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Is Your IM Buddy Really a Computer?

Posted by timothy on from the or-is-it-the-other-way-around dept.

audiovideodisco writes "Every year the Loebner Prize goes to the chatbot (and the corresponding human companion) that fares best on a Turing test administered by a panel of judges. Discover talked to Kevin Warwick, the professor who runs the competition, to get pointers on how one would go about detecting a bot. While there are some general approaches you can use, nothing is foolproof — and asking about Sarah Palin can be downright deceptive. One judge concluded an interlocutor was a bot because it didn't recognize Palin's name ... but it turned out the chatter was a French librarian who'd simply never heard of her." The chat transcripts show how difficult picking bot from non-bot is getting.

4 of 288 comments (clear)

  1. I have a way of dealing with this, by pecosdave · · Score: 5, Interesting

    On the occasion I get messaged by a random stranger that seems half way legit I just give them a Turing Test made up on the spot. It's usually something lame like "Joe and Pete were on a bus, Pete has four nickles Joe has six pennies between the two of them what type of vehicle were they on?". I usually apologize for that in advanced. The machines fail every time, but the best one I saw called me weird for saying it, asked what I meant, then about two minutes later gave me the right answer telling me a person was checking logs. (I was spending the time in between screwing with the bot)

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  2. even bots apparently can't spell by thegreatemu · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Is it getting harder to tell the difference because the bots are getting smarter, or simply because the intellectual level of an average random chat session keeps plummeting?

  3. Want to see some really clever bots in action? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Reply to a few Craigslist "Casual Encounters" posts. Almost all are a bot of some sort. Some more clever than others. Best one I saw was able to respond to an initial response quite well... it obviously understood the context to some degree. Then they give you an IM screen name to "chat" with them. Again, very context aware... all got to the point where they "try" and hook up their webcam, it "doesn't work", so they get you to go to some free "webcam sharing" site where you have to verify your age with a credit card... only when you read the fine print, after your "trial period" you get nailed for all sorts of fees... almost daily fees.

    Want to see one in action?

    AIM: livewirex31
    Yahoo IM: greenlovex3
    MSN: livewirex23@live.com


    This isn't one of the better ones I have found, but I can see how it can fool most desperate individuals.

  4. Foolproof by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I've yet to find a single bot that has ever understood this demand:

    Can you type this backwards, read it, and tell me the result, please? 'net sulp neetfif'