Borne Identity: Looming AI Threat

DARIO Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, the company that runs the Claude artificial intelligence model, has stepped out of line from his peers and confirmed a crisis hiding in plain sight.

- PRATIK KANJILAL

While the industry and governments minimize the threat of AI, claiming that it will only take over menial, clerical, repetitive functions, Amodei recently said that it is very likely to wipe out white-collar jobs and deepen unemployment, especially among young people.

For example, AIs seem to be better persuaders than people. In September 2024, chatbots were reported to be good at debunking fake news and persuading conspiracy theorists to see sense. It was an important finding, since urban legends are used to amp up divisive politics.

In April, researchers at the University of Zurich covertly addressed the popular subreddit, r/changemyview, via AI chatbots to see how efficiently large language models can persuade people. The forum performs an important function in highly polarized times, reminding people that it is normal to have multiple viewpoints. Concealment made the experiment controversial, but its draft report found that AIs are three to six times more persuasive than humans.

In May, researchers at Lausanne pitted 900 people against human and AI debaters to discuss points like the utility of school uniforms and the value of AI. They found that when AIs know something about their opponents, they are formidable persuaders. Now that clever people know this, AIs could be deployed in prestige roles as lobbyists, political campaign managers and marketers of all things from missiles to toothpaste. Dare we say, religion, too?