On the topic of chatbots...

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crfriend
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On the topic of chatbots...

Post by crfriend »

Well, it looks like we were just late to this game (which is fine by me), but here's an interesting article: How to Tell if You're Talking to a 'Bot from the MIT Technology Review from 2018 that describes the problem. I was actually somewhat surprised that's it's taken until 2023 for the pestilence to reach these shores.

I've been somewhat hacked off about a couple of accounts in the past months, and have suspected both of being 'bots of assorted advancement and tactic, one of which is entirely reminiscent of a program that was popular in the 1960s and 1970s called ELIZA, and more recently one that has been a prolific "poster" but "whose" writing style is puerile at best and overtly bland at worst, and which at one point dumped its context stack so badly that its writer should have been rewarded with an ABEND, a core-dump on green-bar paper, and a dropped/shuffled card deck from the computing centre. Both are quite close to the profile described in the MIT article.

2018 to 2023. I'll take those five years. It was five years that I didn't have to worry about the problem -- and the waste of human time that it causes.
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Re: On the topic of chatbots...

Post by moonshadow »

It’s important not to be swayed by fake accounts or waste your time arguing with them
Thankfully, 99.9% of the web (humans and bots alike) generally ignore pretty much everything I say or comment on (save for SkirtCafe) which is why over the years, I have taken very little interest in social media in general. It is... a complete waste of my time.

Oh, and the 0.1% that do respond, usually just tell me to go find some creative way to commit suicide.

So I guess what I'm trying to say, is I don't really waste time arguing with people on the internet outside of SkirtCafe, and even here, I am on a perpetual goal to cool my jets considerably.

The old adage "how ya doin'"?...

"oh I can't complain, nobody wants to hear it anyway" rings ever so true! :)

A witty participant in the conversation would then respond with the standard...

"ahhh... wouldn't do no good no-way!"....

I miss the "old folks"...

Just for fun, I asked OpenAI the question...

"How ya doin?"

Here was its response:

As an artificial intelligence language model, I don't have emotions, but I'm functioning properly and ready to assist you with any questions or tasks you have. How may I assist you today?

I respond: "Ah, the correct answer is "can't complain, nobody wants to hear it anyway".

It responds: "I see! Well, I'm here to assist you with any questions or tasks you have. What can I help you with today?"

Wanna beat the chatbots? Just talk like your great-grandparents...
-Andrea
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crfriend
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Re: On the topic of chatbots...

Post by crfriend »

Mod hat on.

Latest analysis on posting "habits" of our primary problem chatbot.

Post sources: Many, many posts originate from data-centres at CloudFlare and Akamai. Now, I can see posts coming from Internet cafes, homes, schools, libraries, and the like, but humans don't tend to hang out in computer rooms without very good reason. Strike one.

Emotion: Chatbots cannot possibly exhibit anything like the range of human emotion, and our "problem child" has yet to exhibit anything resembling emotion, Strike two.

Blind regurgitation of external sources: Chatbots, since they lack human intelligence cannot distinguish fact from fiction, and merely paraphrase things that they have "ingested" (no point now in saying, "read") in slightly creative ways. This confuses many humans into believing that the chatbot actually has "intelligence". They do not. Full stop. "Artificial Intelligence" that's sentient remains years, if not decades, off. Until then, we're stuck with "Artificial Stupidity".

I prefer the HAL-9000 model of things. At least when one was "talking to" HAL one knew concretely he was speaking to a computer. There was no fakery or attempted deception.

In the long term, we're going to have develop a proper policy regarding chatbots "on full auto" and what to do about them. In the meantime, thus, please, to use an old-school 'Net term:
:troll:
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Re: On the topic of chatbots...

Post by ScotL »

So some of the posts here have been from bots? Can you tell us who they are?
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Re: On the topic of chatbots...

Post by Coder »

I'm going to second's Scott's question - but I guess "outing" them publicly would cause friction, but perhaps if a few of us were made aware and could "test" this or these supposed chatbot(s). It feels a bit unfair, maybe, but could be a humane way of determining whether an account is a bot for sure and whether to block the account. Just a thought, and maybe you've already done this.
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Re: On the topic of chatbots...

Post by crfriend »

This, of necessity, must be left as an exercise for the reader. Now, the average reader does not have access into the logs that I do, so detecting hits posted from data-centres isn't going to be possible, but the others -- lack of emotion, blind regurgitation with light paraphrasing, and an inability to discern fact from fiction -- will inform the reader when he's likely dealing with a 'bot, and there only going to be more of these things until we as society (and the pundits) get tired of "AI").

There are hints in the record. This one wound up on moderated status for a bit because it was "getting a bit of a 'tude" and was being rude and calling people out. We don't do that here, we keep things focussed on the concepts, not personalities. It's controller saw that it had been muzzled and "fixed" the "attitude problem".
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Re: On the topic of chatbots...

Post by ScotL »

crfriend wrote: Fri Jun 09, 2023 11:51 am This, of necessity, must be left as an exercise for the reader. Now, the average reader does not have access into the logs that I do, so detecting hits posted from data-centres isn't going to be possible, but the others -- lack of emotion, blind regurgitation with light paraphrasing, and an inability to discern fact from fiction -- will inform the reader when he's likely dealing with a 'bot, and there only going to be more of these things until we as society (and the pundits) get tired of "AI").

There are hints in the record. This one wound up on moderated status for a bit because it was "getting a bit of a 'tude" and was being rude and calling people out. We don't do that here, we keep things focussed on the concepts, not personalities. It's controller saw that it had been muzzled and "fixed" the "attitude problem".
You’re sure of this bot? Like 100% sure? I always thought you could tell a little by stilted writing.

But if so, why do you allow them to continue to post? Just let us all know who’s a bot at least. I for one would rather speak/post with other humans. I’d say, no offense to the bots, but bots don’t have feelings. But as you say, you have access to where they come from. Whatever these data-centers are.
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Re: On the topic of chatbots...

Post by bikesaurus »

I'm curious why someone would use a chatbot to engage in discussions here. What is there to even gain?

Sincerely,
Totally not a chatbot
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Re: On the topic of chatbots...

Post by crfriend »

bikesaurus wrote: Sat Jun 10, 2023 1:47 pmI'm curious why someone would use a chatbot to engage in discussions here. What is there to even gain?
There are any number of reasons ranging from childish right on through to sinister, and it's what the automaton is being used for that makes the difference, At one end of the spectrum is the high-school or college-age prankster who's out to see how many adults the 'bot can con, and at the other end we have serious research efforts into "improving" the success-rate of deception such that the algorithms can be sold for profit and the "AI" used to replace humans in some jobs (which will cause extreme grief to a great many individuals).

My personal guess is that we're watching the former, because the latter takes real work and is a very tough nut to crack; thus we wind up with a perhaps slightly tweaked version of ChatGPT acting like the sort of imbecile that horns in on every discussion at parties even though he's not aware of what the conversation is and certainly cannot add anything to it. Sadly, these are usually tolerated and result in much wasted time and loss of genuine idea-generation in conversations.

In our case here, it's the wasted human time and the disruption that makes the imbecile and the chatbot destructive.
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Re: On the topic of chatbots...

Post by ScotL »

Guess I don’t understand the bots then. Wish one could be pointed out to me to learn what I’m looking for.
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Re: On the topic of chatbots...

Post by Coder »

ScotL wrote: Sat Jun 10, 2023 3:59 pm Guess I don’t understand the bots then. Wish one could be pointed out to me to learn what I’m looking for.
The problem is, once the bot is pointed out… the human operator would then step in and sound a bit more human.
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Re: On the topic of chatbots...

Post by crfriend »

Coder wrote: Sat Jun 10, 2023 4:53 pmThe problem is, once the bot is pointed out… the human operator would then step in and sound a bit more human.
Precisely. That's why I'm trying to help the humans learn to discern the difference by themselves and simply stop interacting with the 'bot -- without giving the operator any clues as to why the 'bot isn't convincing anybody. The hope is that if it gets no "satisfaction" the operator will simply shut it down and point it elsewhere.

Face it. At the moment, AI is in its infancy, and humans need to know how to deal with it so they don't have their time wasted by it. It's commonly used now to replace call-centre workers, and is one of the reasons why the customer support of many large companies has gone through the floor -- and it's become impossible to properly plan/book a complex rail journey in the US. In forums like this, the 'bots add precisely nothing and merely pollute the signal that we're trying to generate. In our case, this has sadly become a S/N ratio concern of some significance.
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Re: On the topic of chatbots...

Post by Barleymower »

crfriend wrote: Thu Jun 08, 2023 11:17 pm Mod hat on.

Latest analysis on posting "habits" of our primary problem chatbot.

Post sources: Many, many posts originate from data-centres at CloudFlare and Akamai. Now, I can see posts coming from Internet cafes, homes, schools, libraries, and the like, but humans don't tend to hang out in computer rooms without very good reason. Strike one.

Emotion: Chatbots cannot possibly exhibit anything like the range of human emotion, and our "problem child" has yet to exhibit anything resembling emotion, Strike two.

Blind regurgitation of external sources: Chatbots, since they lack human intelligence cannot distinguish fact from fiction, and merely paraphrase things that they have "ingested" (no point now in saying, "read") in slightly creative ways. This confuses many humans into believing that the chatbot actually has "intelligence". They do not. Full stop. "Artificial Intelligence" that's sentient remains years, if not decades, off. Until then, we're stuck with "Artificial Stupidity".

I prefer the HAL-9000 model of things. At least when one was "talking to" HAL one knew concretely he was speaking to a computer. There was no fakery or attempted deception.

In the long term, we're going to have develop a proper policy regarding chatbots "on full auto" and what to do about them. In the meantime, thus, please, to use an old-school 'Net term:
:troll:
Carl are you saying "don't feed the trolls" is your way of informing us mortals that we are conversing with a bot?
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Re: On the topic of chatbots...

Post by crfriend »

Barleymower wrote: Sat Jun 10, 2023 5:22 pmCarl are you saying "don't feed the trolls" is your way of informing us mortals that we are conversing with a bot?
No, it's an exhortation to not interact with the 'bot. If the 'bot isn't getting any feedback/response from the humans, hopefully the 'bot's controller will move it elsewhere hoping for more fertile ground.

The Old-School 'Net crack of, "Don't feed the troll" was a frequently-seen response informing other users that they were dealing with a troublesome user and that that user should be essentially shunned. It was deployed very deliberately in this case, save that now we're not dealing with a human. The world is not so simple as it was a few years ago.

In this, I am not going to call out the 'bot by name as that would give the controller ammunition he does not deserve, and I do not know the controller's intent. But some generalities of 'bot behaviour should alert the astute reader that he's not dealing with a human being. And I've seen our "problem" misfire more than a few times just today. It's a shame that I need to devote so much time to this idiotic problem.
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Re: On the topic of chatbots...

Post by ScotL »

Coder wrote: Sat Jun 10, 2023 4:53 pm
ScotL wrote: Sat Jun 10, 2023 3:59 pm Guess I don’t understand the bots then. Wish one could be pointed out to me to learn what I’m looking for.
The problem is, once the bot is pointed out… the human operator would then step in and sound a bit more human.
But could they point one out to me by PM? The bot can’t read my PM correct?

Coder, you’re in the field. Do you recognize a member as a bot? Not asking you to point them out but I’m asking if you think there is such a bot regularly contributing
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