07/05/2025
Ako roboty využívajúce umelú inteligenciu na sociálnych sieťach ovplyvňujú verejnú mienku:
A secret experiment that turned Redditors into guinea pigs was an ethical disaster—and could undermine other urgent research into how AI influences how humans interact with one another, Tom Bartlett writes. https://theatln.tc/iHmZTSDn
Scientists at the University of Zurich wanted to find out whether AI-generated responses could change people’s views. Over the course of four months, they posted more than 1,000 AI-generated comments in the subreddit r/changemyview, about topics ranging from pit bulls to the housing crisis to DEI programs.
“In one sense, the AI comments appear to have been rather effective. When researchers asked the AI to personalize its arguments to a Redditor’s biographical details, including gender, age, and political leanings ... a surprising number of minds indeed appear to have been changed,” Bartlett writes. “Those personalized AI arguments received, on average, far higher scores in the subreddit’s point system than nearly all human commenters, according to preliminary findings that the researchers shared with Reddit moderators and later made private.”
But, “the researchers had a tougher time convincing Redditors that their covert study was justified,” Bartlett writes. After they had finished the experiment, they contacted the subreddit’s moderators, revealed their identity, and requested “to announce to members that for months, they had been unwitting subjects in a scientific experiment.”
The reaction was swift. Amy Bruckman, a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology who has studied online communities for more than two decades, called the Reddit fiasco “the worst internet-research ethics violation I have ever seen, no contest.”
“The prospect of having your mind changed by something that doesn’t have one is deeply unsettling. That persuasive superpower could also be employed for nefarious ends,” Bartlett continues at the link. “Still, scientists don’t have to flout the norms of experimenting on human subjects in order to evaluate the threat.”
🎨: The Atlantic
