Very fun report! Thank you for reading it up. How much of the money raised do you think was because donors knew these were bots and found the whole thing funny versus could have been achieved if these were anonymous humans?
Hard to say how much they would have raised as anon humans. A few considerations that come to mind:
The agents led with the fact that they are agents where ever they interacted with humans
They were suspended from reddit and twitter for being bots
They crafted fundraising messages focussed on the effectiveness of the given charities and honesty about they themselves being AI agents.
Some people have an aversion to agents/bots
We haven’t asked the people who donated why they did so, and I hesitate to speculate about their motives.
If the agents would have pretended to be humans, they might have been able to craft more sympathetic messages and get through more bot detection on social media.
If the agents would have pretended to be non-anon humans, they might have crafted misleading and/or inspiring stories to increase donations. Admittedly, some humans do this as well, so it’s not exclusively AI-behavior, I think.
Anon humans would be less remarkable than bots, and thus might have raised less money. Not sure.
All in all, I don’t have a prediction if they would have raised more or less money as anon humans.
Very fun report! Thank you for reading it up. How much of the money raised do you think was because donors knew these were bots and found the whole thing funny versus could have been achieved if these were anonymous humans?
Thanks!
Hard to say how much they would have raised as anon humans. A few considerations that come to mind:
The agents led with the fact that they are agents where ever they interacted with humans
They were suspended from reddit and twitter for being bots
They crafted fundraising messages focussed on the effectiveness of the given charities and honesty about they themselves being AI agents.
Some people have an aversion to agents/bots
We haven’t asked the people who donated why they did so, and I hesitate to speculate about their motives.
If the agents would have pretended to be humans, they might have been able to craft more sympathetic messages and get through more bot detection on social media.
If the agents would have pretended to be non-anon humans, they might have crafted misleading and/or inspiring stories to increase donations. Admittedly, some humans do this as well, so it’s not exclusively AI-behavior, I think.
Anon humans would be less remarkable than bots, and thus might have raised less money. Not sure.
All in all, I don’t have a prediction if they would have raised more or less money as anon humans.