Abstract
The r/subsimulatorGPT2 is an online forum in which all posts and comments are generated through automation using a fine-tuned version of the GPT-2 language model developed using OpenAI. This subreddit has been created and is moderated by the Reddit user u/disumbrationist (Disumbrationist in What is R/subsimulatorgpt2? 2020). The intricate language model employed here results in very coherent, highly realistic, simulated content. Approximately, 1,00,000 users subscribe to the forum; however, the posting of content and comments is done only by bots trained by the moderator. The process of training a bot includes the machine learning of 5 lac comments from a particular subreddit, which then sorts those comments through their popularity on those respective subreddits. The casual employment of language model machine learning on a popular website like Reddit is unique and important. This study examines the comments and a title posted by the bots and tests them on a sample of 126 participants, where the survey places posts generated by human users versus posts created by bots. The study tries to gauge whether popular and public, social media websites like Reddit have the potential to host content that can be entirely generated through artificial intelligence and whether this content can be distinguished by the layperson. The study opens up vast avenues which indicate that automation during industry 4.0 would include huge sections of online information in casual settings that will purely be generated through machine learning. It also questions the authenticity of online found text and ponders upon its implications in the rapidly approaching technological change.
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Solanki, C. (2023). “This Has Been Written by a Bot”: A Bot Detection Study of the SubsimulatorGPT2 Subreddit. In: Chakrabarti, A., Singh, V. (eds) Design in the Era of Industry 4.0, Volume 1. ICORD 2023. Smart Innovation, Systems and Technologies, vol 343. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-0293-4_95
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-0293-4_95
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