The secret artificial intelligence (AI) experiment of the University of Zurich controlled the opinions of Reddit users.

Source: Cointelegraph Original text: "The secret artificial intelligence (AI) experiment of Zurich University manipulated the opinions of Reddit users"

Researchers at the University of Zurich have been accused of conducting a four-month experiment without authorization, using AI-generated comments to test whether AI could change people's opinions on a Reddit discussion board.

According to a post made by the moderators of the r/changemyview subreddit on April 26, in 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 moderator stated: "Our sub-forum is a clearly human-centered space that firmly rejects the concealment of AI usage; this is a core value. People come here not to discuss viewpoints with AI or to become subjects of experimentation."

According to the draft of the research paper, the researchers used AI to generate replies and attempted to personalize these responses based on the original poster's past Reddit history (such as political inclination, gender, age, and race).

During a four-month experiment, the fake AI accounts at the University of Zurich posted a total of 1,783 comments and received 137 "delta" marks—this is a sign used by Reddit users to indicate that their views on a certain issue have been persuaded to change.

Researchers stated in a post released to the sub-section that all comments are manually reviewed before posting to ensure compliance with community guidelines and to "minimize potential harm."

The research team at the University of Zurich argues that the "potential benefits far outweigh the risks" of the study, as they found that the large language models (LLMs) used in the experiment were extremely persuasive, exceeding "previously known benchmarks of human persuasion".

Researchers stated: "The controlled, low-risk study we conducted provides valuable insights into the persuasive capabilities of LLMs in the real world—capabilities that are now easily accessible to anyone and may also be exploited by malicious actors for more dangerous purposes on a large scale."

At the same time, the researchers also noted that the experiment showed that "there are still significant challenges in distinguishing humans from AI", as users in the r/changemyview subreddit did not identify AI bots throughout the experiment.

This subsection has 3.8 million members, ranking in the top 1% of all subreddits on Reddit.

Reddit considers legal action

Reddit moderators stated that they were not aware of the experiment in advance, have submitted an apology request to the University of Zurich, and requested to prevent the publication of related research results.

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 University of Zurich research have been banned.

Lee stated: "We are formally issuing a legal letter to the University of Zurich and the research team."

"We will do everything we can to support the community and ensure that relevant researchers are held accountable for their misconduct," he added. ”

The Ethics Committee of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Zurich stated in response to this sub-section that it has launched an investigation into the incident and promised to coordinate better with the subjects of the experiment in the future. The principal investigator of the project has also received a formal warning.

The ethics committee pointed out: "This project provides important insights and carries minimal risk. Therefore, suppressing the publication of its results is disproportionate to the value brought by the research."

The University of Zurich has not yet responded to this immediately. Cointelegraph has also not received a reply to inquiries sent to the email related to the experiment.

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