I'd be surprised if it's just China
this post was submitted on 27 Dec 2023
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At this point, I assume every major government has the capabilities and the intent to use AI for exactly this purpose.
Oppose at all fronts you can, this is not okay.
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The specifics of this article aside, I am so not looking forward to the continued proliferation of AI based bullshit on the internet/public discourse/the media/etc. It’s gonna get so so much worse, we’re just scratching the surface right now. The validity of any photo or video will be destroyed and nothing will be trustworthy anymore. This is great news for fascists who thrive in a world where the truth is unknowable and meaningless.
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Culturally there is no real concept of plagiarism or cheating in China. Any shortcut is acceptable, because if you aren't using it someone else is.
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Do people really get their news and information from random YouTube channels?
YouTube is not a reliable source!
My father in law watches this crap all the time. Also every war propaganda video.
.. if not that, Thai boxing or bear hunting. Ya never know what he'll be watching as long as it's one of those. Oh unless it's Friday night, then he's watching SmackDown.
TBF, the FriendlyJordies are a reliable news source, but that's more of an exception to the rule.
The problem isn't getting your new from YouTube. But rather random YouTube channels. It's like saying "Do people really get their news from random news sites"
Yeah it seems a lot of people do. Especially if it's linked through social media, I would guess a non trivial amount of people won't fact check it or check the source.
I automatically dismiss any argument that uses a YouTube video as evidence. If it's legit, there's going to be text that goes with it.
Yep i know a lot of people at least in my country. If not YT, then they get it from FB
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Sometimes I wonder if there are different "levels" of propaganda nation states put out. Like you have this obviously fake crap get a bunch of surface-knowlege people. Then you have more subtle things put out - like social media accounts pretending that something false is a ground truth. You'll then get people who can catch the fake videos and then believe the fake accounts no problem because it's obviously can't be propaganda - because you know what propaganda looks like. cough gell-mann amnesia cough
Or maybe nation states are really that incompetent and the only level of propaganda they can put out is like the article's videos. Honestly people give way too much credit to how much these folks know/plan out. There's no secret cabal playing 5d chess. They're normal people (ie. dumbfucks) pushing a message.
Who knows.
Propaganda is a quantity over quality game. You're not trying to convince the die-hard supporters of the other side, that's not realistic. You're trying to give informational cover to your own side.
It's like suppressive fire. Is the machine gunner specifically trying to kill the enemy? No, he's sending bullets whizzing overhead to change their behavior. Then his buddies can circle around their cover and very specifically aim at and kill them.
edit: You are right that it's no 5d chess though. It's more like the excuses you'd get out of a young kid. Just flak, intended to get in the way. Fired in quantity.
There's also Russian style propaganda which isn't really about sending any specific message but more about sowing chaos. It's about blasting people with so much contradictory information that they become overwhelmed and exhausted and just give up trying to pay attention to anything. To say it a different way it's about lowering the signal to noise ratio to the point where most people lose the signal.
China tends to favor targeted disinformation, they tightly control what people hear and have specific messages they push. Russia just tries to scream incoherent gibberish where nobody can hold a conversation anymore.
There’s also Russian style propaganda which isn’t really about sending any specific message but more about sowing chaos. It’s about blasting people with so much contradictory information that they become overwhelmed and exhausted and just give up trying to pay attention to anything.
"Flood the zone with shit"
— Steve Bannon
That makes sense, but the targets of my first paragraph wouldn't be the die-hards. It would be people who think they can identify fake news - but their hubris is what makes tricking them even easier. It would actually be much easier making fake accounts than making the fake YT videos.
If I was to use your analogy - it'd be like if the gunner's level of effort to land hits or to whiff were the same. [S]he'd obviously just hit them.
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“Oh bother! America steals all the hunny!”
at this point I'm convinced China was just copying all of the "China gonna collapse in 3 days" videos
Alarming as this may sound, they’re beating a dead horse. Most of the people who would believe this shit uncritically also think Fox “News” is the gospel truth. They’re already lost.
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I wonder if the AI has caught on to a lot of the abusable mechanics of YT like an upload schedule, opening livestreams or premieres in multiple windows, the upvote/downvote exploit, etc. There is a solid possibility that an AI has better strats than we do.
The AI is just being used to create the content itself. The upload process is still just a script. The AI can only adjust parameters set by the person, and the person creating the setup likely isn't adding in any of the other factors
An actual AI influencer who could control all that would be interesting. What kind of strategies it would make to get the most engagements
Very Hard to train since I assume you would need real human feedback for each run of course
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Give them a break they don't have a 24 hour cable news channel for propaganda
Why is this a sign that they're using "Artificial Intelligence"? Sounds like they're just as likely using text-to-speech for planned propaganda. It's not like they don't have an ay of people to work on it.
Because contemporary tts use ml, a form of ai.
tl;dr: AI is creating the voices, not the script.
AI hate gets people emotional and leads to more clicks. Couple that with anything to do with China and you end up with a couple bucks of ad money.
This made me think of what you can do with AI to poke fun at china, and sadly it seems that microsoft is a bit hard on anti china prompts. But like, life finds a way.....
They do it here too. Anything positive coming out of china is full of this shit and bootlickers quick behind them.
Anything positive coming from anywhere is likely to be at least strongly exaggerated.
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What's next? They landed on the dark side of the sun? North Korea already did that.
This is very poor form, at least employ agents like the american 3 letters.
RFA is a private, nonprofit corporation, funded by the U.S. Congress through the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), an independent federal government agency that oversees all U.S. civilian international media. In addition to providing oversight, the USAGM works with RFA to ensure the professional independence and integrity of its journalism.
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