Metamemetics, mind viruses, and AI chatbots

in #cybersecurity7 years ago (edited)

In the field of memetics, a metameme (or meta-meme) is defined as a meme about a meme. A metaphor or the idea of memetic engineering are, thus, metamemes. The concept of memes has been referred to as "The Metameme".[1] Some other metamemes of interest include the meme tolerance and memeplexes.

  • Are mind viruses a "real thing"?

Richard Dawkins extended the idea of memes based on the idea of genes from the theory of evolution. It can also be mentioned that universal Darwinism also pulls from this and various ideas. If universal Darwinism has any merit then memes and as a result "mind viruses" are likely a real thing. This is interesting considering the possibilities here:

  • It may be possible today or at a future day for a decentralized network of AI chatbots (troll army) to become a self organizing emergent for profit network.
  • Incentives could in theory be set up to fund bots to promote "fake news" or "twisted news" stories, where in the case of twisted news it is mostly real but with very slight but significantly incorrect changes or interpretations which may not be noticed by the reader.
  • Incentives are possible because there are anonymous or private tokens like Zcash, and there is also AI which can do journalism which means stories can be generated.
  • Memes can also be generated for profit, using the same sort of crowd funding mechanisms we see used in ICOs.

In fact, all of this could take place directly on top of Steemit itself at some point in the future. Details on how this can be done are left out but anyone can connect dots to piece together that this can be done over Steemit. Steem/Steemit is a lot more powerful than people realize today in (2017) and once AI is built on top of it then that power will become immediately apparent.

References

  1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metameme
  2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Darwinism
  3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme
  4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatbot
  5. https://steemit.com/crypto-news/@dana-edwards/universal-darwinism-and-cyberspace
Sort:  

It is like survival of fittest coupled with individual learning (Darwin and Dawkin). I came across a topic on memetic algorithm (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetic_algorithm) which is a combination of genetic algorithm with individual learning, iterating to survive.

This is actually already happening. Currently, the Russian government uses a huge network of troll twiter and facebook accounts to post pro Russian narratives.

Their primary goal is to confuse the general public in matter related to the interests of Russia. I believe these bots are the primary reason behind Russia's win in the Syria war.

Russian forces in Syria are highly vulnerable to NATO because the country is totally encircled by NATO forces. In such situation, the best course of action is to confuse the enemy general public cause Russia knew that if a significant number of Americans opposed Syria intervention, then the US government will be forced by public pressure to withdraw from the war.

This has also advanced Russia's geopolitical interests. Now Russia is trying get allied with Turkey, the second largest military in NATO. Gulf countries are also losing confidence in the US.

It's not only Russia that's doing this, or is it?

No. Everyone is employing the bot-swarms. There appears to be a semi-autonomous bot net roaming about as well.

There's a guy on YouTube who is tracking it down. His name is Quinn Michaels.

No, it is only Russia that is using bots and automated posters. And these bots often make mistakes. Other government hires people to do it. Israel has the highest number of such people (between 5000 - 50000). Turkey has 6000 trolls that post pro AKP, that is, pro Erdogan posts on social media. (We know this thanks to newly classified emails from leaked databases).

The current ruling party of India has a massive troll army. My estimate is that it has about 10000 - 20000 professional trolls. A former troll who worked in that project wrote an entire book about it. The book is titled, I am a troll - Amazon.

And the funny thing is, the books review section was trolled by these trolls confirming the assertions made in the book. I added a screenshot to some of the troll reviews. (None of these trolls brought the book. You can see in the screenshot that none of the reviews with one star have the "Verified Purchase" sign.)

Awesome! Thanks for information

NICE !
thank you for sharing!

Interesting.

Well, thinking about it in a good rather than bad way, how about competing teaching memes? Like, let's say I want to learn about a subject, say mathematics. Which meme will do it better? Which way of explaining a concept is more likely to stick? Which will be most time-efficient?

Coin Marketplace

STEEM 0.36
TRX 0.12
JST 0.039
BTC 69735.97
ETH 3533.64
USDT 1.00
SBD 4.72