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In a prescient tweet, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman noted that AI will become persuasive long before it becomes intelligent. A scintillating study conducted by researchers at the University of Zurich just proved him right. In the study, researchers used AI to challenge Redditors perspectives in the sites /changemyview subreddit, where users share an opinion on a topic and challenge others to present counter arguments in a civilized manner. Unbeknownst to users, researchers used AI to produce arguments on everything from dangerous dog breeds to the housing crisis. The AI-generated comments proved extremely effective at changing Redditors minds. The universitys ethics committee frowned upon the study, as its generally unethical to subject people to experimentation without their knowledge. Reddits legal team seems to be pursuing legal action against the university. Unfortunately, the Zurich researchers decided not to publish their full findings, but what we do know about the study points to glaring dangers in the online ecosystemmanipulation, misinformation, and a degradation of human connection. The power of persuasion The internet has become a weapon of mass deception. In the AI era, this persuasion power becomes even more drastic. AI avatars resembling financial advisors, therapists, girlfriends, and spiritual mentors can become a channel for ideological manipulation. The University of Zurich study underscores this risk. If manipulation is unacceptable when researchers do it, why is it okay for tech giants to do it? Large language models (LLMs) are the latest products of algorithmically driven content. Algorithmically curated social media and streaming platforms have already proven manipulative. Facebook experimented with manipulating users moodswithout their consent through their newsfeeds as early as 2012. The Rabbit Hole podcast shows how YouTubes algorithm created a pipeline for radicalizing young men. Cambridge Analytica and Russiagate showed how social media influences elections at home and abroad. TikToks algorithm has been shown to create harmful echo chambers that produce division. Foundational LLMs like Claude and ChatGPT are like a big internet hive mind. The premise of these models holds that they know more than you. Their inhumanness makes users assume their outputs are unbiased. Algorithmic creation of content is even more dangerous than algorithmic curation of content via the feed. This content speaks directly to you, coddles you, champions and reinforcing your viewpoint. Look no farther than Grok, the LLM produced by Elon Musks company xAI. From the beginning, Musk was blatant about engineering Grok to support his worldview. Earlier this year, Grok fell under scrutiny for doubting the number of Jews killed in the holocaust and for promoting the falsehood of white genocide in South Africa. Human vs. machine Reddit users felt hostile toward the study because the AI responses were presented as human responses. It’s an intrusion. The subreddit’s rules protect and incentivize real human discussion, dictating that the view in question must be yours and that AI-generated posts must be disclosed. Reddit is a microcosm of what the internet used to be: a constellation of niche interests and communities largely governing themselves, encouraging exploration. Through this digital meandering, a whole generation found likeminded cohorts and evolved with the help of those relationships. Since the early 2010s, bots have taken over the internet. On social media, they are deployed en masse to manipulate public perception. For example, a group of bots in 2016 posed as Black Trump supporters, ostensibly to normalize Trumpism for minority voters. Bots played a pivotal role in Brexit, for another. I believe it matters deeply that online interaction remains human and genuine. If covert, AI-powered content is unethical in research, its proliferation within social media platforms should send up a red flag, too. The thirst for authenticity The third ethical offense of the Zurich study: it’s inauthentic. The researchers using AI to advocate a viewpoint did not hold that viewpoint themselves. Why does this matter? Because the point of the internet is not to argue with robots all day. If bots are arguing with bots over the merits of DEI, if students are using AI to write and teachers are using AI to grade then, seriously, what are we doing? I worry about the near-term consequences of outsourcing our thinking to LLMs. For now, the experience of most working adults lies in a pre-AI world, allowing us to employ AI jdiciously (mostly, for now). But what happens when the workforce is full of adults who have never known anything but AI and who never had an unassisted thought? LLMs cant rival the human mind in creativity, problem-solving, feeling, and ingenuity. LLMs are an echo of us. What do we become if we lose our original voice to cacophony? The Zurich study treads on this holy human space. That’s what makes it so distasteful, and, by extension, so impactful. The bottom line The reasons this study is scandalous are the same reasons its worthwhile. It highlights whats already wrong with a bot-infested internet, and how much more wrong it could get with AI. Its trespasses bring the degradation of the online ecosystem into stark relief. This degradation has been happening for over a decadeyet incrementally, so that we haven’t felt it. A predatory, manipulative internet is a foregone conclusion. It’s the water we’re swimming in, folks. This study shows how murky the water’s become, and how much worse it might get. I hope it will fuel meaningful legislation or at least a thoughtful, broad-based personal opting out. In the absence of rules against AI bots, Big Tech is happy to cash in on their largess. Lindsey Witmer Collins is CEO of WLCM App Studio and Scribbly Books.
Category:
E-Commerce
Theres a power shift underfoot at Apple. And for the first time since 2023, the Apple design team will report directly to the companys CEO. The news comes as Apple announced COO Jeff Williams will be retiring by the end of the year. While Williams will be handing the role over to Sabih Khan, oversight of the design team will not come along with the title. Instead, it will be handled by Tim Cook. Since 2023, the Apple design team has reported Williams in what seemed like a prioritization of global logistics over design excellence. Williams was an engineer by trade who oversaw the logistics of building Apple productsa most important expertise in running a company the size of Apple. Its the same expertise that led Tim Cook to rise to the role of CEO of the company. This move went alongside a deprioritization of design at Apple. Consider that Apple defined itself through a cozy relationship between design and the c-suite, and nowhere was the value of that relationship more historically articulated than in the partnership between Steve Jobs and Jony Ivewhich drove Apples unprecedented run of inventions, from the iMac to the iPod to the iPhone. After Jobss passing, Ive continued his role as VP of industrial design, where he reported directly to Tim Cook. Rumors point to this relationship being fraught. Ive left Apple in 2019 to form LoveFrom, and Evans Hanky took over the position. But when Hanky left in 2022 (she now works at io, the firm building out OpenAIs hardware initiatives), design was demoted in the process. Williams stepped in, creating a layer between the CEO and the design team. This timing coincided with a disastrous launch (and subsequent suspension) of Apples Vision Pro headset, along with Apples lagging strategy reconciling the role of AI in its products. Truth be told, Apple was not alone in demoting its design team within its greater corporate structure. Roughly 39% of Fortune 500 companies that were part of a recent survey had cut one or two of the top levels of design at their organization, deprioritizing designs voice within business. Of course, it stung more when Apple would make such a decision, given that it defined the power of design in corporate strategy. From what we can tell, this all means that Apples design lead Alan Dye, its VP of Human Interface Design, now reports directly to Cook alongside the design team. Apple did not respond to a request for clarification on that point. But in any case, Apple has subtly shifted its organization in what, on paper, seems to put a greater emphasis on design. Time will tell if this move improves Apples challenged product strategy.
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E-Commerce
The Supreme Court on Tuesday cleared the way for President Donald Trumps plans to downsize the federal workforce despite warnings that critical government services will be lost and hundreds of thousands of federal employees will be out of their jobs. The justices overrode lower court orders that temporarily froze the cuts, which have been led by the Department of Government Efficiency. The court said in an unsigned order that no specific cuts were in front of the justices, only an executive order issued by Trump and an administration directive for agencies to undertake job reductions. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the only dissenting vote, accusing her colleagues of a demonstrated enthusiasm for greenlighting this Presidents legally dubious actions in an emergency posture. Jackson warned of enormous real-world consequences. This executive action promises mass employee terminations, widespread cancellation of federal programs and services, and the dismantling of much of the Federal Government as Congress has created it,” she wrote. The high court action continued a remarkable winning streak for Trump, who the justices have allowed to move forward with significant parts of his plan to remake the federal government. The Supreme Court’s intervention so far has been on the frequent emergency appeals the Justice Department has filed objecting to lower-court rulings as improperly intruding on presidential authority. The Republican president has repeatedly said voters gave him a mandate for the work, and he tapped billionaire ally Elon Musk to lead the charge through DOGE. Musk recently left his role. Tens of thousands of federal workers have been fired, have left their jobs via deferred resignation programs or have been placed on leave. There is no official figure for the job cuts, but at least 75,000 federal employees took deferred resignation and thousands of probationary workers have already been let go. In May, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston found that Trumps administration needs congressional approval to make sizable reductions to the federal workforce. By a 2-1 vote, a panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals refused to block Illstons order, finding that the downsizing could have broader effects, including on the nations food-safety system and health care for veterans. Illston directed numerous federal agencies to halt acting on the presidents workforce executive order signed in February and a subsequent memo issued by DOGE and the Office of Personnel Management. Illston was nominated by former Democratic President Bill Clinton. The labor unions and nonprofit groups that sued over the downsizing offered the justices several examples of what would happen if it were allowed to take effect, including cuts of 40% to 50% at several agencies. Baltimore, Chicago and San Francisco were among cities that also sued. Todays decision has dealt a serious blow to our democracy and puts services that the American people rely on in grave jeopardy. This decision does not change the simple and clear fact that reorganizing government functions and laying off federal workers en masse haphazardly without any congressional approval is not allowed by our Constitution,” the parties that sued said in a joint statement. Among the agencies affected by the order are the departments of Agriculture, Energy, Labor, the Interior, State, the Treasury and Veterans Affairs. It also applies to the National Science Foundation, Small Business Association, Social Security Administration and Environmental Protection Agency. The case now continues in Illston’s court. Mark Sherman, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
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