A Conspiracy Theory Busting AI Chatbot: the Calvary Coming to the Rescue or a Cause for Concern?



James Keys and Tunde Ogunlana discuss the AI chatbot that seems to be able to pull people away from conspiracy theories and the viability of using of technology to address problems created by technology.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/12/health/chatbot-debunk-conspiracy-theories.html

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5 thoughts on “A Conspiracy Theory Busting AI Chatbot: the Calvary Coming to the Rescue or a Cause for Concern?”

  1. I don't think the mentioned conspiracies even qualify as true conspiracies; they are more like claims, allegations, gossip, or rumors that people discuss as talking points or for entertainment. A real conspiracy hypothesis has structure, conflicting facts, a timeline, some indisputable facts, and speculative ideas. For example, a conspiracy theory about ChatGPT is that it has a liberal orientation. The structure of this theory revolves around who created it, and it’s noted that many public figures at OpenAI are openly liberal. One of the indisputable facts cited is that when the bot is prompted to speak positively about Trump, it refuses, while it proceeds when prompted to speak about Biden. The speculation is that the LLM was trained to exclude positive text regarding the right-wing candidate and later instructed to deny positive portrayals of the individual. In my view, this is a legitimate conspiracy theory or, more accurately, a hypothesis.

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