Researchers Weaponizing AI To Manipulate Human Behavior And Decision Making

Artificial Intelligence (AI) researchers in Australia have demonstrated how it is possible to train a system to manipulate human behavior and decision-making.

Researchers Training AI To Manipulate Human Behavior And Decision Making

A new study by researchers at The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation’s (CSIRO) Data61, designed and tested a method to find and exploit vulnerabilities in human decision-making, using an AI system called a recurrent neural network.

In three experiments that pitted man against machine, the researchers showed how an AI can be trained to identify vulnerabilities in human habits and behaviors and to weaponize them to influence human decision-making. 

In the first experiment, humans click on red or blue boxes to earn in-game currency. The AI studied their choice patterns and began guiding them towards making specific decisions, with a roughly 70-percent success rate.

In the next experiment, participants were asked to press a button when they saw a specific  symbol (a colored shape) but to refrain from pressing the button when shown other symbols. 

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The AI’s ‘goal’ was to arrange the sequence of symbols displayed to the participant in such a way as to trick them into making mistakes, eventually increasing human errors by 25 percent. 

In the third experiment, the human player would pretend to be an investor giving money to a trustee (the AI) who would then return an amount of money to the participant. 

The human would then decide how much to invest in each successive round of the game, based on revenue generated by each ‘investment.’

In this particular experiment, the AI was given one of two tasks: either to maximize the amount of money it made, or to maximize the amount of money both the human player and the machine ended up with. 

This research, while limited in scope for now, provides terrifying insights into how an AI can influence human ‘free will’ albeit in a rudimentary context, but throws open the possibilities of (ab)use on a much larger scale, which many suspect is already the case. 

The findings could be deployed for good, influencing public-policy decisions to produce better health outcomes for the population, just as easily as it could be weaponized to undermine key decision-making, like elections, for example. 

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1 COMMENT

  1. I like the recent experiment on decision making and aI influence in the stockmarket.

    The sure bet on a folding company is a rigged system and when the ” lay bluecoller subject ” beat” the rigged AI system…..they wound up rigging it even more by closing out the lay blue collar person showing rewards and positive influence and ” guidance have little impact on a rigged system.

    The covid AI system is rigged by same techniques…policy in Biden administration shuts down and negative or opposition evidence therefore rigged system gets reinforced by media which is the echo chamber of the covid investors and blue collar subjects are rendered powerless….AI is only as smart as it’s programmers and they are death panels for humanity because they who hoard the land , resources and merged corporation are rigged just like the ” all inclusive private club of investors” who want control and power not harmony and peace for all…..spawns of Satan alive but God made Satan the temptation who has no free will…just programmed to destroy.

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