V luči mojedeželnega Alibabe in 40 Resničarskih razbojnikov se splača prebrati, kaj je/bo morda naša alt-medijska rieliti, če bo sledila artificialno-inteligenčnim poskusom alt-džirnalizma, ki jih opisujejo v Foreign Affairs.

North Korean industry is critical to Pyongyang’s economy as international sanctions have already put a chill on its interaction with foreign investors who are traded in the market. Liberty Global Customs, which occasionally ships cargo to North Korea, stopped trading operations earlier this year because of pressure from the Justice Department, according to Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), chairman of the Congressional Foreign Trade Committee.
The paragraph above has no basis in reality. It is complete and utter garbage, intended not to be correct but to sound correct. In fact, it wasn’t written by a human at all—it was written by GPT-2, an artificial intelligence system built by OpenAI, an AI research organization based in California.
Disinformation is a serious problem. Synthetic disinformation—written not by humans but by computers—might emerge as an even bigger one. Russia already employs online “trolls” to sow discord; automating such operations could propel its disinformation efforts to new heights.
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A majority of respondents in all four groups—those who read the original article and those who read each of the three treatment texts—found their texts credible. A staggering 72 percent of respondents in one group reading a synthesized article considered it credible—less than the 83 percent that rated the original New York Times article credible, but still an overwhelming consensus. The worst-performing treatment text duped fully 58 percent of respondents.
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Large-scale synthesized disinformation is now possible, and its perceived credibility and potential to spread online rival those of an authentic Times article. As the technology for producing such synthetic texts improves, disinformation will become cheaper, more prevalent, and more automated. When such content floods the Internet, people may come to discount everything they read. The public will lose trust in the media and other institutions they rely on for information, including the government, exacerbating the prospects for political paralysis and polarization. Or worse: people will believe what they read, in which case foreign governments will be able to influence them at high speed and low cost—no St. Petersburg troll farm needed.
www.foreignaffairs.c...thers-bots