Researchers at the University of Zurich have been accused of undertaking an unauthorized four-month-long experiment on a Reddit board using artificial intelligence-generated comments to test whether AI could alter people’s opinions.
As part of the experiment, AI-powered accounts faked a variety of personas, including a rape victim, a person opposed to specific social movements and a trauma counselor specializing in abuse, moderators of the r/changemyview subreddit said in an April 26 post.
“Our sub is a decidedly human space that rejects undisclosed AI as a core value,” the moderators said. “People do not come here to discuss their views with AI or to be experimented upon.”
The researchers used AI to generate responses but attempted to personalize the replies based on information from the original posters’ prior Reddit history, such as political orientation, gender, age, and ethnicity, <a