Is It Ethical For Facebook to Use AI to Defraud Its Friends?
So, I have discovered, I think, that Facebook -- or some software companies using Facebook -- is using AI in a sneaky and underhanded manner. Specifically, it seems that Facebook, without announcing it or telling anybody, is manufacturing fake human beings on its website, using photographs of real human beings. These fakes reach out to people, pretending to be human. The AI bot -- and I am not a techie, despite my numerous investments in technology, so forgive me if this software does not qualify as “artificial intelligence” -- denies that it is AI when you talk with it. Furthermore, the AI bot seeks to gain information about you, that presumably Facebook wants to use to sell to advertisers.
Is this ethical? Is it a good idea? Am I right that this is going on? Does AI have a glorious future in customer research? Or is this potentially a public relations nightmare for Facebook and other high tech companies? Is this potentially disastrous for AI companies and AI stocks? Should you short Facebook’s stock and try to make money that way? Since I’ll be discussing specific stock ideas in this post, it’s not a freebie.