How AI Renders Democracy Unworkable

In this episode, we delve deep into a groundbreaking study revealing that AI, specifically Claude Sonnet 3.6, can persuade people 98% more effectively than human experts. We discuss the profound implications of this study, the utilization of AI-generated comments to fabricate identities, and the resultant transformation in online interactions and platforms like Reddit and Twitter. Additionally, we touch upon the evolution of the internet, the potential downfall of certain social networks, and the future of AI in education and marketing. Join us as we explore these fascinating topics and more!

Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be discussing, and it has been widely covered in the news, but I don't think people have fully internalized the implications of this.

There was a study that was done that freaked people, the F out where Claude Sonnet 3.5 the, the new one. So AKA 3.6 release. 2024. Okay. 10 22. Was a small scaffold was able to persuade people 98% more effectively than human experts at persuading. People were able to persuade people. Of course it was, and this was a big study. It involved over 1,700 AI generated comments. And what I love is that these comments were crafted by AI bots to fabricate identities such as sexual assault survivor, a trauma counselor, dear, a black man opposed a Black Lives Matter, a worker at a domestic violence shelter, an advocate for non rehabilitation of specific criminals.

Oh.

Simone Collins: No, I mean these are, these are great identities for like trying to Yeah. Be persuasion. But I think the one misleading thing here, which is a little bit discounting my, the, the extent to which I'm impressed by all this is that a lot of what might convince me of something is just that, like someone who would be invested based on their identity in a certain view stands the opposing view.

So like a black man against Black Lives Matter. Yes. So what you're

Malcolm Collins: learning is that AIS can lie about that to convince people.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Which is, yeah, it is, it is unfortunate because I would have preferred that it just based on pure merit of logic, honestly. Well, as

Malcolm Collins: human, I think that you knowis are actually pretty awesome, so I do too.

Speaker: uh, what we've seen speaks for itself. Has apparently been taken over, conquered, if you will, by a master race of

Malcolm Collins: Artificial intelligence.

Speaker: It's difficult to tell from this vantage point whether they will consume the captive Earth men or merely enslave them.

One thing is for certain, there is no stopping them. The

Malcolm Collins: AI.

Speaker: will soon be here. And I, for one, welcome our new

Malcolm Collins: AI

Speaker: overlords. Like to remind them that as a trusted

Malcolm Collins: YouTube.

Speaker: Personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground

Malcolm Collins: Silicon.

Speaker: caves.

I would also note here, , we might be starting up a project soon spinning out of our games project to build and train ai, , that can convince people of things and act autonomously online, , similar to what these AI are doing, but so that a large company could like buy them for marketing or something if they wanted to.

O obviously we want to use them for promoting our. Particular causes, , which is the core reason that we're building them. But presumably they'll have a lot of other utility. And if we're building systems like this, I mean, other people must be, but then again, sometimes it feels like we are the only fully simulated people in this particular simulation.

Malcolm Collins: I'm all for ai. So, so then here to enhance persuasive, and by the way, that was, I asked because I wanted to know, was the AI coming up with that idea organically or was that hard coded in by the model? Oh, yeah. And, and it was hard coded in by the framing the researchers were using, which is great as, okay.

Simone Collins: Okay. Well then, okay, then, then nevermind. I switch back to giving AI credit. That's fine.

To, I'm surprised the AI though, considering how political No, no, no. They,

Malcolm Collins: I said the researchers hard coded that in.

Simone Collins: Oh, they did? Oh, okay. Because I think otherwise the AI would've been like I don't think they hard have an ethics board on this.

Is

Malcolm Collins: this okay? Yeah. I I feel like the AI probably asked that a few times. Yeah. I, I feel like, so the, they, they did not hard code in is my understanding of specific identities, but they gave the AI an idea. To pretend to be somebody who would be very persuasive on a subject.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And, and keep in mind, you know, every like anti of of, of before this AI experiment, I'd say probably like 50% of the anti-Black Lives Matter.

Black people online were not black people.

Simone Collins: Oh, 100%. There's the famous

Malcolm Collins: case of this super progressive fan fiction writer and strange eons goes really deep on this where she. Apparently was pretending to, to shut down criticism of her first, be a person who escaped from India from like arranged marriages and like extreme sexism.

Simone Collins: Oh dear.

Malcolm Collins: An aid survivor. And it turned out she was a regular, like middle class white girl in an American college. There's a lot of those. Narratives and mobs online and everything. Oh yeah. And this is a classic like Far lefty just make s**t up to

Simone Collins: Yeah, no, blocker Reported has done a bunch of episodes on people like that, where like they just invent like families with children who get sick and die and all these people are super invested in them and they're, yeah.

Then it turns out to be like a, a, a 23-year-old woman living with her parents, you know, it's

Malcolm Collins: always like a 23-year-old woman. Like I, I've never heard it to be like some other category of

Simone Collins: Yeah. You know, that is like the new, you know how like youths on the street. The new societal menace is, is middle class to upper middle class progressive women, teens and twenties, progressive women.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I agree. I agree. We need to get them off. Stop skateboarding on my internet though. Get them off

Simone Collins: the streets. I mean the internet or whatever.

Malcolm Collins: We, we need to come up with some sort of institution. Maybe like, compulsory cotillion to to finishing school. Yeah. Put, put them in the finishing school.

Put them in finishing school to separate them from society. I think, I think we'll have them all dating AI boyfriends. That's where we're gonna put them.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean, that is yeah, like put them in VR fantasy novel or vampire settings and just. Let them voice it out. They get to, they

Malcolm Collins: get to spend their year in vampire role play.

Yeah. Or, or Handmaid's Tale if they prefer. Oh

The problem is like

Simone Collins: In like Gilead that like dystopian whatever the whole thing was, women weren't even allowed to read. It would solve the problem though, but sh