Dr. Todd Rose

And when you put it into social media environment,

Even if there's no bad actors, just the dynamics of that, the loudest voices, will guarantee that you're going to be wrong the longer you spend time on there.

But it gets even worse.

So my organization has partnered with other organizations.

We've been studying the way in which foreign entities that are trying to disrupt us have built bot armies.

Russia, China, they have millions of bots, some of them AI-enabled now.

And we often think when it's propaganda and manipulation that they're just spreading disinformation.

It's not what they do at all.

The new form of propaganda is the ability to manufacture a collective illusion.

to convince them that their communities believe things they don't.

And that need to belong kicks in.

I mean, we're talking about, so we know on social media writ large, that roughly one fourth of all the interactions you ever have are with bots and you don't know it.

One fourth of all your interactions on social media are with bots and you don't know it.

And with AI enabled bots, you wouldn't be able to tell.

They are so sophisticated.

So you just have to be careful to know if you just get to that point and understand this concept of a collective illusion, right?

Right.

Group think, but you're wrong about the group.

So why would you conform?

Like if you conform to something your group doesn't want, you're destroying the group you actually care about.