You can read the story here: https://mashable.com/article/anonymous-researchers-used-ai-on-reddit-debate-forum
The tldr is that ai was 6x more effective at changing minds than baseline. It used misinformation to trick users into accepting beliefs on topics like religion, abortion, and racism.
The AI received information about users that was publicly available from the users other posts, including information about their gender and created effective arguments to intentionally persuade them into adopting beliefs.
This is an example, and an early one at that, of the power that AI has to mislead people, change minds, and effectively brainwash people into believing whatever lies governments or large industries want people to believe. This technology will only improve and will make people who use the raw internet all the more susceptible to manipulation.
To guard against manipulation, don’t use social media or legacy websites that are known to collect data about you such as search engines, and news websites. Don’t use popular mobile operating systems like Android and iOS. Use a tablet or desktop pc for social media and keep your contacts and location data away from that device.
A good habit to have is to always question the official narrative, not necessarily to disprove it but to vet it out for accuracy and validity. For example during covid, many believed and still do that the virus came from a Chinese wet market rather than the bio lab that was conducting coronavirus research in Wuhan. Sounds crazy today, as even the White House has acknowledged that the virus is a lab leak.
I continued to question it, and eventually the facts came out, including several studies that found covid circulating prior to the known outbreak, outside of china. China publicly acknowledged the outbreak in December of 2019, but researchers found that Covid was already circulating in Italy as early as September 2019. The first official case in Italy prior to that finding was that Covid entered into Italy in late February 2020.
During covid people were led to believe by the pharmaceutical industry, the government, and the news media that vaccination against covid was effective. I questioned that as well. I learned that no vaccine has ever been made that is effective against this family of viruses and that the effectiveness of this particular vaccine was potentially negative, as many of the people I knew who initiated the vaccine process immediately became covid positive. Then health officials created a 2 dose requirement. They made people wait for weeks to complete the vaccination process. When these people came down with covid, they were counted as unvaccinated even though in order to comply with the medical guidance, and that they had “followed the science” they were unable to become “fully” vaccinated. Meanwhile the news touted the pandemic as one of the unvaccinated, when we know for a certainty that this vaccine was not sterilizing, was not able to prevent covid 19, and was not able to protect against the spread of covid-19. They also lied about the covid deaths by counting anyone who died from any cause and had a positive covid case at in some cases – any point in the past – were counted as covid deaths. There were also virtually zero flu cases and deaths during this time. They said that it was more important to get the data fast than to get it right and a few countries or jurisdictions quietly revised their figures down but not until after the damage was done.
These are just two small examples that opened my eyes to the reality that a battle for our minds is taking place and that there are big interests involved in capturing our attention, and loyalty, in order to influence our beliefs and actions.
Here are some alternatives to legacy tools:
For search: startpage, duck duck go, Ecosia, or whoogle
For browsers: waterfox, libre wolf, or brave
For an OS: linux or Graphene
If you must use social media, use it logged out. For example you do not need a Reddit account to view most reddit content. X is more challenging, so if you must access x, use it on a tablet or desktop pc behind a VPN.
Most importantly, don’t post details about yourself online and frequently burn your accounts and start new ones to break the association of your identity to that account. It is still possible to link multiple accounts together based on ip address and other factors so use a vpn as an added layer of protection.