Networks in China and Iran also used AI models to create and post disinformation but campaigns did not reach large audiences
In Russia, two operations created and spread content criticizing the US, Ukraine and several Baltic nations. One of the operations used an OpenAI model to debug code and create a bot that posted on Telegram. China’s influence operation generated text in English, Chinese, Japanese and Korean, which operatives then posted on Twitter and Medium.
Iranian actors generated full articles that attacked the US and Israel, which they translated into English and French. An Israeli political firm called Stoic ran a network of fake social media accounts which created a range of content, including posts accusing US student protests against Israel’s war in Gaza of being antisemitic.
AI programs are already dominated by bad actors, and always will be. OpenAI and the other corporations are every bit the bad actors as Russia and China. The difference between Putin and most techbros is as narrow as a sheet of paper. Both put themselves before the planet and everyone else living on it. Both are sociopathic narcissists who take, take, take, and rely on the exploitation of those poorer and weaker than themselves in order to hoard wealth and power they don’t deserve.
This is just labeling. You can label everything as bad at will. I’m fine with that, it’s called “you’re entitled to your opinion”. That’s not objective though.
Well, let’s see about the evidence, shall we? OpenAI scraped a vast quantity of content from the internet without consent or compensation to the people that created the content, and leaving aside any conversations about whether copyright should exist or not, if your company cannot make a profit without relying on labour you haven’t paid for, that’s exploitation.
And then, even though it was obvious from the very beginning that AI could very easily be used for nefarious purposes, they released it to the general public with guardrails that were incredibly flimsy and easily circumvented.
This is a technology that required being handled with care. Instead, its lead proponents are of the “move fast and break things” mentality, when the list of things that can be broken is vast and includes millions of very real human beings.
You know who else thinks humans are basically disposable as long as he gets what he wants? Putin.
So yeah, the people running OpenAI and all the other AI companies are no better than Putin. None of them care who gets hurt as long as they get what they want.