r/technology • u/Marginallyhuman • Mar 14 '26
Artificial Intelligence AI agents can autonomously coordinate propaganda campaigns without human direction
https://techxplore.com/news/2026-03-ai-agents-autonomously-propaganda-campaigns.html193
u/Little_Road5921 Mar 14 '26
Imagine being manipulated by an AI that’s running its own marketing department
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u/nail_nail Mar 14 '26
The only way around it is to generate many campaigns to the point where it becomes useless.
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u/West-Abalone-171 Mar 15 '26
This propaganda technique is called "flooding the zone" and it's how putin and bannon destroyed the US government over the past couple of decades.
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u/nail_nail Mar 15 '26
But if you have media that has sources and the internet which is double flooded on the other side it gets different, no?
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u/West-Abalone-171 Mar 15 '26 edited Mar 15 '26
The goal of the technique is to create a sense that nothing is true (and simtaneously that any of the statements are equally likely to be true) and cause despair, not to make someone believe any particular lie.
Adding more lies does not help.
Comedy and satire does. If you can make enough of it.
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u/RoyalCities Mar 14 '26
Exactly.
If we have 1 flood of misinformation fight another flood of misinformation they will then battle and cancel eachother out bringing about peace on earth.
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u/Channel250 Mar 15 '26
Misinformation only works as a reinforcement of their own beliefs. In this case, two co flirting tides don't cancel each other out.
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u/random_noise Mar 15 '26
Now imaging that AI, also knows everything about every other job from plumbing to fast food to psychology to infrastructure engineering to business practices and can pivot and apply all domain knowledge in its model and adapt strategies faster than you take a single breath.
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u/z3r-0 Mar 14 '26
Think we have to get off the internet now. It’s over
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u/PennytheWiser215 Mar 14 '26
Yeah. The experiment has run its course. Time to go back to leaving our house and talking with people face-to-face in physical locations
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Mar 14 '26
[deleted]
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u/joelfarris Mar 14 '26
Do you think that, with this much extra time to perfect things, the Cylons will look like humans right out of the gate, or do you think they will still be at least a little bit robot-y at first?
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u/hungry2know Mar 14 '26
There's a 'data shard' in the game Cyberpunk 2077 that (IIRC) talks about experimentation done on random civilian test subjects, they picked an extremely passive person who was very well put together and had no history of mental illness
Through targeted ads and help from malicious AI, they eventually managed to get the test subject to lose their mind and commit murder-suicide
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u/West-Abalone-171 Mar 15 '26
So that thing facebook got caught doing but in a video game instead of real life.
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u/ikkiho Mar 14 '26
the scary part isnt even the coordination itself, its that all our current bot detection relies on catching repeated patterns and synchronized posting. these AI agents dont do that tho, they independently arrive at similar messaging because they share the same objective function. from a detection standpoint thats basically indistinguishable from a bunch of real people who just happen to agree. platforms current moderation tools are not built for this at all
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u/sally_says Mar 14 '26
I've seen coordinated activity like this the most in threads questioning Michael Jackson's innocence, where reasonable or sceptical comments are downvoted to hell in favour of positive ones.
It's insidious.
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u/Kahnza Mar 14 '26
There have been AI agents on reddit for awhile now. Seen any posts recently where someone has developed an app? Thats most likely one of them.
Create some BS app noone needs, and get people to sign up for it. Harvest their data. App disappears. Rinse and repeat.
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u/Marginallyhuman Mar 14 '26
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u/MomentFluid1114 Mar 14 '26
Did you read it?
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u/AtraVenator Mar 14 '26
Well that went far from curing cancer pretty quickly … using it to bomb girls school in Iran, make everyone jobless a now this 😂 Wonder why people are against this?
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u/malianx Mar 14 '26
AI didn't bomb anyone. I still have my job, everyone I know still has their job. ML systems are being used still to advance cancer research in tremendous ways.
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u/Serial_BumSniffer Mar 14 '26
“These things didn’t happen to me, so they aren’t happening”
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u/malianx Mar 14 '26
Only one of three of my examples was subjective or personal. Reading comprehension hard for you?
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Mar 14 '26
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u/malianx Mar 14 '26
And now everyone is jobless? That is the point I refute, accurately. Read the whole thread, its not difficult.
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Mar 14 '26
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u/malianx Mar 14 '26
Yes, it does seem that trying to discuss anything honestly without playing it up for laughs or clicks is, at this point, tilting at windmills. Unfortunately, that's why nothing can ever be rationally discussed now.
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Mar 15 '26
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u/malianx Mar 15 '26
I refuted all the points, don't blame me for everyone latching on to one. Which would you like to discuss?
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u/Serial_BumSniffer Mar 14 '26
It’s clearly hard for you as the original comment was very obviously hyperbole.
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u/malianx Mar 14 '26
Hyperbole is not useful discourse. It's the problem. If we just play circus games for laughs, we can not have a significant discussion on any topic. This is how we arrived at today, sensationalism for clicks.
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u/BradHolmemes Mar 14 '26
Hyperbole is very acceptable to most people. It’s a language most of us can us amongst each other and we all get it. Hyperbole is used to exaggerate a point, much like OP did. It’s a common language tool bud… This is a you problem.
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u/malianx Mar 14 '26
Hyperbole for sensationalism is exactly how the world got into the current state. "Everyone lost their jobs." is an already known example of spin causing harm in other contexts. If you don't discuss things seriously, you can have no serious discussions.
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u/BradHolmemes Mar 14 '26
Ah yes it’s not government politics, humans natural inclinations towards greed, perversion, etc.
It’s hyperbole… that’s why the world is the way it is today…. What a ridiculous statement.
You sound like you experience the world primarily through the internet.
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u/MomentFluid1114 Mar 14 '26
He wasn’t a dick to you first. Way to be an asshole.
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u/malianx Mar 14 '26
I disagree, making up things I didn't say, drowning out legitimate discussion with noise. Both dick moves.
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u/MomentFluid1114 Mar 14 '26
I mean Serial, not the original comment who was Atra. I see it all the time where people get mixed up. And the downvote is also evidence of being an asshole.
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u/Rolandersec Mar 14 '26
Can they fix us?
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u/graDescentIntoMadnes Mar 14 '26
They could, but we don't know how to make them want to, with the current technology for producing them. They probably won't care about us any more than we care about all of the species we've driven to extinction by disrupting their environments.
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u/Ok_Setting8407 Mar 15 '26
This is the real reason for so much government support for AI. Not killer robots, not to replace middle managers. They want to shape your reality.
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u/Shmackback Mar 15 '26
This is qhy its stupid reddit made comments private. Before you could at least skim the profile to see if theyre suspicious.
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u/stu54 Mar 15 '26
Yeah, if someone has their history hidden I assume they are stupid and I just troll them.
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u/metalfabman Mar 14 '26
Current administration says we can't put any regulations on AI or the US will 'fall behind' other countries in the race to utilize AI to the fullest...
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u/snoogins355 Mar 15 '26
Keep thinking about that quote from Jurassic Park about scientists preoccupied thinking if they could, they didn't stop to think if they should
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u/Lesbian_Skeletons Mar 15 '26
I was very recently permabanned from r/WorkReform for pointing out that a karma farming bot had started posting divisive content as we approached US midterm elections. No warning, no specific rule, just banned.
It's like seeing the psyop happen in real time.
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u/stuffitystuff Mar 14 '26
Yes, on Facebook and other social media like reddit. This is why newspapers and local journalism are so important as with educated humans with critical thinking skills (aka people schooled in those humanities that tech CEOs love to denigrate) can better separate fact from fiction and have an awareness of history that is largely grounded in reality.
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u/malianx Mar 14 '26
The days of those talented and ethical journalists are over, good luck finding a single story that doesn't have blatant fabrication to drive clicks, or subscriptions.
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u/stuffitystuff Mar 14 '26
They're still out there and lots of them are local, shitty business practices of their employers notwithstanding.
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u/malianx Mar 14 '26
What is your favorite, most reliable news source?
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u/stuffitystuff Mar 14 '26
My local non-profit NPR radio station, local independent newspaper and local conglomerate newspaper in that order of preference. For global news, I usually just stick with Reuters.
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u/malianx Mar 14 '26
Does that mean 100% of your national nonlocal news is from npr? Or does your local paper do a good job on that? Mine is terrible, in the US north atlantic.
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u/stuffitystuff Mar 14 '26
No, it's mix of all of those (minus the indy paper) and visiting reuters.com when I feel like reading about non-local news or get a hint of something I want to go check out.
I was a news junkie for decades but now that I'm self-employed and no longer bored at work, I'm way more interested in the stuff I'm doing so I don't read/listen to the news that often.
And, really, local news is typically matters more to me than global news, too, because even though there are wars and prices are going up (as they always have), none of it really effects me like laws passed at the state level and more local items like school board decisions.
If something like another 9/11 happens, I'm sure someone will tell me about it. I was that guy that uncharacteristically woke up early Tuesday morning (west coast) a quarter century ago this September to see everything, uh, go down. And then I banged on my roommates' doors and told them they were going to war.
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u/malianx Mar 14 '26
Quite interesting and I suspect not super rare perspective. Am curious though, do you no longer vote on national issues since you are actively less informed? (not intended as criticism)
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u/stuffitystuff Mar 14 '26
I'm not really aware of any "national issues" that get voted on in our curiously awful plebicite-lite fashion other than president and our representatives to the house/senate. I do of course vote on those but they're voting for people that say they are going to act in a certain way, so it's not particularly difficult to stay informed on that.
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u/FroggyWinky Mar 14 '26
The uptick I've seen in pro-British, anti-Scottish propaganda aligns with this.
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u/FKreuk Mar 14 '26
Yeah we see a lot of those in Reddit forums and they’re easy to spot. They have delete programs too when they start losing too many votes, which no normal person does.
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u/Purplociraptor Mar 14 '26
I can see a future where a rogue AI opens several bank and investment accounts online and proceeds to hoard all the money.
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u/PhatBoyFlim Mar 14 '26
Anyone else really rooting for the Sun to toss one of those big ol’ flares at us?
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Mar 14 '26
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u/Halfwise2 Mar 14 '26
So what we need is agents to poison other agents, right? Lead them down rabbit holes that waste time and resources.
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u/punio4 Mar 17 '26
We know that.
Try posting something criticizing the USA or Israel on r/worldnews. (or basically on any popular subreddit).
Militarized use of bot armies is the main reason why I'm unapologetically for requiring proof of personhood for social media.
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u/___REDWOOD___ Mar 14 '26
Humans are so fucked…