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AI-Powered Text From This Program Could Fool the Government:
Idaho proposed changing its Medicaid program. The state needed approval from the federal government, which solicited public feedback via Medicaid.gov.
Roughly 1,000 comments arrived. But half came not from concerned citizens or even internet trolls. They were generated by artificial intelligence. And a study found that people could not distinguish the real comments from the fake ones.
The project was the work of Max Weiss, a tech-savvy medical student at Harvard, but it received little attention at the time. Now, with AI language systems advancing rapidly, some say the government, and internet companies, need to rethink how they solicit and screen feedback to guard against deepfake text manipulation and other AI-powered interference.
"The ease with which a bot can generate and submit relevant text that impersonates human speech on government websites is surprising and really important to know," says Latanya Sweeney, a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School who advised Weiss on how to run the experiment ethically.
Sweeney says the problems extend well beyond government services, but it is imperative that public agencies find a solution. "AI can drown speech from real humans," she says. "Government websites have to change."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 21 2021, @02:57PM (5 children)
Most of the comments written by people look like they were written by bots.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 21 2021, @03:12PM
Drones, not bots, drones.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 21 2021, @07:06PM (1 child)
But can people fool the bots?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2021, @12:38AM
Or, rather, can the government fool the people?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday January 21 2021, @10:42PM
I wrote my first BBS comment generating auto-bot (complete with auto dial, auto login, auto navigate to the comment section and auto post) in 1983.
How's it doing now with its Turing test?
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/24/7408365/
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 21 2021, @11:22PM
i'm going to need you to fill out this bot to prove you're not a captcha.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 21 2021, @03:55PM (6 children)
The last three paragraphs of the summary sound like they are leading into demanding a real ID to get online.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 21 2021, @05:28PM (5 children)
this is the modern equivalent of a town meeting. do you go to your town meetings with a bag on your head, and nobody knows who you are?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 21 2021, @06:33PM (1 child)
You cannot possibly be unaware there is a faction pushing for an ID tied to all internet activity, no exceptions.
Sure, the initial application is just for government websites, where it serves a perfectly reasonable purpose, but once the infrastructure is established for that, it becomes far too easy to extend it to cover any online activity. You can always demonstrate that terrorists/drug dealers/fraudsters are using some site or tech.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday January 21 2021, @10:50PM
There are places on the internet where anonymity is good, or even brilliant (though I think it more hurts than helps comment quality around here).
Government requests for comment - tantamount to voting - are not a place that should be subject to easy SPAM-hacking. Not that real estate developers around here don't go out and hire dozens of homeless people to come sit in on city council meetings to cheer in support of their projects (projects that will ultimately displace the homeless even further from the center of town), but... if I'm writing to my Congress critter to express an opinion, I do want them to know I am a constituent with the power to vote for or against them in the next election, and the best way to do that would be with verifiable identity. As it stands today, it would be an afternoon's work to write an address scraping program to harvest names and addresses of "constituents" in a district and have a comment-bot automatically submit supportive or detracting comments on any issue from every single constituent in a Congressional district, Senate might be a little harder due to the sheer number of constituents and the diversity of databases required to get all their addresses.
In the not-so-distant-future where Russian middle schoolers write these bots as homework assignments for basic Comp-Sci, something like RealID will not just be a good idea, it will be a virtual necessity to solicit meaningful feedback online.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/24/7408365/
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday January 22 2021, @12:05PM (2 children)
Or, closer to home, should we all ignore your comment, as you posted it A/C?
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Friday January 22 2021, @01:33PM (1 child)
If his point is relevant, you take it into consideration. It doesn't carry any more weight just because the guy also brought along six animatronic manikins dressed the same and chanting in unison with him.
No problem is insoluble, but at Ksp = 2.943×10−25 Mercury Sulphide comes close.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday January 22 2021, @06:15PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Thursday January 21 2021, @04:13PM (4 children)
Of course they can't tell. Often, opponents of a measure circulate a template for people to use. Take several dozen letters, feed them to any sort of pattern-matching program (doesn't even have to be a neural net - a simple statistical analyzer will do), and you can generate endless similar texts. There's nothing "intelligent" about it - calling this "AI" is kind of a joke.
All you can do is to require people to identify themselves. Real example: if I want to do something on my town's website, I can do so anonymously, or I can login and let them know who I am. More functions are available when logged in.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Thursday January 21 2021, @07:21PM (1 child)
But the GPT-3 based text [soylentnews.org] is getting better and better. I'll reiterate that this kind of text should be posted in forum discussions and appropriately tagged so people can at least try to learn how to recognize it when it shows up.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 21 2021, @08:17PM
That would be a good idea. Unfortunately, there is no source. The authors of GPT-3 don't even allow anyone outside of a few specially picked researches to use GPT-3, and it's over a monitored API.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 21 2021, @08:15PM
...this.
Cryptographically signed messages with a public key/signature.
While this wouldn't stop the most heavily moneyed interests from being able to fake large groups of people, it sound allow a chain of suggestions or comments to be tied together, which in turn allows the credibility of the person behind them to be considered over a longer period of time. This does have the risk of text analysis being used to figure out who the person is, but even that is a lower risk than the suggested 'RealID' with online components.
At this point in time the best thing we can do is offer suggestions that reduce the damage until such time as either a real solution is put forth, or we finally agree that America is coopted by money and hold a constitutional congress to determine our fates going forward.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday January 22 2021, @12:10PM
Changing something to do with traffic, and get a thousand complaints from pedal cyclists? Have the experts check to see how many peddle cyclists typically use that intersection, if they didn't have that data already - and if they do, just retrieve that known data. Simples. Did the data say something special had to be done for cyclists? If yes, do something special. If no, don't. The opinions of the thousands of complainants is actaully irrelevant.
Be data driven, not feels driven.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 21 2021, @04:40PM (2 children)
If I create and AI that can spout my favorite talking points 24/7/365 on every social media platform, HOW is that not my constitutionally protected right?
Isn't this the same logic that allows infinite political donations? If you can afford all the ad-space to promote whatever then you are free and clear, my friend.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 21 2021, @06:47PM
By your definition, spam and then protected speech and the more the better. If that is true, I would just brock US IPs.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday January 22 2021, @12:13PM
Just because the Supreme Court agreed to it doesn't mean it makes any sense at all. That's appeal to authority, and whilst they may be authorities in jurisprudence, that doesn't mean they're authorities in common sense.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jelizondo on Thursday January 21 2021, @04:49PM
C'mon! Many people can't tell the difference between facts and fake news! How could they tell if a bot or a human wrote something?
(Score: 5, Touché) by Dr Spin on Thursday January 21 2021, @06:03PM (1 child)
... could fool the government - its not a very high bar!
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday January 21 2021, @08:30PM
Only when they want to be fooled, or rather only in the direction they want to be fooled.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday January 21 2021, @11:13PM (3 children)
Let's say, for the sake of argument, that we're dealing with government officials (politicians, regulators, civil servants, etc) who are genuinely trying to do the right thing. I know, fantasy, but it's easier if we take crooked officials out of the equation.
If you're trying to do the right thing by your constituents, then you want some sort of public commenting system in place so that citizens can voice their opinions so you know what they're thinking about the issue. Done right, it's actually a great counter to lobbying and special interests because anyone who cares enough to bother can tell you something. For instance, I recently sat in on some local zoning board discussions because it was going to affect my neighbors, and it actually helped the board and me to know what my neighbors thought.
However, any system like that can be gamed. For example, if a company wants to game an in-person public comment session, they can hire a bunch of people to show up and say, in their own words, that company's viewpoint, with 1 guy from the astroturfing PR agency in the back of the room watching to make sure that everyone does their job, and that's all completely 100% legal. And online versions make it even easier to stuff the comments sections with either paid or AI-generated comments.
I'm not sure there's a good solution, either, other than having the regulators know that sometimes the comments are astroturf and acting accordingly.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday January 22 2021, @12:16PM (1 child)
False dichotomy. There are those who are non-crooked who just wish to be re-elected or re-appointed (or contacts extended), so will do whatever makes them popular or in favour. There's no need for that to include any impropriety.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday January 22 2021, @02:25PM
There are some people who generally start from the assumption that all problems in government are caused by corrupt people in government, and the point I was making was that public comments are still a problem even if you have people in government who aren't corrupt in the slightest.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2021, @03:50PM
Hey now, just because my proposed anti-anonymity legislation won't actually stop spam is no reason not to use spam as an excuse to pass my legislation!