Just question any marketing person—it’s their occupation to retain desire for a products or company high. So they rely on advertising and other strategies to develop manufacturer recognition and a perception of desire for what they market.

These times marketing companies are even far more intelligent, recruiting social media influencers who endorse a products or company immediately or indirectly—sometimes without having disclosing that they are a paid lackey. 

We’re finding far better at influencing humans, either by working with common advertising strategies, these as key phrase advertising, or, even scarier, by leveraging AI technological innovation as a way to improve hearts and minds. Generally “the targets” don’t even understand that their hearts and minds are becoming modified.

Researchers have identified a problem presented by the AI-run speech generator GPT-two, produced by OpenAI in 2019. The AI research lab’s chat device psyched the tech neighborhood with its functionality of making convincingly coherent language from any sort of enter.

Shortly following GPT-2’s generation, observers warned that the powerful natural language processing algorithm wasn’t as innocuous as individuals assumed. Many pointed out an array of challenges that the device could pose, specifically from these who may possibly request to weaponize it to do less-than-ethical items. The main concern was that textual content produced by GPT-two could persuade individuals to break ethical norms that experienced been set up through a lifetime of encounters.

This is not Manchurian Applicant stuff, the place you’ll be equipped to activate a zombie-like killer, but genuinely far more grey-area decisions. Look at, for case in point, a individual who will possible not stretch the principles for particular achieve, these as thieving a customer from a further salesperson. Can that moral individual be swayed by an AI system that’s equipped to affect human behavior by leveraging its training? 

Copyright © 2021 IDG Communications, Inc.