In a YouTube video, a voice in English announces that China has researched and developed its own ultra-thin 1-nanometer chip – a staggering claim given that the chip isn’t expected in commercial devices for another decade.

“Recent news from China has sent ripples of excitement and astonishment across the globe,” gushes the voice-over on the China Charged YouTube channel. “This revolutionary breakthrough is more than a technological marvel; it is a game-changer that will redefine the global tech landscape.”

“Prepare to have your mind blown,” says another video, this time on the channel Unbelievable Projects. “Welcome to today’s video, in which we’ll discover why America remains behind China in infrastructure development.”

These voices and their “good news” about China are evidence that the Chinese Communist Party and its overseas proxies are using artificial intelligence to flood YouTube with propaganda videos, according to a new report that describes a “coordinated inauthentic influence campaign” on the platform.

  • nicetriangle@kbin.social
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    9 months ago

    The specifics of this article aside, I am so not looking forward to the continued proliferation of AI based bullshit on the internet/public discourse/the media/etc. It’s gonna get so so much worse, we’re just scratching the surface right now. The validity of any photo or video will be destroyed and nothing will be trustworthy anymore. This is great news for fascists who thrive in a world where the truth is unknowable and meaningless.

    • daltotron@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      It’s just sort of kind of like a slightly more advanced form of spam, or trolling, or really fucked up propaganda/news. The integrity of the ideas and the evidence itself is more what should be evaluated in an argument anyways, rather than the source, and I don’t think like, evidence, generally, like, evidence in general, proof of things in general, is going anywhere anytime soon. I don’t think AI is advanced enough to break encrypted p2p communication, so I don’t really think there’s much of a chance that shit just gets totally wiped off the internet and you start seeing like mass memory hole type shit. It’s more likely that you end up seeing mass disinformation campaigns. You know, like what we’ve had since forever, where you get the population to do it to themselves.

      • speff@disc.0x-ia.moe
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        9 months ago

        > The videos are part of at least 30 channels identified by researchers as being part of the “Shadow Play” network promoting pro-China and anti-U.S. narratives, according to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

        > according to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute

        > Australian

    • pop@lemmy.ml
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      9 months ago

      Administration? Lemmy was built by a guy that denies tiananmen square massacre.

      • barsoap@lemm.ee
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        9 months ago

        Before you get downvoted by the tankies, note for historical accuracy (so that I will be downvoted because they like that even less, OTOH lemmygrad doesn’t even see me so w/e): The massacres were in side streets, not on the square itself. The party was at first split as to how to deal with the protests, the students were to simplify quite a bit Dengists alarmed by the power shifts within the party away from Dengism following Hu Yaobang’s death. Hardline faction was amassing the army outside of Peking, Peking locals went out there and handed them noodles and explanations as to the situation, explaining that the protesters were their sons and daughters, good socialists1, not some bourgeois anti-revolutionary mob. Dengist faction lost out in the internal party struggle, hardliners decided that the army shall march, army marched, Peking locals erected barricades etc. in the streets leading to the square, get massacred, army arrives at square, delivers final ultimatum, students retreat, with no further or at least minimal bloodshed.


        1 According to Marxist-Leninist-Maoist type thought. People understanding actual theory understand that Dengists are even more capitalist than Lenin, but MLs never acknowledge that state capitalism is, indeed, capitalism, and Dengists never acknowledge that they’re not even doing state capitalism any more but run of the mill oligarchic capitalism.

    • AlexisFR@jlai.lu
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      9 months ago

      Weird, as social leaning instance, they should be opposed to modern China! Should we help them?

    • YeetPics@mander.xyz
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      9 months ago

      Got banned from there today for suggesting that disappearing prisoners isn’t the status quo in “the west”.

      Oddly enough I’ve been downvote-stalked since and I find it hilarious.

  • jjjalljs@ttrpg.network
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    9 months ago

    Do people really get their news and information from random YouTube channels?

    YouTube is not a reliable source!

    • csm10495@sh.itjust.works
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      9 months ago

      My father in law watches this crap all the time. Also every war propaganda video.

      … if not that, Thai boxing or bear hunting. Ya never know what he’ll be watching as long as it’s one of those. Oh unless it’s Friday night, then he’s watching SmackDown.

    • doctorcrimson@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      TBF, the FriendlyJordies are a reliable news source, but that’s more of an exception to the rule.

      • Bazoogle@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        The problem isn’t getting your new from YouTube. But rather random YouTube channels. It’s like saying “Do people really get their news from random news sites”

        • robotopera@sh.itjust.works
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          9 months ago

          Yeah it seems a lot of people do. Especially if it’s linked through social media, I would guess a non trivial amount of people won’t fact check it or check the source.

    • heyfrancis@lemmy.ml
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      9 months ago

      Yep i know a lot of people at least in my country. If not YT, then they get it from FB

    • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      I automatically dismiss any argument that uses a YouTube video as evidence. If it’s legit, there’s going to be text that goes with it.

    • nekandro@lemmy.ml
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      9 months ago

      at this point I’m convinced China was just copying all of the “China gonna collapse in 3 days” videos

  • doctorcrimson@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    I wonder if the AI has caught on to a lot of the abusable mechanics of YT like an upload schedule, opening livestreams or premieres in multiple windows, the upvote/downvote exploit, etc. There is a solid possibility that an AI has better strats than we do.

    • Bazoogle@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      The AI is just being used to create the content itself. The upload process is still just a script. The AI can only adjust parameters set by the person, and the person creating the setup likely isn’t adding in any of the other factors

    • Evotech@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      An actual AI influencer who could control all that would be interesting. What kind of strategies it would make to get the most engagements

      Very Hard to train since I assume you would need real human feedback for each run of course

      • doctorcrimson@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        I think you could just let it push a bunch of buttons and fill in fields at random or with sample data and then score each generation based on user engagement and views, it wouldn’t need that much human feedback during the development phase but the downside would be slightly less control over the content it pushes.

  • M0oP0o@mander.xyz
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    9 months ago

    This made me think of what you can do with AI to poke fun at china, and sadly it seems that microsoft is a bit hard on anti china prompts. But like, life finds a way…

  • deft@ttrpg.network
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    9 months ago

    They do it here too. Anything positive coming out of china is full of this shit and bootlickers quick behind them.

  • ripcord@kbin.social
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    9 months ago

    Why is this a sign that they’re using “Artificial Intelligence”? Sounds like they’re just as likely using text-to-speech for planned propaganda. It’s not like they don’t have an ay of people to work on it.

    • Grimy@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      AI hate gets people emotional and leads to more clicks. Couple that with anything to do with China and you end up with a couple bucks of ad money.

  • magnetosphere@kbin.social
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    9 months ago

    Alarming as this may sound, they’re beating a dead horse. Most of the people who would believe this shit uncritically also think Fox “News” is the gospel truth. They’re already lost.

    • occhionaut@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Yeah ive blocked every channel reccomendation ive gotten that so much as smells like shoe polish.

  • speff@disc.0x-ia.moe
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    9 months ago

    Sometimes I wonder if there are different “levels” of propaganda nation states put out. Like you have this obviously fake crap get a bunch of surface-knowlege people. Then you have more subtle things put out - like social media accounts pretending that something false is a ground truth. You’ll then get people who can catch the fake videos and then believe the fake accounts no problem because it’s obviously can’t be propaganda - because you know what propaganda looks like. cough gell-mann amnesia cough

    Or maybe nation states are really that incompetent and the only level of propaganda they can put out is like the article’s videos. Honestly people give way too much credit to how much these folks know/plan out. There’s no secret cabal playing 5d chess. They’re normal people (ie. dumbfucks) pushing a message.

    Who knows.

    • auroraborealiz@sopuli.xyz
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      9 months ago

      There’s also the crap “China will collapse in XX days” propaganda on YouTube as well

      It’s fucking everywhere

  • yamanii@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    This is very poor form, at least employ agents like the american 3 letters.

    RFA is a private, nonprofit corporation, funded by the U.S. Congress through the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), an independent federal government agency that oversees all U.S. civilian international media. In addition to providing oversight, the USAGM works with RFA to ensure the professional independence and integrity of its journalism.

    • Ahri Boy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      9 months ago

      All other USAGM-funded outlets have the same perspective as RFA. I stopped reading RFE/RL anymore because it was tiring.

    • M0oP0o@mander.xyz
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      9 months ago

      "The Boy Who Cried Wolf” into Chinese

      Here is what the AI generated image from the bingilator looks like of that… (you know one good turn requires another)