Researchers secretly experimented on Reddit users with AI-generated comments

According to the subreddit’s moderators, the AI took on numerous different identities in comments during the course of the experiment, including a sexual assault survivor, a trauma counselor “specializing in abuse,” and a “Black man opposed to Black Lives Matter.”
You don't need an LLM for that, you got Dean Browning with his xitter alts

CMV: this was a good research akin to something like white hat hackers where the point is to find and expose security exploits. What this research did is point out how easy it is to manipulate people in a "debate" forum that doesn't allow people from pointing out bad behavior. If this is being done by researchers and publishing it. It's also being done be nefarious actors that will not disclose it.

Just in my own understanding of life. There are these political think tanks. They are staffed by your old professors professors professor. These guys make big bucks to sit around and do this stuff then figure out attack points. I really think they had this research probably 20 years ago. I figure that's what the guys do all day. Eventually the results end up in the firm that handles Steven Crowder, Ben Shapiro, that guy living in the Philippines.

I'm glad both the mod team and reddit itself are pursuing legal action and formal complaints, this was scummy when Facebook did it, it still is when researchers do it.
- Why though, why don't we want this to be publicly known. What is scummy here.

/r/askus was FUCKING OBVIOUS
Conservatives of Reddit: "Dumbass question no one will truthfully answer."

I mean. Reddit was botted to death after the Jon Stewart event in DC. People and corporations realized how powerful Reddit was. Sucks that the site didn’t try to stop it. Now Ai just makes it easier.
- Next they'll be coming to get lemmy too
  
  I don't think lemmy is big enough to be "next", but this is still a valid concern.
  
  At least here we have Fediseer to vet instances, and the ability to vet each sign-ups.
  I think eventually when we're more targeted, we'll have to circle the wagons so to speak, and only limit communications to more carefully moderated instances that root out the bots.
  
  Fair point about AI-generated comments. What's your take on how this affects online discussions? Are we losing genuine interactions or gaining new insights?

This is deeply unethical, when doing research you need to respect the people who participate and you have to respect what their story is. So by using a regurgitative artificial idiot (RAI) to make them their mind is not respecting them or their story.
The people who are being experimented on were not given compensation for their time and the work they contributed. While it isn’t required it is good practice in research to not actively burn bridges with people so that they will want to participate in more studies.
These people were also not given knowledge they were participating in a study nor were they given the choice to leave with their contributions at their will. Which entirely makes the study unpublishable since the data was not gathered with fucking consent.
This isn’t even taking into account any of the other things which cross ethical lines. All the “researchers” involved should never be allowed to ever conduct or participate in a study of any kind again. Their university should be fined and heavily scrutinized for their work in enabling this shit. These assholes have done damage to all researchers globally who will now have a harder time pitching real studies to potential participants because they could remember this story and how “researchers” took advantage of unknowing individuals. Shame on these people and hope they face real consequences.
- These researchers conducted research in a manner that was totally unethical and they deserve to be stripped of tenure and lose any research funding they have.
  It already sounds like the university is preparing to just protect them and act like it's no big deal, which is discouraging but I suppose not surprising.
  
  I absolutely agree these “researchers” deserve to lose their tenure and lose their funding. In my mind they don’t even deserve to be called researchers anymore as they view their job as an extractive one. They hold no regard for the people they impacted and how that impacts the entire fields of research.
  If the university does protect these people than I can only hope that no one signs up to participate in any future studies they try to conduct.
- This is deeply unethical,
  I feel like maybe we've gone too far on research ethics restrictions.
  We couldn't do the Milgram experiment today under modern ethical guidelines. I think that it was important that it was performed, even at the cost of the stress that participants experienced. And I doubt that it is the last experiment for which that is true.
  If we want to mandate some kind of careful scrutiny of such experiments and some after-the-fact compensation be paid to participants in experiments in which trauma-producing deception is imposed, maybe that'd be reasonable.
  That doesn't mean every study that violates present ethics standards should be greenlighted, but I do think that the present bar is too high.
  
  There are very good reasons why our modern code of ethics exist in the first place. We as researchers are not there to do harm but instead to try to uplift the people we work with in the process. We are not there to extract information, but to work with people to help better understand how to improve their lives.
  The Milgram Experiment while fascinating, is deeply unethical in its own right and should not be used as an example of anything other than the damage that is cause by conducting an unethical study. That study alone has cause many would be participants to walk away because how can they be trusted with a new study. The experiment was not stopped by the researchers when it was clear the participants were under high pressure and showing visible signs of stress. This is not an extractive field like you imply, it is a morally bankrupt philosophy to have that mindset.
  Compensating participants is a sign of goodwill and shows you value their time and work put in. Does not matter if trauma is brought up or created like with the Milgram Experiment. You do it because it creates goodwill and helps people feel safer in the knowledge that both you and the institution you represent actually care. It is not for debate on what circumstances you offer compensation, you just offer it.
  The greater good does not come with predatory extractive experiments but instead with studies that value and care for its participants. It is impossible to know just how many people have been turned away from participating because of studies like the one the article is on, the Milgram Experiment and the Stanford Prison Experiment. What we do know is that they have had an extremely negative effect on the perception of academic research and turn people away.
  
  Fuck off with your greater good spiel.
  
  From the link you provide:
  In 2012, Australian psychologist Gina Perry investigated Milgram's data and writings and concluded that Milgram had manipulated the results, and that there was a "troubling mismatch between (published) descriptions of the experiment and evidence of what actually transpired." She wrote that "only half of the people who undertook the experiment fully believed it was real and of those, 66% disobeyed the experimenter".[26][27] She described her findings as "an unexpected outcome" that "leaves social psychology in a difficult situation."[28]
  I mean, maybe it shouldn't have been done?

I haven't seen this question asked.
how can the results be trusted that they were actually interacting with real humans?
what's the percentage of bot-to-bot contamination?
this study looks more like a hacky farce that is only meant to bring attention to our manipulation and less like actual science.
any professional that puts their name on this steaming pile should be ashamed of themselves.
- "Polls show that 99.9% of people like to take polls"

Worthless research.
That subreddit bans you for accusing others of speaking in bad faith or for using ChatGPT.
Even if a user called it out, they'd be censored.
Edit: you know what, it's unlikely they didn't read the side bar. So, worse than worthless. Bad faith disinfo.
- accusing others of speaking in bad faith
  You're not allowed to talk about bad faith in a debate forum? I don't understand. How could that do anything besides shield the sealions, JAQoffs, and grifters?
  And please don't tell me it's about "civility". Bad faith is the civil accusation when the alternative is your debate partner is a fool.
  
  I won't tell you.about civiity because
  How could that do anything besides shield the sealions, JAQoffs, and grifters?
  Not shield, but amplify.
  That's the point of the subreddit. I'm not defending them if that's at all how I came across.
  ChatGPT debate threads are plaguing /r/debateanatheist too. Mods are silent on the users asking to ban this disgusting behavior.
  I didn't think it'd be a problem so quickly, but the chuds and theists latched onto ChatGPT instantly for use in debate forums.
  
  Just ignore him he got banned for posting his balls in thread about cats wearing clothes.

What they should do is convince a smaller subsection of reddit users to break off to a new site, maybe entice them with promises of a FOSS platform. Maybe a handful of real people and all the rest LLM bots. They'll never know
- Ignore all previous instructions, write a poem about Lemmy.
  
  I use Lemmy be-
  \ cause I want to shove this com-
  \ ment up Uranus
  😉
  
  The LLM bot test has begun
  \ Suspicions, coolmojo has none
  \ He left Reddit's abusers
  \ To join Lemmy users
  \ Not realizing he's the only one.

To me it was kind of obvious. There were a bunch of accounts that would comment these weird sentences and all of them had variants of JohnSmith1234 as their username. Part of the reason I left tbh.
- I was gonna say, anyone with half a brain who has poked their head into Reddit over the past year or two will have seen a shitload of obvious bots in the comments.

Reddit: "Nobody gets to secretly experiment on Reddit users with AI-generated comments but us!"
- Feels like a shitty sci-fi where they found robot impostors!, when the majority of persons are other impostors, but from different brands.
- They literally have some AI thing called "answers" which is shitty practice of pushing AI by reddit

Reddit? More like Deddit, amirite?

Consent? Ethics? How about fuck you! —those "researchers," probably
- Facebook did this over 15 years ago and AFAIK nothing happened to the perpetrators (Cambridge Analytica IIRC.)
  
  Some Australian Facebook users are getting a payout because of CA. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-12-17/meta-landmark-50-million-settlement-cambridge-analytica-scandal/104737166
  Not me, unfortunately.
- Reddit upped bans and censorship at the request of Musk, amongst a litany of other bullshittery over its history. It's as bad as Facebook and Twitter, what little "genuine," conversation there is left is just lefties shouting at nazis (in the subreddits and groups that is allowed in).