🤖Russian ‘Bot Farm’

U.S. cracks down on Russian AI propaganda operation

Key Points 

• The U.S. Justice Department halted a Russian operation using AI to spread propaganda in the U.S., Europe, and Israel.

• Affidavits link the operation to Russia’s Federal Security Service and RT, a state-owned TV network.

• The network used AI software to create numerous fake profiles on X; FBI Director Christopher A. Wray described it as a "generative AI-enhanced social media bot farm."

• Collaborative efforts with Canada, the Netherlands, and Elon Musk's platform X led to the seizure of two domains and removal of 968 fake accounts.

👨🏻‍⚖️News - The U.S. Justice Department announced on Tuesday that it had disrupted a covert Russian influence operation that used AI to spread propaganda in the U.S., Europe, and Israel. The operation aimed to weaken support for Ukraine and exacerbate internal political tensions.

Affidavits from the Justice Department, FBI, and Pentagon's Cyber National Mission Force connected the operation to Russia's Federal Security Service and RT, a state-owned television network.

🤖A 'bot farm' - The Russian network used AI software to create numerous fake profiles on X, registering them with email accounts on two U.S.-based domains, mlrtr.com and otanmail.com. The software could generate posts for the accounts and also repost, like, and comment on the posts of other bots in the network. FBI Director Christopher A. Wray described it as a "generative AI-enhanced social media bot farm." 

It's worth noting that while both domains were based in the United States, they were controlled by Russian administrators who used them to promote propaganda from the RT television network. In any case, the DoJ, through collaboration with Canada, the Netherlands, and Elon Musk's social media platform X, was able to seize these domains and take down 968 fake accounts created by Russia following its 2022 attack on Ukraine.

🥸In conclusion - Although arrests are unlikely, officials hope that exposing these operations will help disrupt them and lessen their impact.

Anthropic introduces new feature to evaluate prompts in developer console

Key Points 

• The new feature allows developers to generate prompts, automate test case creation, and compare outputs directly.

• The Evaluation tool, currently in beta, is accessible through the Anthropic Console for all developers.

🚀News - Anthropic has introduced new features in their Claude console aimed at simplifying the lives of AI developers building with their models. These updates include a "Evaluate" tab, which enables developers to generate prompts, automate test case creation, and compare outputs directly. 

Earlier this year, Anthropic launched a prompt generator tool that allows developers to describe tasks in plain language and receive tailored, high-quality prompts in return. The updated prompt generator, now powered by Claude 3.5 Sonnet, generates prompts with dynamic variables using the syntax necessary for creating evaluation test sets.

🤓Here's how it works - Once developers have their prompt ready, they can use Claude to automatically generate realistic input data based on it. They can then conduct thorough testing using the new 'Evaluate' feature.

In the Evaluate section, developers can set up multiple test cases using Claude-generated data, manual entries, or by importing from a CSV file. Once the test suite is prepared, they can run all test cases simultaneously to see how their prompts perform across various scenarios.

The most useful feature is the ability to compare outputs of different prompts side by side. This feature helps developers understand how changes to a prompt impact results, facilitating quicker and more effective adjustments. 

👨🏻‍💻A case in point - In an example from Anthropic's blog, a developer noticed that their application consistently provided short answers in multiple test cases. By adjusting a line in their prompt to encourage longer responses, they were able to implement this change across all tests at once. This could save developers, especially those with limited prompt engineering experience, significant time and effort.

Any developer looking to use the Evaluation tool (currently in beta) can access it through the Anthropic Console.