AI Bot Swarms Threaten Democracy

Automated bots that purvey disinformation have been a problem since the early days of social media, and bad actors have been quick to jump on LLMs as a way of automating the generation of disinformation. But as is outlined in a new article in Science, something worse is coming: swarms of AI bots acting together in concert.

Swarms of bots act like a megaphone and reinforce the misinformation or disinformation of the others.

It is a really creative way to amplify what these likely Russian disinformation campaigns seek to communicate.

Early bot networks were really just a cut and paste operation but at the speed of computers.

The current generation of these bots talk to each other so that other bots can reinforce the messages posted by different bots.

If you have thousands of these bots, running by AI and talking to each other via back channel communications, well, they are much more effective.

That means, if the social media platforms care, they have to use new and more creative techniques to detect and disarm these swarms.

Think of this like the swarms of drones used in Ukraine – this is the same technique except on the Internet.

Learn more at Gary Marcus’ blog.

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