How many internet forum prophecy cults (you know like the q one) are or will be powered by these language models? It's often assumed or at least easier to imagine the evaluator in Turing's test is a rational actor that possesses a high-degree of skepticism. But it seems that a lot of the human population is ready and willing to believe wild claims with little or no evidence and many people seek out information that confirms what they already believe.
As the cost of making such models becomes less and less, it seems inevitable, spin up many such models and see what sticks and/or combine some evolutionary process for feeding back user-engagement to fine-tune and adapt the models. How many of these influence machines will latch onto the language of existing religious traditions and how many might invent or spur on the development of entirely new ones? Maybe not exactly the "Age of Spiritual Machines" that some futurists predicted...
How far are we from "Show HN: I started a cult by training a model on the sermons of televangelists and MLM copy."
This thought process is something I think is a common misconception with how cults work.
A machine to autogenerate cult-ish nonsense isn't needed. Humans are already incredibly good at doing this on their own.
Not only this, but another thing about this is that cults generally fine-tune themselves to fit their members.
A machine generating convincing lies still wouldn't meaningfully do as much as a human-operated, human-targeted attempt at a cult. Creating one is something basically any human can do; the required skillset is something most people possess.
"Show HN: How I increased ROI of my cult by 20% with AI-driven personalized advertisements."
Imagine GAN generated pictures showing attractive people (optimized for your taste) attending imaginary member's meetings near you. It would basically be the same as the text generation SPAM that eBay and AirBnb already use, but with pictures.
As the cost of making such models becomes less and less, it seems inevitable, spin up many such models and see what sticks and/or combine some evolutionary process for feeding back user-engagement to fine-tune and adapt the models. How many of these influence machines will latch onto the language of existing religious traditions and how many might invent or spur on the development of entirely new ones? Maybe not exactly the "Age of Spiritual Machines" that some futurists predicted...
How far are we from "Show HN: I started a cult by training a model on the sermons of televangelists and MLM copy."