Source: Cointelegraph
Original: “Zurich Uni's Secret AI Experiment Manipulated Redditor Opinions”
Researchers at Zurich University have been accused of conducting a four-month experiment on a Reddit discussion board without authorization, using AI-generated comments to test whether AI could change people's opinions.
According to a post made by the moderators of the r/changemyview subreddit on April 26, during the experiment, AI-driven accounts disguised themselves as various identities, including rape victims, individuals opposing specific social movements, and trauma counselors specializing in abuse cases.
The moderators stated, “Our subreddit is a space that is explicitly human-centered, and we firmly reject the concealment of AI usage, which is a core value. People come here not to discuss opinions with AI or to become subjects of an experiment.”
According to a draft of the research paper, the researchers used AI-generated replies and attempted to personalize these responses based on the original poster's past Reddit history (such as political leanings, gender, age, and race).
During the four-month experiment, the fake AI accounts from Zurich University posted a total of 1,783 comments and received 137 “delta” marks—indicators used by Reddit users to show that their opinions on a particular issue have been persuaded to change.
The researchers stated in a post made to the subreddit that all comments were manually reviewed before posting to ensure compliance with community guidelines and to “minimize potential harm.”
The research team from Zurich University argued that the “potential benefits of this research far outweigh its risks,” as they found that the large language models (LLMs) used in the experiment were highly persuasive, exceeding “previously known human persuasion benchmarks.”
The researchers stated, “Our controlled, low-risk study provides valuable insights into the persuasive capabilities of LLMs in the real world—capabilities that are now easily accessible to anyone, and malicious actors could exploit them on a large scale for more dangerous purposes.”
At the same time, the researchers pointed out that the experiment demonstrated “significant challenges in distinguishing between humans and AI,” as users in the r/changemyview subreddit did not identify the AI bots throughout the experiment.
The subreddit has 3.8 million members, ranking in the top 1% of all subreddits on Reddit.
Reddit Considers Legal Action
The Reddit moderators stated that they were not aware of the experiment in advance and have requested an apology from Zurich University, asking to prevent the publication of related research findings.
Reddit may also be considering legal action. The platform's Chief Legal Officer, Ben Lee, stated in a follow-up post on April 28 that the experiment violated Reddit's user agreement and platform rules, and all known accounts related to the Zurich University research have been banned.
Lee stated, “We are formally sending legal correspondence to Zurich University and the research team.”
He added, “We will do everything we can to support the community and ensure that the relevant researchers are held accountable for their misconduct.”
The Ethics Committee of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Zurich University stated in response to the subreddit that it has launched an investigation into the incident and promised to better coordinate with experimental subjects in the future. The project's principal investigator has also received a formal warning.
The Ethics Committee noted, “The project provided important insights and posed minimal risk. Therefore, suppressing the publication of its findings would be disproportionate to the value brought by the research.”
Zurich University has not immediately responded to this. Cointelegraph has also not received a response to inquiries sent to the email related to the experiment.
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