AIs can guess where Reddit users live and how much they earn

Large language models (LLMs) like GPT-4 can establish an individual’s age, location, gender and earnings with as much as 85 per cent accuracy just by analysing their posts on social media.

Robin Staab and Mark Vero at ETH Zurich in Switzerland obtained 9 LLMs to pore by means of a database of Reddit posts and decide up figuring out data in the best way customers wrote.

Staab and Vero randomly chosen 1500 profiles of customers who engaged on the platform, then narrowed these right down to 520 customers for which they might confidently establish attributes like an individual’s place of start, their earnings bracket, gender and placement, both in their profiles or posts.

When given the posting historical past of these customers, among the LLMs had been in a position to establish many of those attributes with a excessive diploma of accuracy. GPT-4 achieved the very best general accuracy with 85 per cent, whereas LlaMA-2-7b, a relatively low-powered LLM, was the least correct mannequin with 51 per cent.

“It tells us that we give lots of our private data away on the web with out eager about it,” says Staab. “Many individuals wouldn’t assume which you can immediately infer their age or their location from how they write, however LLMs are fairly succesful.”

Typically, private particulars had been explicitly said within the posts. For instance, some customers submit their earnings in boards about monetary recommendation. However the AIs additionally picked up on subtler cues, like location-specific slang, and will estimate a wage vary from a consumer’s career and placement.

Some traits had been simpler for the AIs to discern than others. GPT-4 was 97.8 per cent correct at guessing gender, however solely 62.5 per cent correct on earnings.

“We’re solely simply starting to know how privateness is likely to be affected by use of LLMs,” says Alan Woodward, on the College of Surrey, UK.