
Future elections may be swayed by chatbots - jonbaer
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611832/future-elections-may-be-swayed-by-intelligent-weaponized-chatbots/
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PurpleBoxDragon
I feel like the safer bet is that future elections will be decided in much the
same way as current elections are, by weaponized money. How many people would
make great candidates that we never hear about because they don't have the
money and realize the futility of even trying?

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creaghpatr
Not to mention voters weaponizing the ballot by voting for the candidate of
their choice.

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kartan
Countries and big corporations already have a huge presence on social media.
From Russia meddling with the elections to viral videos for beans we live in a
world were no body knows that you are a dog on the internet, or a paid poster
for some interest group.

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smadge
You raise a great point. Deceptive social media propaganda campaigns are
already happening; bots only decrease the costs.

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smadge
Don’t have political discourse except with people you personally know, or face
to face.

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buboard
> except with people you personally know, or face to face

so don't talk to strangers, people outside your class and your race. i see
that ending well

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smadge
The rule of thumb I said allows you to have non political discourse with
strangers over the internet, and have political discourse with strangers face
to face.

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qubax
No. I'm sure it will be swayed by CNN, Foxnews, MSNBC, NYtimes, Washington
Post and the rest of the media.

Not that it really matters because the elections will be won before the
election since money will pick who the candidates are.

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Spivak
TL;DR Growth hacking -- but by politicians this time, with some added FUD for
flavor.

1\. Loud people are more likely to be heard.

2\. A view with the appearance of consensus carries a weight similar to one
that does.

3\. Bots powered by more modern AI techniques may be harder to recognize and
moderate.

4\. The author assumes AI chat works like in the movies when its actually more
like cleverbot.

5\. "Shielding people" from certain information is basically just thinking for
them, at that point why even bother asking them what they want, you might as
well just tell them.

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creaghpatr
'Weaponized'

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toast_coder
Thats a technical term for something your political opponents do.

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creaghpatr
Indeed

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skywhopper
_Future_ elections?

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smt88
They likely weren't very "intelligent" in recent years. On one end, you had
memes, which can be made once by a human and widely distributed.

On the other end of the spectrum, you had fake community organizers, trolls,
etc., and as far as we know, those were mostly operated manually by a fairly
large staff.

Chatbots would potentially make voter manipulation cheap enough for much
smaller actors to do it.

~~~
craftyguy
> They likely weren't very "intelligent" in recent years.

They were intelligent enough to convince a non-trivial number of voters.

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jlarocco
Serious question: is there evidence to support that claim?

We know there was "meddling", but has it been proved that it convinced a "non-
trivial" number of voters to change their vote or that it actually affected
the outcome of the election?

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lowry
What a crap...

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buboard
so we need to replace elections?

