SmartTrolls? TrollBots?
I just heard something that I found very, very disturbing today.
For many of us, the term "deep state" is more than a rumor, myth or whisper. We know it's real.
We know that there are real-if-but-unseen forces out there behind the scenes - and hiding in plain sight - working with us to manipulate us, to shape our opinions, and to form us into a kind of dumbed-down, gmo-fueled, complacent consumer citizenry, a society so mesmirized by the latest shiny, so drawn by the allure of the alternate reality of endless infotainment, that we are too distracted and too preoccupied to take a close look at the cogs and the inner workings of the forces that are driving us.
Today I heard the term "smart AI" for the first time. Smart artificial intelligence. Almost sounds like an oxymoron. It would be, if it wasn't so scary.
The snippet of information about this technology I have goes something like this: you are participating in a chat on a livestream on a very popular video website. You probably even are a subscriber to this particular channel.
A trollbot appears. Only it doesn't appear to be a trollbot. It looks like it's person with a pretty sophisticated knowledge of technology who is also a troll on a mission, one who's got a burr under his saddle, with you in his crosshairs.
A consciencious moderator zaps the troll. Voila! One less troll. Unbeknownst to the mod, however, is that he has also obliterated access for one of his strong followers. You see, this isn't just any troll. This is a smart troll. And there's an underlying algorithm, and somehow, someway, when you pick off one of your unseemlier and totally unacceptable detractors, SmartTroll picks off one of your staunch supporters.
And this task - disrupting your chat, agitating chat participants, and creating havoc within your little community - is just one portion of the mission.
This activity carries on into comments posted about videos, as well. After weeks or months of abuses posted in comments section, even the most sane, balanced, tolerant person will eventually say enough is enough, and start to moderate, blocking those who repeatedly and/or disproportionately post ugly, vulgar, mean-spirited comments.
And again, SmartTroll has been programmed to boot one of your good guys for every bad guy you zap.
The tolerance for trolling is also reinforced by the reluctance to participate in censorship. Those of us with certain political (or anti-political) leanings probably fall into this niche, and don't kid yourself - that's factored into the program. Let the trolling go on long enough, and you get a lot of cranky fingers flying across keyboards. People get irritated. They complain. They unsubscribe. They say f*k this, I don't need this. They complain, they fight with you, they fight among themselves.
And that's just from the SmartTrolls. When they analyze the sh*t everyone is slinging at each other over the course of battles started by the real trolls and add that into the equation, you have trolls that are so smart, they're like antibiotic resistant organisms. With each generation, a little of that DNA containing that unique genetic material, that new information, is transferred before the organism replicates. When the cell divides, a new, smarter, organism - or troll - results.
Anyway, this is what I surmise, at least, from my brief introduction to the concept of the Smart AI algorithm this morning. I've never heard the term "trollbot" before, nor "SmartTroll". If you haven't either, then maybe I've just made a contribution to IT and AI. Pretty good for a girl who doesn't even code. And we - you and I - are making history here. This is the anti-revolution. This is where the resistance starts, where we begin to develop strategies to thwart these computerized puppet-masters and the fish-bellied-flesh that's behind them, pushing the buttons.
It almost goes without saying that starving the trolls would be the first step. If I hadn't actually had the experience of provoking a troll during chat, I'd say stick to the non-feeding schedule. I knew I was provoking the troll. I didn't know it was a SmartTroll, a product of AI.
Not until now. But that, dear reader, is a discussion for another day.
Post script: Well, did do a little looking around, and I guess oxymorons aren't the only morons around.
In all fairness, I won't be too hard on myself. I said I'd never heard of Smart AI, smart artificial intelligence, before today. And that's true.
But I got it wrong. What was being discussed was "Strong" AI, strong artificial intelligence. To my amusement, Smart AI exists in science fiction and in cybergaming. After I initially wrote this submission, I looked up smart AI, and read all about it here: https://www.halopedia.org/Smart_AI
It exists. Sort of. It certainly made a lot of sense to me, but my first clue that something wasn't right was when I found myself reading Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics. I started to read it because I was curious as to what a science fiction author had written was so good that it was adopted as part of a technology standard of sorts.
Alright, so I'm technologically challenged. For those of you who know what I intended to write about, I would like to invite you to indulge in a good, guilt-free laugh. I wasn't a science fiction fan, have some interest and little training in technology, so the joke's on me.
Or is it? We're so close to what used to be science fiction that it's spooky.
And if you like this post, feel free to resteem and make someone else feel a little smarter (than me) today.