https://www.theepochtimes.com/tech/bots-hav...ference-5448718

Alas that site wants my email.

Are they talking about chat bots or bots that for example post at forums? I've seen (supposedly) ChatGPT in action making forum posts, but I didn't understand what the purpose was.

Here's the study mentioned in the article headline: https://www.ai21.com/blog/human-or-not-results


Bots in general, it seems:

"The bot-human blur is like a magic trick ... As bots get smarter, we risk losing trust in online interactions," Daniel Cooper told The Epoch Times.

...

"Spotting bots is like finding Waldo in a crowd. Look for repetitive patterns, lack of personalization, or rapid responses. Also, trust your gut. If it feels off, it might just be," he said.

While much of the discussion of malicious or "bad bot" traffic centers on social media, the influence of maligned AI interactions has much farther-reaching consequences.

...

Reports of AI language models leaving reviews for products on sites like Amazon emerged in April this year. The bot reviews were easy to identify since the chatbot literally told readers that it was an AI language model in the first sentence.

...

"Mr. Kann said there are methods a user can employ to determine if they're interacting with another person.

Like Mr. Cooper, he suggested watching response patterns carefully.

"Bots often respond instantly and may use repetitive language."

Mr. Kann also said people should check profiles since bots often have generic or incomplete online profiles.

He added an inability to distinguish between bots and humans could lead to research accuracy challenges.

"It can lead to skewed data analytics, as bot interactions can inflate website traffic and engagement metrics."

So social media. That's us.

Or more likely FB, Insta and so on. The posts I saw was at a normal forum, like this one, though. The posts were on topic but yet a little off. As said, I didn't understand the purpose. Maybe someone was just training, learning how to handle the API.

I must say I'm both fascinated by and scared of what those things can do.

You know Notetab that I cling to, right? AFAK its scripting language isn't documented anywhere online. There are scripts floating around, but the sole source for the syntax is the Help file. Someone, not me, asked ChatGTP to write a script for Notetab that did this and that. And it did! It didn't get it all right, but it was pretty close. And when asked to correct it it switched to some other scripting language, I've forgotten what, so a failure but still... I'm amazed that it knew the syntax and the vocabulary of such an obscure language, used by maybe a couple of hundred people, at all! How the heck did it do that?

I'm a bit concerned by this part from the survey:

People assume bots don’t make typos, grammar mistakes and use slang

People tend to identify spelling and grammatical errors, as well as the usage of slang, with humans. Therefore, when they noticed mistakes in their counterpart's messages, the first instinct of many participants was to assume they were talking to fellow humans, even though most models in the game were trained to make these types of mistakes and to use slang words.

...

People identified politeness with something less human.

Some participants assumed that if their counterpart was too polite and kind, they were probably a bot, due to the perception that people, especially online, tend to be rude and impolite.

Truth be told I've seen occasional posts like that since 1998.

Spam bots, yes. But these don't spam So what's the reason? I get it if it's, say, a political topic at for instance FB. But the ones I saw were on a more technical topic, didn't try to convince people of anything at all, just added relevant information.

No I meant real people expressing themselves in strange ways for unknown reasons.

Is it at all possible that I may be a bot?

coothead

Who isn't in this neck of the woods?

Off topic - I have just noticed that you and pandy have been
around these parts for exactly 17 YEARS !

Joined: 10-August 06

Blimey, I was almost a middle aged man back then.

coothead

So were we.

Maybe a man that should be listened to.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65452940

That sounds to me very much like The Borg.

Unfortunately Resistance Is Futile.

coothead

Yeah. I guess that's how ChatGTP could, at least superficially, know the obscure script language of my old editor. Maybe one of the copies specializes in Help files...

Maybe that's another way to identify a bot: it simply knows much more than a human would. So to pass as a human it needs to feign a bit of ignorance as well.

I enjoy taking online opinion surveys, participating in focus groups, etc. One of the things I've noticed more and more is that these surveys ask the same questions repeatedly, only in different ways. For example, a survey may ask your age, and then later ask what year you were born in. If they don't line up, then they reject you (and you don't get the reward for completing the survey). But this makes me think that this might catch humans who are just clicking through the forms as quickly as possible, but not catch bots.

I also do surveys. But I think they most often are just poorly constructed. I get kicked off even if my answers line up. There are lots of questions about things that have already been answered. Like they ask how many people live in your home (answer 1). Then they ask if you have children under the age of 18 living at home. Duh. Or how many vehicles to you have? (Anser 0). Next question: what brand is the car you drive the most?

Do you think those repeat questions are used to catch bots? I have no idea, but ISTR such repeat questions have been around a very long time. I imagine police interrogators would use them to spot lies. But I also read recently that current "AI" bots can be very incoherent in their answers, so if you ask their age you might get wildly different answers every time.

When I'm kicked out of a survey, I'm pretty sure it's because I don't fit the demographic they're looking for. For example, I say that I've never bought a new car, and that I don't ever expect to be in the market for a new car, and then I get the "We already have enough responses from your group" exit message.

But yeah, I get badly written surveys pretty regularly. I explain that I never use something, then they ask what my favorite brand of that something is, and so on. I usually try to move forward with some kind of "None of the above" or "Other" responses, but sometimes I just give up and close the tab.

I also do surveys and bots may well be involved but I strongly believe that the
real reason for rejection is AGEiSM.

So how old are you? - ( There is no obligation, of course, to answer this publicly )

I am in my final year as a septuagenarian and have experienced a massive drop
in the surveys offered to me and those that are offered are more often than not
immediately terminated when the magic numbers 79 and 1944 are entered.

Of course, I have to admit that living alone without children, motor vehicles or
anything that is called "Smart" might also have adverse effects. On the other
hand, surveys that intentionly ignore these responses are just creating biased
irrevelant surveys.

coothead

I think the repeat questions are intended to weed out people who just fill out as many surveys as possible to collect the rewards, without really paying attention to the questions. If it catches stupid bots, then that's just a bonus. The real goal is to catch people who aren't really answering seriously.

I think it depends on what they're trying to figure out. If they want to know more about people who play video games, then it doesn't make sense to continue once you say that you never play video games. But if they're trying to figure out general attitudes towards smart home technology, then yeah, they should include people who don't use it, or who use it just a little. In that case, limiting their study to people who already have lots of smart home devices would be short sighted.

I've used a lot of survey sites and I know only one that feels professional and actually pay a decent hourly wage (specified). It's clearly stated who the client is, most often a university institution, you can contact the researcher and so on. The surveys can also be more taxing, but aren't always. But after spending an hour on a psych test where you stare at fast switching images with colored dots, you actually need a break!

But otherwise, I'm mostly surprised that companies actually pay for surveys that are so bad as they often are.

Read an article yesterday saying that AI generated child pornography increases rapidly. On top of the obvious problems with that they often use images of children from already existing real porn as a starting point. So already abused children get virtually abused again. And the police and other organizations that fight child porn need to sift through it all and try to decide what's real and what's not, which they said isn't easy to judge, so it slows them down significantly.

Only for Christian - unless you understand Swedish. Sorry for that.
https://sverigesradio.se/avsnitt/max-tegmar...marpratare-2023

Sommar (Summer) is a long running radio show that lets known and not so known people talk about what they want for an hour and a half.

Max Tegmark is a renown scientist with an interest for AI. I haven't listened to the end of the show yet, but it seems he thinks AI will be the end of us. Maybe a grain of salt is needed, but interesting anyway.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Tegmark

...alternatively...

two hours,forty eight minutes and twelve seconds

...if you've time on your hands.

coothead

Great! I'll watch it. In installments.

Short attention span?

Don't worry. There's music too.

He told an anecdote that I found interesting.

An AI asked humans for help to read a CAPTCHA. I didn't expect it would. I guess at a forum or a group chat of some kind. The person it spoke to was on to it and asked if it was bot. Then the AI lied and said it was a visually impaired person. I didn't expect that either.

But Tegmark didn't say what AI. So it could be something experimental that was programmed to do exactly that. Anyhow, it kind of shows the potential. I think Tegmark and the numerous other scientists that raise a warning flag now are right. In the wrong hands AI could be lethal.

But I don't see how we can stop it from ending up in the wrong hands. Treaties between countries are of little use when it comes to traditional war, so it hardly will work in this case. And there are always private enterprise and omnipotent individuals.

History shows that the wrong hands are in general those in power
and in particular those among them who are psychopaths.

There are, unfortunately, a host of that ilk from which to chose.

coothead

Doesn't sound too bad, unless/until an AI becomes better at social engineering than even human online scammers.

I don't think AI:s need help with CAPTCHAs anymore though: https://forums.htmlhelp.com/index.php?showtopic=61360


I suspect the wrong hands are the ones already creating it... Question is how much more damage Big Tech companies like Google/Twitter/Facebook can do? There are already human shills and astroturfers trying to influence forums, Wikipedia etc. Much more of the same and maybe real humans will just become more careful online?

Not sure what governments may use it for, except trying to sway public opinion (which they already do). Any ideas?

Here is just one article...

How artificial intelligence systems could threaten democracy

...written four years ago.

coothead

I think it could be used for a lot of things. For instance what if AI instead of generals plans a war and take the strategic decisions? Add to that cadres of drones and satellites that feed it with information. All technologies that the other part may not have access too.

I think the point of the example he used was that an AI reached out into our world and that it lied about what it was.

If we think telemarketers and phone scams are a PITA now, imagine when AI calls every person over 80 and convince them to buy this great cell phone deal or asks for their bank login and bank ID.

But much of that are things governments are already doing. Maybe AI will do it more efficiently of course, but I'm mostly curious about completely new kinds of abuses only possible with AI...

Well, I will be able to answer that question in about seven months time.

I would tell AI to stick all things smart up his fundamental orifice
and as for my bank details, well a polite fffuck off would suffice.

Sorry about my stammer.

coothead

The big fear is of course allowing an AI to start wars by itself, or escalate it to say using nuclear weapons.


So that AI would spontaneously make a forum post to get help solving a CAPTCHA (in turn because of some unknown spontaneous purpose)? Considering the delay before you get a reply on forums, that suggests the AI was very anxious to get past that CAPTCHA. But it's an interesting thought: a human asks an AI a question, and the AI then passes on the question to web forums (where other AI:s may reply).

How did they determine it was really an AI?


I have no problem with unsolicited phone calls (so far ). If this becomes a problem people must simply stop publishing their numbers. Once the consumer outrage becomes big enough maybe even the mobile providers may become more restrictive.

The story doesn't tell. But it doesn't matter really if it did it on its own or was programmed to act that way. At least I haven't thought of AI as being that proactive. But that of course, I realize now, depends on what the people behind it let it do.




Could have been a chat. Story doesn't tell that either.





It is a problem already. Mainly elderly people are scammed all the time, tricked to use their Bank ID during the call and whoops - there went their savings. If 10 people can scam x elderly persons in a week how many do you think AI can scam?

Phone numbers are bought and sold. The UL (local bus company) app was hacked the other week. White hat obviously, as he informed UL about the hole. He got hold of the identity of over half a million people, including email, phone numbers and buying history. No CC numbers though. Sort those people after the national identification numbers and feed the AI the identity and numbers of those born before a certain year and start the scam calls.

I actually have a friend whose boyfriend fell for one of those "Hello, I'm calling from Microsoft" calls. He's not old, but a pretty nervous type and no so good at English. So I imagine he was sweating from trying to express himself in English already and didn't have so much brain capacity left. He gave them his CC number and lost 37 000. He got it back more than half a year later without a word of explanation, neither from the bank nor the police.

I've got one of those calls too. It's amazing anyone can fall for it, but it happens. These new scams are much more smart than that. They don't speak broken English, they speak Swedish and convince the victim they are calling from their bank.

I just learnt (SVT) that on services like TikTok and Instagram every keystroke you make is recorded. You don't even need to hit the submit button. Those two services were just examples. I guess there are a lot more.

Luckily for me, I have absolutely no connections to Social Media.

If I did then I would Copy&Paste this...

F*ck You TikTok
F*ck You Instagram

...at regular intervals.

I would hazard a guess that all appliances that are labelled as
SMART will also behave in a similar manner.

Luckily for me, I have absolutely nothing with that abominable
label.

coothead

It may help to use Tor browser on those sites (just like on search engines), perhaps with a filter blocking all third-party scripts. I also believe there are third-party sites that let you view at least Twitter and Instagram posts if need be.

Do sites like that even work of you block everything?




You are here, aren't you? Per definition forums are also social media. But I get what you mean.

Usually not, but at least you can block some of it. Blocking also compensates for the slow connection speed of Tor, so I can even use Youtube with it.


To me social media is sites made primarily for socializing, as opposed to exchanging ideas or information. It's possible to socialize on traditional web forums too, but it's not their main purpose. It's also possible to exchange ideas or information on social media sites, but again it's not their main purpose (and my impression is that it works pretty bad).

According to Wikipedia forums are definitely included.

This is a problem with the surveys some of us engage in. They can ask something like "How many hours a week do you spend on social media?". So what's an honest answer for coothead and myself? None or too many?

I think the definition of social media is a little like that of the new buzzword "sustainable". It's floating. It can mean anything. Boy, I hate the sustainable word! Especially in Swedish since the word we use used to mean long lasting. Like if I ask a seller if this washing machine is "hållbar" I want to know how long it will probably last before it breaks down in pieces and I need to buy a new one, not if the workers that put it together are paid a fair salary. Good if they are, but that's not what I ask.

Then Wikipedia itself should be included, I'm sure its contributors feel very social on the discussion pages.


In practice I guess it almost always means Facebook for older users, and TikTok or similar for the younger ones. People using traditional web forums are too few to make a statistical difference. So just answer "no" when they ask.


Isn't that another buzzword ("Fair trade", "Rättvisemärkt" or some similar incantation)? I think Sustainable just means the Earth's ecosystems will last longer if you buy their poor quality washing machines (and another one every five years)...

Yes, for younger people that's probably true. Except they hardly know what FB is. But the term has been around a long time and I prefer the original definition.

Yeah, I usually answer no, depends on how the question is asked. Sometimes they are more specific and list FB, Insta and so on. Then there's often a box labeled "Other". Then I chose that one.

It's ridiculous with these studies. Most are pure crap, except the place with scientific studies I mentioned. Still, I can't resist to give honest answers most of the time. I know that if I at an early stage tell them I don't drink coffee or eat bread I will be screened out. Still I can't resist doing just that. I'm probably stupid.



That's how I interpreted it at first, like "good for the environment". But they can squeeze anything in there. Fair salaries, equal rights for women, HBTQ... anything that could be thought of is right, fair, good, equal, decent.... It isn't only a poorly chosen word, it's too wide a concept altogether. I'm just waiting for them to market nuclear power as sustainable. They are already attempting to greenwash it so...