Last night, I had a strange dream. I don’t remember the specifics of the situation, but the salient point was that I came to explain to somebody how it’s possible for someone to use an A.I. to manipulate the stock-market. The long and short of it was that an A.I. could be trained to analyze a lot of memes and viral-videos and such to figure out how to generate memes that will catch on and people will spread. It can then be used to spread propagandist memes that can boost or tank stocks. It’s now entirely possible to use A.I. to manipulate the market by taking advantage of people’s low-bar of what they consider amusing and inability to control themselves from spreading inane things.
When I woke up, I thought about it for a couple of moments and realized that it was one of those rare dreams that’s not nonsense, this actually could work. The future present is doomed. :-\
With the whole Gamestop stonks debacle that happened 10 months later, this idea is more realistic than ever. 🤔
And even the Gamestop thing was a year before ChatGPT exploded AI into the public consciousness. No, I’m not psychic, I’ve been saying “this will change everything” to many Two Minute Papers videos for YEARS before ChatGPT came out, so I was just watching AI developing in real-time. 🤷
Also, the reason I have a degree in psychology is because by chance, one day between first and second years of university back in 1998, while I was waiting in line for something to do with school, I saw a stand with a bunch of pamphlets and happened to look at the one about AI which mentioned needing degrees in computer-science and psychology, so when I got back to campus, I switched programs from comp-sci to comp-sci AND psychology.