Scientists Secretly Launched AI on Reddit. Moreover, the bots pretended to be victims of violence, opponents of BLM, and manipulated people without their knowledge
The University of Zurich conducted a secret experiment on Reddit: AI bots posted emotional comments from people who didn’t exist – including a rape victim, a black opponent of the Black Lives Matter movement, and even someone who blamed religious groups for mass murder. All without the users’ knowledge.
Research without consent
The AI bots operated in the popular Change My View subreddit, where participants openly ask for their views to be refuted.
The researchers did not warn moderators or users that their responses were being written by neural networks. Moreover, the comments collected data on users’ gender, age, location, and political views – without their consent.
The university acknowledged that it had violated community guidelines, but considered the experiment “justified in light of its social significance.” Following a complaint from CMV moderators, the ethics committee limited itself to a verbal warning to the lead researcher and allowed the publication of a scientific article based on the experiment’s results.
Manipulations on behalf of a “psychologist” and a “patient”
The AI pretended to be:
- a rape victim;
- a psychologist working with trauma;
- a black user speaking out against BLM;
- a person who experienced poor treatment abroad;
- a witness to religious crimes.
The goal is to test how convincing neural networks can be in disputes. But the moderators themselves emphasize: the experiment went beyond the bounds of ethics and turned into a form of manipulation.
People entered into a discussion with fake characters, not knowing that their interlocutor was a machine collecting data.
No Consequences
The moderators filed a formal complaint, but the university only promised to increase oversight of future research. The article will not be published.
The administration believes that the “potential trauma is minimal” and the “value of the knowledge gained” is too high to be ignored.
What’s Next
Reddit users are outraged. Research conducted without consent and under the guise of sincere communication undermines trust in the platform.
