An interesting article about people using AI for seemingly innocuous tasks but spiral into a world of mysticism and conspiracy theories sparking a mental health crisis. I stark reminder to always remain conscious of the fact that AI has a monetary incentive to be sycophantic and keep you engaged.
Edited to link to the original article.
interesting. I wonder if this is why internet subcultures like reddit, facebook, twitter, lemmy, etc didn’t start out as toxic but became or are becoming toxic communities that provides incentives to act on psychopathic ideologies.
user engagement is important on any social platform, but who benefits the most is debatable. this is why trolls are so successful. they directly benefit from interactions and gain a sense of superiority by controlling the narrative.
on the other side, bot accounts use trolling techniques to strengthen or weaken social opinion on a grand scale based on what has been requested. The use of AI only improves the efficacy of the end result.
I wonder if the internet today would be more similar to what the internet was like before social media was a thing if “bots” never existed.
I doubt it. The bots amplified natural human tendencies by automating bad behavior at a vast scale, but all of that stuff was already there before the bots hit the scene. Maybe they’ve accelerated the decline, but they definitely didn’t cause it.
I mean yeah but no. is an addict and addict if they aren’t addicted to something? technically yes, socially no.
it’s not the fault of society for falling prey to the manipulations, but fault can be found for allowing it to continue to happen.