Bots

Are Bots an Ethical or Unethical Technology?

When I first heard that we were going to be talking about bots in class my mind immediately went to the 2005 children's film "Robots". Then as class went on and I began to understand the true power that digital intelligence has. to say the least it scared me! All I could think of was the Orwellian society in the book 1984, how members of society were watched by their government through their television screens. Call me paranoid but you always hear about how people believe the government used "Alexa" to listen to our conversations listening for "trigger words". Despite all my theories, digital intelligence is the future of society, it will create so many opportunities for people that they didn't even know was possible. In fact digital intelligence has already been helping our troops. A military device was developed called the "Robo Dog", this "dog" is suppose to carry our troops supplies and enter zones that are unsafe for our troops and it is able to withstand any terrain and is incapable of being knocked over. This is a form of digital intelligence because it is obviously not a real dog, it is a computer that is carrying the supplies for our troops. Click on the link under the "Robo Dog" to watch a video. Digital intelligence is the future and is extremely interesting and helpful but it needs to be used wisely. In class we saw examples of various "simple" twitter bots. Even just being used on a social media platform they can have an impact.

https://youtu.be/EstNBGu3_Co

Is the future of Humans really Human?

If you haven't heard of either of these two gentlemen above, I strongly urge you as a reader to check out the conversation they have about AI. Not only are my feelings about AI positive, but I truly believe that there is a positive future ahead when Humans and AI can work together symbiotically.

Recently, in class, we've been discussing the potential that AI has, and how it has already been implemented in society. While in class, we went over some simple bots that would take information from users (the  info was based on the bot's algorithms) and produce outputted material.

Although rudimentary in regards to the true capabilities of an AI, people can begin to see the simple things that an AI can be programmed to do. After going over the material we have in class, it's become evident that a discussion about AI is one that I'm quite passionate about, and I look forward to continued discussions about such topics!

Bots are a very interesting tool used by many people today and can be very useful at times. They aren't just a program in a computer that automatically does certain things. They can be found anywhere from Siri on your iPhone to a real life transformer. Google homes or "Alexas" are also a very new form of artificial intelligence that many people I know have.  In general, bots are automated programs that run on the internet and can make or program things randomly or on command from a computer bot user. For example, they have been used on Twitter to make rhyming poems from retweeting tweets from random people and put them together so that the last word on each pair of tweets rhyme. When bots make these kind of posts they are referred to as self-generating texts. In addition to this, bots can be used to create political statements.  For example, the bot NRA Tally, on twitter, tweets out the statistics of mass gun violence anytime it is committed in America. So, this technology can be constructive when used in positive ways.

Bots and Self Generating Text

The application of a bot can also be used in negative ways.  Though the aforementioned Twitter and self-generating text bots me seem harmless, both can be used in ethically questionable ways.  An example of an ethically questionable Twitter bot would be a bot network that produces fake followers.  These sorts of bots capitalize on Twitter's follow recommendation algorithms by providing a false sense of legitimacy to a particular profile.  This means that in addition to the fake followers that can retweet any tweets, there are real people that follow the profile and are influenced by what is tweeted out.  The Twitter profile now has the power to influence public opinion when these bots are used on a large scale.  Authoritarian regimes have also been known to use these social media bots in order to suppress public opinion.  The bots networks that these governments use are designed to send out so many tweets/statuses that it pushes messages sent out by opposition activists down in the media feed, decreasing the amount of users who view it.  

The question, "Are bots bad or unethical technology?", is actually a lot more complicated than it may seem. Taking a different perspective may shed light on the answer.  If you view a bot as a tool, and neither an ethical or unethical device, the question becomes more clear.  The question of ethics does not apply to the tool, it applies to the person using it.