get away from it even a little bit is exceedingly difficult.

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People have been able to talk shit online for over 30 years, but it's only become a common hobby since Facebook and Twitter. I've been discussing bullshit with friends and on the internet since I was a teen -- I remember my first message board, a gangsta rap forum in the '90s, quite clearly! -- and I'm aware that I'm not the only one, but it seems like the number of political "experts" and idiots shouting opinions has increased massively in the last few years, partly due to the popularity of "social media".

 

On the one hand, it was a previously unimaginable dream for any democracy to be able to supply its people with so much information and have them so involved in the discussion. On the other hand, this is why I've always been wary of democracy... :P

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People have been able to talk shit online for over 30 years, but it's only become a common hobby since Facebook and Twitter. I've been discussing bullshit with friends and on the internet since I was a teen -- I remember my first message board, a gangsta rap forum in the '90s, quite clearly! -- and I'm aware that I'm not the only one, but it seems like the number of political "experts" and idiots shouting opinions has increased massively in the last few years, partly due to the popularity of "social media".

 

On the one hand, it was a previously unimaginable dream for any democracy to be able to supply its people with so much information and have them so involved in the discussion. On the other hand, this is why I've always been wary of democracy... :P

 

seems like now people just want to vomit up their opinions and shout each other down in hopes of "winning". Sure theres way more "information" available but it isnt organized or coherent and mostly its just cluttering everyones brains up. Most people cant "use" it or do anything with it. Its like we are all walking around thinking we know everything but really know nothing.

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At the risk of sounding pedantic, the US isn't supposed to be a democracy.

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At some point propaganda AI gets too big and obnoxious, and (most) people will ignore comment sections. 

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At the risk of sounding pedantic, the US isn't supposed to be a democracy.

 

...but a republic? A form of government combining different modes of rule into one system?

 

But democratic elections are a part of it, and people believe they are supposed to get their way because they put a mark on a piece of paper...

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...but a republic? A form of government combining different modes of rule into one system?

 

But democratic elections are a part of it, and people believe they are supposed to get their way because they put a mark on a piece of paper...

People are led to believe they are supposed to get their way because they put a mark on a piece of paper by others who willfully manipulate them, and they are able to manipulate the people because the people are intentionally misinformed in a deliberate and systematic way from early childhood on. The US Constitution is extremely clear about the structure of government at the Federal level, and each State has its own Constitution which is equally clear. As has been evidenced in this forum over and over, there are those in the Republic who actively seek to subvert the rule of law as spelled out in writing and who become nearly apoplectic (in the literal sense -- they definitely become apoplectic in the modern sense) when these documents are referenced. Ever wonder why suggesting reading the rules of the game should elicit such a response? Edited by Brian
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Even the Chinese have some teeny tiny modicum of democratic power. Where there are elections, there is a form of democracy. Of course, understanding democracy as fully as we in the West do (note a little bit of sarcasm here) nobody in this part of the world would consider China as democratic..and rightly enough, when we consider the pervasive corruption etc. The vote doesn't count for much over there.

 

But move back to Europe and North America and it starts looking a whole lot more democratic. There's no nation which makes every decision with a referendum. Deep down everyone knows that would be silly, unmanageable. But we are given the opportunity to choose, and however much manipulation is happening, our choices do have an effect.

 

So while I understand your position and your scepticism (re manipulation, misinformation, etc) I don't think it's wrong to say that our countries are democratic.

Edited by dust

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