Researchers from the University of Zurich secretly ran a months-long experiment in psychological manipulation using AI-generated comments on leftist echo chamber Reddit to test the persuasiveness of AI chatbots.
Engadget reports that moderators of the popular Reddit community r/changemyview have exposed an unauthorized experiment conducted by researchers from the University of Zurich. The experiment, which ran for several months without the knowledge or consent of the subreddit’s users, involved the use of AI-generated comments to test the persuasiveness of large language models (LLMs).
According to the moderators, the researchers deployed AI-generated comments in response to posts on r/changemyview, a subreddit boasting 3.8 million members, where users share often controversial or provocative opinions and invite debate from others. The AI, taking on various identities such as a sexual assault survivor, a trauma counselor, and a Black man opposed to the Black Lives Matter movement, engaged with unsuspecting users in what moderators describe as “psychological manipulation.” Reddit is infamous for its extreme leftist bias, which enabled the AI chatbots to persuade users to agree with various positions by leftist talking points on topics like abortion.
The researchers’ methods, as outlined in a draft of their paper, went beyond simply generating responses. They also attempted to personalize the AI’s replies by using information gleaned from the original poster’s Reddit history, such as their gender, age, ethnicity, location, and political orientation. This data was inferred using another LLM and provided to the AI alongside the post’s content.
The actions of the researchers violated multiple subreddit rules, including policies requiring disclosure when AI is used to generate comments and prohibiting the use of bots. Moderators have filed an official complaint with the University of Zurich and requested that the researchers withhold publication of their paper.
Reddit’s Chief Legal Officer, Ben Lee, condemned the researchers’ actions as “deeply wrong on both a moral and legal level” and a violation of the site’s rules. The platform has banned all accounts associated with the University of Zurich research effort and is working to strengthen its inauthentic content detection capabilities. Reddit is also in the process of reaching out to the university and the research team with formal legal demands, aiming to hold them accountable for their actions.
In response to the controversy, the University of Zurich researchers maintained that their study had been approved by a university ethics committee and argued that their work could help online communities protect users from more malicious uses of AI. However, the moderators of r/changemyview dispute the necessity and novelty of the research, pointing out that OpenAI researchers have conducted experiments using data from the subreddit without experimenting on non-consenting human subjects.
Read more at Engadget here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship.
