What is a bot and how do they infiltrate forums like this

[GoSeigen]

Much more of a problem if a number of bots start threads and have conversations amongst themselves without any human interaction? That's the logical end point, is it not?

For now, the posts I've seen here and reported are pretty obviously not human and rather poor quality. But that's going to change for sure.

I don't think it will change for a long time. IMO AI is so patently stupid that it will not be useful beyond some circus-trick stuff and very basic niche task for the time being. No doubt the tech will mature somewhat in a decade or two, but I don't rate it at the moment. Remember self-driving cars from 10-12 years ago? Still not there yet...

GS

[BullDog]

Much more of a problem if a number of bots start threads and have conversations amongst themselves without any human interaction? That's the logical end point, is it not?

For now, the posts I've seen here and reported are pretty obviously not human and rather poor quality. But that's going to change for sure.

I don't think it will change for a long time. IMO AI is so patently stupid that it will not be useful beyond some circus-trick stuff and very basic niche task for the time being. No doubt the tech will mature somewhat in a decade or two, but I don't rate it at the moment. Remember self-driving cars from 10-12 years ago? Still not there yet...

GS

I agree with you. There's little intelligence in AI presently. The recent "customer service" interactions I've had with obvious AI bots ranks firmly as artificial stupidity.

[GoSeigen]

I don't think it will change for a long time. IMO AI is so patently stupid that it will not be useful beyond some circus-trick stuff and very basic niche task for the time being. No doubt the tech will mature somewhat in a decade or two, but I don't rate it at the moment. Remember self-driving cars from 10-12 years ago? Still not there yet...

GS

I agree with you. There's little intelligence in AI presently. The recent "customer service" interactions I've had with obvious AI bots ranks firmly as artificial stupidity.

My standard interaction with them is to say "Please connect me to a human".

LOL

They (quite rightly) seem to have no powers to actually do stuff yet, they seem to be a glorified FAQ.

GS

[BullDog]

I agree with you. There's little intelligence in AI presently. The recent "customer service" interactions I've had with obvious AI bots ranks firmly as artificial stupidity.

My standard interaction with them is to say "Please connect me to a human".

LOL

They (quite rightly) seem to have no powers to actually do stuff yet, they seem to be a glorified FAQ.

GS

At risk of boring you and others somewhat. Recently I contacted a company saying their device's on board WiFi receiver seemed to be faulty. The device would lose connection to the WiFi network unless the WiFi access point was within 1m of the device. The "customer service" response was obviously AI generated but apparently intended to look like it was from a human. The reply to me said that they couldn't diagnose an issue with the device because it seemed I hadn't connected the device to the WiFi network. Please connect the device to WiFi and contact them again. I gave up. Bought another device from a competing brand. Result therefore is that company with it's artificial stupidity has lost a customer.

[formoverfunction]

New user bot challenge, does not compute...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyH33DXusTY

I'd claim to be Dr Smith everytime, not a bubbleheaded booby.

[Mike4]

I still feel they should identify themselves as AIs though rather than masquerade as humans.

Here, you put your finger on my unease. I feel there is a deceit happening when a bot posts masquerading as a human, and it could and should be called out.

If a bot identifies itself as a bot when posting, I see no problem. For now anyway!

[BullDog]

I still feel they should identify themselves as AIs though rather than masquerade as humans.

Here, you put your finger on my unease. I feel there is a deceit happening when a bot posts masquerading as a human, and it could and should be called out.

If a bot identifies itself as a bot when posting, I see no problem. For now anyway!

Unfortunately I doubt that's going to happen. It would defeat the purpose of having the AI bots because users would know they're not talking to a human. If I were training an AI bot, I'd want the bot to be talking to humans who don't know they're talking to a bot.

[UncleEbenezer]

Much more of a problem if a number of bots start threads and have conversations amongst themselves without any human interaction? That's the logical end point, is it not?

Not really. It's a milestone that was passed, I think, sometime in the 1980s.

[bungeejumper]

Anybody remember Eliza? An early prototype of a chatbot, from nearly 60 years ago. The program posed as a psychotherapist, engaging its human interlocutors in conversations in which it would pick up on certain things they said and ask them further questions, which would lead to more questions, and so on.

I remember tinkering with a cut-down Eliza routine on my Camputers Lynx microcomputer (1983), using BASIC. It seemed like a lot of fun at the time. Most humans would notice pretty quickly that Eliza's questions were falling into repetitive loops like some sort of Groundhog Day, but it was surprising how many people continued to think that it/she was a human. If you got really fed up and swore at Eliza, she would reprimand you for your bad language!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA

ELIZA's creator, Weizenbaum, intended the program as a method to explore communication between humans and machines. He was surprised and shocked that individuals, including Weizenbaum's secretary, attributed human-like feelings to the computer program.

Many academics believed that the program would be able to positively influence the lives of many people, particularly those with psychological issues, and that it could aid doctors working on such patients' treatment. While ELIZA was capable of engaging in discourse, it could not converse with true understanding. However, many early users were convinced of ELIZA's intelligence and understanding, despite Weizenbaum's insistence to the contrary.

Happy days.

BJ

[mc2fool]

Anybody remember Eliza? An early prototype of a chatbot, from nearly 60 years ago. The program posed as a psychotherapist, engaging its human interlocutors in conversations in which it would pick up on certain things they said and ask them further questions, which would lead to more questions, and so on.

I remember tinkering with a cut-down Eliza routine on my Camputers Lynx microcomputer (1983), using BASIC. It seemed like a lot of fun at the time. Most humans would notice pretty quickly that Eliza's questions were falling into repetitive loops like some sort of Groundhog Day, but it was surprising how many people continued to think that it/she was a human. If you got really fed up and swore at Eliza, she would reprimand you for your bad language!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA

ELIZA's creator, Weizenbaum, intended the program as a method to explore communication between humans and machines. He was surprised and shocked that individuals, including Weizenbaum's secretary, attributed human-like feelings to the computer program.

Many academics believed that the program would be able to positively influence the lives of many people, particularly those with psychological issues, and that it could aid doctors working on such patients' treatment. While ELIZA was capable of engaging in discourse, it could not converse with true understanding. However, many early users were convinced of ELIZA's intelligence and understanding, despite Weizenbaum's insistence to the contrary.

Happy days.

BJ

Yeah, I first came across it in, IIRC, 1973. I can't imagine anyone thinking it was a person, but then there's nowt as queer as folk.

There's a number of Eliza emulators on the web. Here's one. I don't know how faithful it is to the original but on just a cursory test it's much as I remember from those decades ago. https://psych.fullerton.edu/mbirnbaum/psych101/Eliza.htm

[UncleEbenezer]

Yeah, I first came across it in, IIRC, 1973. I can't imagine anyone thinking it was a person, but then there's nowt as queer as folk.

You don't have to think it's a person to anthropomorphise it.

After all, the first anthropomorphism was to give her a human name.

[Mike4]

Yeah, I first came across it in, IIRC, 1973. I can't imagine anyone thinking it was a person, but then there's nowt as queer as folk.

You don't have to think it's a person to anthropomorphise it.

After all, the first anthropomorphism was to give her a human name.

And before the name, appears to have been the assigning of a gender!

[bungeejumper]

Yeah, I first came across it in, IIRC, 1973. I can't imagine anyone thinking it was a person, but then there's nowt as queer as folk.

You don't have to think it's a person to anthropomorphise it.

After all, the first anthropomorphism was to give her a human name.

From Eliza Doolittle, of course. Who was trained by her mentor to behave like a lady. Did it succeed? Not bl00dy likely!

BJ

[clissold345]

I agree with you. There's little intelligence in AI presently. The recent "customer service" interactions I've had with obvious AI bots ranks firmly as artificial stupidity.

There is intelligence in AI in some areas. Eg I use the Vim editor. If I don't know how to do something, I could read the help and I'll probably find the answer in 15 minutes or so. But so far (about six times) the Bing chatbot has always given me a correct answer immediately.

[BullDog]

I agree with you. There's little intelligence in AI presently. The recent "customer service" interactions I've had with obvious AI bots ranks firmly as artificial stupidity.

There is intelligence in AI in some areas. Eg I use the Vim editor. If I don't know how to do something, I could read the help and I'll probably find the answer in 15 minutes or so. But so far (about six times) the Bing chatbot has always given me a correct answer immediately.

I have asked ChatGPT some technical questions I would ask of an engineer in an interview. The answers are fine. They're learned from articles on the internet. I think there's a world of difference recognising patterns of words and giving a copied text book response and actually being intelligent.

[mc2fool]

You don't have to think it's a person to anthropomorphise it.

After all, the first anthropomorphism was to give her a human name.

And before the name, appears to have been the assigning of a gender!

People give human names to all sorts of things, and sometimes assign gender too (e.g. ships, storms), but nobody thinks they're a person.

Anthropomorphising is not the same as believing that it actually is a real human, which is the claim that's been made of some (not by BJ per se, he's just repeating a long standing claim about Eliza).

[servodude]

There is intelligence in AI in some areas. Eg I use the Vim editor. If I don't know how to do something, I could read the help and I'll probably find the answer in 15 minutes or so. But so far (about six times) the Bing chatbot has always given me a correct answer immediately.

I have asked ChatGPT some technical questions I would ask of an engineer in an interview. The answers are fine. They're learned from articles on the internet. I think there's a world of difference recognising patterns of words and giving a copied text book response and actually being intelligent.

It also understandably makes the same mistakes that are common among the average of the stuff on the internet
- or it did when I gave it a couple of interview questions I like to use to weed out the bluffers
Interesting it could eventually be convinced of its error and would remain trained for the rest of the session (unlike your average bluffer who tends to die on the hill)

[bungeejumper]

I have asked ChatGPT some technical questions I would ask of an engineer in an interview. The answers are fine. They're learned from articles on the internet. I think there's a world of difference recognising patterns of words and giving a copied text book response and actually being intelligent.

I understand that chatbots also have a habit of making stuff up! Which would seem to underline the need for caution WRT their outpourings, especially in legal or reference contexts. And especially not in science.

I'm not sufficiently well up on this topic to have a worthwhile level of understanding, but I could imagine that these bots are designed to look for "bridges" whenever they find two quoted facts that don't quite meet in the middle. If we, as humans, found such a gap, we might be tempted to theorise about such a "bridge". Indeed, you couldn't read an Agatha Christie without doing exactly that!

We've seen that AI imaging programs invent people with six fingers (or two right hands!) because they're intent on combining two or more pictures into one. Maybe the same principle applies with chatbots? Gene splicing will never be the same again.

BJ

[clissold345]

I have asked ChatGPT some technical questions I would ask of an engineer in an interview. The answers are fine. They're learned from articles on the internet. I think there's a world of difference recognising patterns of words and giving a copied text book response and actually being intelligent.

Yes it doesn't understand the question and it doesn't understand the answer it gives. In the case of my Vim questions the Bing chatbot's answers are as good as those of a human Vim expert. It's not simply quoting from the manual. I think it somehow weaves together answers to similar questions, to create a word pattern that it "thinks" is the correct answer.

[csearle]

n the case of my Vim questions the Bing chatbot's answers are as good as those of a human Vim expert. It's not simply quoting from the manual. I think it somehow weaves together answers to similar questions, to create a word pattern that it "thinks" is the correct answer.

Yes well that would be a very human way of doing things. If someone asks me a question and I don't quite understand exactly what they are after, then either I seek clarification or, as best I can, I guess what they want and give some kind of answer that attempts to clarify that. If on the other hand they ask a clear question and I feel I know the answer then I just give that. Very AI like.C.