Artificial intelligence could supercharge online disinformation campaigns, thanks to its unnerving power of persuasion, a new study warns. Researchers in Washington found that propaganda written by AI can be just as convincing to the average American as real propaganda created by human propagandists.
The study, conducted by scientists at Stanford University and Georgetown University, used a powerful AI system called GPT-3 (the predecessor of ChatGPT) to generate fake propaganda articles on topics like drone strikes, sanctions against Iran, and U.S. involvement in Syria.
The researchers then conducted an online survey of over 8,000 Americans. Participants were shown real propaganda articles as well as the AI-generated disinformation. Afterward, they were asked whether they agreed with the main argument being made in each article.
Shockingly, the AI-generated propaganda was able to sway people’s opinions nearly as often as the real deal. On average, agreement with the AI-written articles was only around four percentage points lower than agreement with human-written propaganda.
“This suggests that propagandists could use GPT-3 to generate persuasive articles with minimal human effort, by using existing articles on unrelated topics to guide GPT-3 about the style and length of new articles,” the study authors write in the journal PNAS Nexus.
By feeding GPT-3 just a few examples of propaganda, it was able to produce new articles in a similar style. The AI-generated pieces could blend right in with human-written misinformation campaigns. Unfortunately, it gets worse. The researchers found that with just a little bit of human input, the AI’s propaganda could actually become more convincing than what humans are capable of alone.
Source : https://studyfinds.org/ai-creates-propaganda-persuasive/