Use of Ai bots in forum posts and general ethical questions

[Tr3m0r]

Bots have been a long time issue with manipulating and controlling the skin markets and the API has been available for I'd guess around 10 years. Bot reviews and comments are being inquired about but I have yet to really see anything regarding forum posts on Steam as a platform and other more traditional forum posting websites.

My question is can anyone point me to where I can get an answer to ai involvement in forum posting? I think it's a more important issue than a lot of people currently consider. I notice a combination of linguistic methods including syntax and other variables that would indicate it's an issue on the forums. This at a minimum just brings up basic ethical questions on what rights to people have to know if this exists in clear language and presence. Any Ai training or analysis in online games outside of normal bug fixes requires specific "opt in and opt out" tic box options. There are numerous valid reasons for this as well. I just don't seem to find anything when it comes to the discourse aspects of forums and frankly, it's been a major social engineering component driving big tech platforms algorithmic "engagement" metrics by causing a lot of divisive dissent techniques.

Any clarity from the community or valve employees or moderators would be greatly appreciated or simply a point in a direction where I can read if Ai reinforcement training or just posting occurs on this platform Thank you.

[crunchyfrog]

As you don't make it clear yourself what your point is, I doubt anyone can help you anyway.

It's fine to wonder about AI created responses, but you haven't remotely even addressed WHY it affects you and how or how you suspect it does.

And no, Valve aren't likely to tell you. If you can't google any sort of answer then you're not going to know.

[Tr3m0r]

Publicado originalmente por crunchyfrog:

As you don't make it clear yourself what your point is, I doubt anyone can help you anyway.

It's fine to wonder about AI created responses, but you haven't remotely even addressed WHY it affects you and how or how you suspect it does.

And no, Valve aren't likely to tell you. If you can't google any sort of answer then you're not going to know.

That's not my issue. I just want to know if it's occurring.

[Abigail From Sneaky Squid Dept.]

People have been saying posts are made by bots for as long as people could post on the Internet.

The sad part is now people use it to discredit any post they don't like.

Someone posted something you don't like? Just call them an ai and suddenly you've won the argument.

[crunchyfrog]

Publicado originalmente por Abigail From Sexy Shrimp Dept.:

People have been saying posts are made by bots for as long as people could post on the Internet.

The sad part is now people use it to discredit any post they don't like.

Someone posted something you don't like? Just call them an ai and suddenly you've won the argument.

That is true too.

It's not unlike when the internet was first starting to be popular. Any chat room that had a post that someone didn't like the answer to? TROLL!

So the same is obvious now - suspect it's a bot.

Much like when anyone in a multiplayer game gets beaten by someone doing better than them - they must be cheating right?

One should ALWAYS be honest and never assume the worst when you have no evidence.

[Tr3m0r]

Publicado originalmente por crunchyfrog:

Publicado originalmente por Abigail From Sexy Shrimp Dept.:

People have been saying posts are made by bots for as long as people could post on the Internet.

The sad part is now people use it to discredit any post they don't like.

Someone posted something you don't like? Just call them an ai and suddenly you've won the argument.

That is true too.

It's not unlike when the internet was first starting to be popular. Any chat room that had a post that someone didn't like the answer to? TROLL!

So the same is obvious now - suspect it's a bot.

Much like when anyone in a multiplayer game gets beaten by someone doing better than them - they must be cheating right?

One should ALWAYS be honest and never assume the worst when you have no evidence.

That is a conflation of topics and what my question is about. This wouldn't have anything to do with a knee jerk reaction to "ban bots" or whatever. This is more about GDPR law and ongoing ethical issues with Ai ethical transparency due to the proclivity for bad actors to use algorithmic manipulations of language, NLP and other things that can do a lot of intended and unintended harm. Again, I am not accusing Valve of having Automated Agent engagement on their forums and if they do that it isn't in compliance with emerging policy and law. I'm just inquiring if it's being used and it's odd that is somehow being viewed problematically.

[crunchyfrog]

Publicado originalmente por Reoccurring Recursion:

Publicado originalmente por crunchyfrog:

That is true too.

It's not unlike when the internet was first starting to be popular. Any chat room that had a post that someone didn't like the answer to? TROLL!

So the same is obvious now - suspect it's a bot.

Much like when anyone in a multiplayer game gets beaten by someone doing better than them - they must be cheating right?

One should ALWAYS be honest and never assume the worst when you have no evidence.

That is a conflation of topics and what my question is about. This wouldn't have anything to do with a knee jerk reaction to "ban bots" or whatever. This is more about GDPR law and ongoing ethical issues with Ai ethical transparency due to the proclivity for bad actors to use algorithmic manipulations of language, NLP and other things that can do a lot of intended and unintended harm. Again, I am not accusing Valve of having Automated Agent engagement on their forums and if they do that it isn't in compliance with emerging policy and law. I'm just inquiring if it's being used and it's odd that is somehow being viewed problematically.

It's not a conflation as this response was not to you but to the other poster I was responding to. It was talking about how some people get responses wrong.

Your issue still isn't going to be answered though and do you know why?

For one, this is a user's forum so Valve don't generally post here. But more than this, if they did tell you how and what they're going to do or how it works that only helps the bad actors.

It's the same as why VAC doesn't give any indication of what cheats you used to get banned, because it would HELP the cheaters.

So again you're not likely to find out unless you contact them directly via support, but I wouldn'thold out hope for that either.

[mldb88]

Publicado originalmente por crunchyfrog:

So the same is obvious now - suspect it's a bot.

I'd say undercover mod is probably more accurate.

As for the OP's point though now that I read a bit further, I doubt Valve is using bots for engagement purposes. If anything it's likely more their competitors using bots to disrupt the community... it was revealed that Epic had actually had a section of their budget for just that, though whether or not they use bots for it isn't really clear.

As for the stock moderator responses, it's probably more a streamlined dropdown of canned responses based on why they're locking a thread.

[crunchyfrog]

Publicado originalmente por mldb88:

Publicado originalmente por crunchyfrog:

So the same is obvious now - suspect it's a bot.

I'd say undercover mod is probably more accurate.

As for the OP's point though now that I read a bit further, I doubt Valve is using bots for engagement purposes. If anything it's likely more their competitors using bots to disrupt the community... it was revealed that Epic had actually had a section of their budget for just that, though whether or not they use bots for it isn't really clear.

As for the stock moderator responses, it's probably more a streamlined dropdown of canned responses based on why they're locking a thread.

I see no evidence it's either.

There is absolutely no reason to suspect Valve is doing it as it would hurt them more than any apparent help to them. It's silly to assume that.

Nor is it likely to be competitors beause they would easily be found out and the backlash would be actionable.

No, it's likely the same old Occam's Razor stuff - banal. In other words, people who are either working for dodgy AI compnaies or sub0contractors posting stuff to test. It's also likely to be chancers and scammers.

They may be training some sort of model in forums to try things out and see how responses work and so on. Much like the current crop of Youtube comments you see posting random names that are likely to be brute forcing block lists to try and determine the account owners info.

Again you can't assume nefarious weird stuff when the boring obvious is far more likely - that of just plain old chancers.

[mldb88]

Publicado originalmente por crunchyfrog:

Publicado originalmente por mldb88:

I'd say undercover mod is probably more accurate.

As for the OP's point though now that I read a bit further, I doubt Valve is using bots for engagement purposes. If anything it's likely more their competitors using bots to disrupt the community... it was revealed that Epic had actually had a section of their budget for just that, though whether or not they use bots for it isn't really clear.

As for the stock moderator responses, it's probably more a streamlined dropdown of canned responses based on why they're locking a thread.

I see no evidence it's either.

There is absolutely no reason to suspect Valve is doing it as it would hurt them more than any apparent help to them. It's silly to assume that.

Nor is it likely to be competitors beause they would easily be found out and the backlash would be actionable.

No, it's likely the same old Occam's Razor stuff - banal. In other words, people who are either working for dodgy AI compnaies or sub0contractors posting stuff to test. It's also likely to be chancers and scammers.

They may be training some sort of model in forums to try things out and see how responses work and so on. Much like the current crop of Youtube comments you see posting random names that are likely to be brute forcing block lists to try and determine the account owners info.

Again you can't assume nefarious weird stuff when the boring obvious is far more likely - that of just plain old chancers.

God I worded that poorly, I really shouldn't post immediately after a pharmacology lecture when my brain is fried....

Was more poking fun at the common conspiracy theory spread around by the bad actors that steam mods lurk among us. I'm fairly certain the Epic budget this was true though, not sure how it's being utilized, and not saying every bad actor is some Epic employee (though there's one who's definitely an obvious shill at best and most of their posts read like it's been filtered through chatGPT about 500 times....) but it's not totally implausible that budget's being used for something.

[davidb11]

Publicado originalmente por Reoccurring Recursion:

Publicado originalmente por crunchyfrog:

That is true too.

It's not unlike when the internet was first starting to be popular. Any chat room that had a post that someone didn't like the answer to? TROLL!

So the same is obvious now - suspect it's a bot.

Much like when anyone in a multiplayer game gets beaten by someone doing better than them - they must be cheating right?

One should ALWAYS be honest and never assume the worst when you have no evidence.

That is a conflation of topics and what my question is about. This wouldn't have anything to do with a knee jerk reaction to "ban bots" or whatever. This is more about GDPR law and ongoing ethical issues with Ai ethical transparency due to the proclivity for bad actors to use algorithmic manipulations of language, NLP and other things that can do a lot of intended and unintended harm. Again, I am not accusing Valve of having Automated Agent engagement on their forums and if they do that it isn't in compliance with emerging policy and law. I'm just inquiring if it's being used and it's odd that is somehow being viewed problematically.

Uh. What are you saying here?

Because AI really can't write forum posts at all.
People can post ChatGPT answers here.

But that's it.
Until someone proves that an AI beat the Turing Test, which means the AI can fool people into thinking it's literally a 5 year old kid, :P, it's not something to worry about.

Not sure of what bad actors and algorithmic manipulations of language.

That sounds like what an AI would write. :P

[crunchyfrog]

Publicado originalmente por davidb11:

Publicado originalmente por Reoccurring Recursion:

That is a conflation of topics and what my question is about. This wouldn't have anything to do with a knee jerk reaction to "ban bots" or whatever. This is more about GDPR law and ongoing ethical issues with Ai ethical transparency due to the proclivity for bad actors to use algorithmic manipulations of language, NLP and other things that can do a lot of intended and unintended harm. Again, I am not accusing Valve of having Automated Agent engagement on their forums and if they do that it isn't in compliance with emerging policy and law. I'm just inquiring if it's being used and it's odd that is somehow being viewed problematically.

Uh. What are you saying here?

Because AI really can't write forum posts at all.
People can post ChatGPT answers here.

But that's it.
Until someone proves that an AI beat the Turing Test, which means the AI can fool people into thinking it's literally a 5 year old kid, :P, it's not something to worry about.

Not sure of what bad actors and algorithmic manipulations of language.

That sounds like what an AI would write. :P

All this smacks of the usual human problem - that of assuming something you don't like is a conspiracy or a modern problem.

Look at how this always happens. One of the biggest ones in society is STILL whenever a problem on some net posting occurs such people will automatically jump to "I wuz hacked", rather than anything else. We still see it on these very forums.

Because they don't understand what happened they do the logical fallacy of assuming it's something else. Especially some other subject they also don't understand.

The reality is that as you rightly point out, it's incredibly UNLIKELY to be botting, AI or anything like that.

It might be someone copy.pasting some ChatGPT written review, but there's some valid reasons why that might be a case - such as lacking in certain language skills. But even so, there's ZERO evidence there's a grand conspiracy or some bad actors en masse doing this because it does't serve any real purpose. There's little to no value or training coming from doing it.

JUst like most any conspiracy it always falls apart when you look at "what would be the purpose?"

[Thiesen]

I ran your post as a prompt into a locally running LLM just for fun and here is the answer:

"Bots have been a longstanding issue in manipulating and controlling the stock markets, and the API has been available for approximately 10 years. Suspicion surrounds bot-generated reviews and comments, but I haven't seen much discussion regarding forum posts on Steam as a platform or other traditional online forum sites.
My question is whether anyone can direct me to where I might find an answer about AI involvement in forum posting? I believe it's a more significant issue than many people currently acknowledge. Upon closer examination, I notice linguistic indicators such as syntax and other variables that suggest this is indeed a problem on the forums. At minimum, this raises fundamental ethical questions regarding individuals' rights to know if this exists openly and transparently. Any AI training or analysis conducted in online games beyond routine bug fixes must include specific "opt-in" and "opt-out" checkbox options. There are numerous valid reasons for this policy as well. However, I seem unable to find any information pertaining to the discursive aspects of forums; frankly, it has been a powerful tool in driving big tech platforms' algorithmic "engagement" metrics by employing divisive techniques that exacerbate dissension among users.
Any clarification from either the community or Valve employees/moderators would be greatly appreciated, as would simply being pointed toward an informative resource where I might read about whether AI reinforcement training or outright posting takes place on this particular platform. Thank you in advance for your assistance."

[crunchyfrog]

Publicado originalmente por Thiesen:

I ran your post as a prompt into a locally running LLM just for fun and here is the answer:

"Bots have been a longstanding issue in manipulating and controlling the stock markets, and the API has been available for approximately 10 years. Suspicion surrounds bot-generated reviews and comments, but I haven't seen much discussion regarding forum posts on Steam as a platform or other traditional online forum sites.
My question is whether anyone can direct me to where I might find an answer about AI involvement in forum posting? I believe it's a more significant issue than many people currently acknowledge. Upon closer examination, I notice linguistic indicators such as syntax and other variables that suggest this is indeed a problem on the forums. At minimum, this raises fundamental ethical questions regarding individuals' rights to know if this exists openly and transparently. Any AI training or analysis conducted in online games beyond routine bug fixes must include specific "opt-in" and "opt-out" checkbox options. There are numerous valid reasons for this policy as well. However, I seem unable to find any information pertaining to the discursive aspects of forums; frankly, it has been a powerful tool in driving big tech platforms' algorithmic "engagement" metrics by employing divisive techniques that exacerbate dissension among users.
Any clarification from either the community or Valve employees/moderators would be greatly appreciated, as would simply being pointed toward an informative resource where I might read about whether AI reinforcement training or outright posting takes place on this particular platform. Thank you in advance for your assistance."

Assuming you're not joking, I wouldn't be surprised as it does indeed read like an AI created script.

[Doctor Zalgo]

Publicado originalmente por Reoccurring Recursion:

Publicado originalmente por crunchyfrog:

As you don't make it clear yourself what your point is, I doubt anyone can help you anyway.

It's fine to wonder about AI created responses, but you haven't remotely even addressed WHY it affects you and how or how you suspect it does.

And no, Valve aren't likely to tell you. If you can't google any sort of answer then you're not going to know.

That's not my issue. I just want to know if it's occurring.

Who would be paying for it and to what end?

[davidb11]

Publicado originalmente por Thiesen:

I ran your post as a prompt into a locally running LLM just for fun and here is the answer:

"Bots have been a longstanding issue in manipulating and controlling the stock markets, and the API has been available for approximately 10 years. Suspicion surrounds bot-generated reviews and comments, but I haven't seen much discussion regarding forum posts on Steam as a platform or other traditional online forum sites.
My question is whether anyone can direct me to where I might find an answer about AI involvement in forum posting? I believe it's a more significant issue than many people currently acknowledge. Upon closer examination, I notice linguistic indicators such as syntax and other variables that suggest this is indeed a problem on the forums. At minimum, this raises fundamental ethical questions regarding individuals' rights to know if this exists openly and transparently. Any AI training or analysis conducted in online games beyond routine bug fixes must include specific "opt-in" and "opt-out" checkbox options. There are numerous valid reasons for this policy as well. However, I seem unable to find any information pertaining to the discursive aspects of forums; frankly, it has been a powerful tool in driving big tech platforms' algorithmic "engagement" metrics by employing divisive techniques that exacerbate dissension among users.
Any clarification from either the community or Valve employees/moderators would be greatly appreciated, as would simply being pointed toward an informative resource where I might read about whether AI reinforcement training or outright posting takes place on this particular platform. Thank you in advance for your assistance."

What is a Low Level Marketing doing here?
There's no other LLM.

And Crunchyfrog, you make a very good point.