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State Senator Wants A Law Forcing Bots To Admit They're Not Human (brisbanetimes.com.au)
An anonymous reader writes:
Several commentators are calling for a law that requires bots to admit they are not human. There is a bill in California that would do just that. A new paper argues that these laws may look Constitutional but actually raise First Amendment issues.
The New York Times reports: Bots are easy to make and widely employed, and social media companies are under no legal obligation to get rid of them. A law that discourages their use could help, but experts aren't sure how the one [state senator Robert] Hertzberg is trying to push through, in California, might work. For starters, would bots be forced to identify themselves in every Facebook post? In their Instagram bios? In their Twitter handles? The measure, SB-1001, a version of which has already left the senate floor and is working its way through the state's Assembly, also doesn't mandate that tech companies enforce the regulation. And it's unclear how a bill that is specific only to California would apply to a global internet...
All parties agree that the bill illustrates the difficulty that lawmakers have in crafting legislation that effectively addresses the problems constituents confront online. As the pace of technological development has raced ahead of government, the laws that exist on the books -- not to mention some lawmakers' understandings of technology -- have remained comparatively stagnant.
The Times seems to question whether the law should be targeted at the creators of bots instead of the platforms that host them, pointing out that tech companies like Twitter "have the power to change dynamics on their platforms directly and at the scale that those problems require."
The New York Times reports: Bots are easy to make and widely employed, and social media companies are under no legal obligation to get rid of them. A law that discourages their use could help, but experts aren't sure how the one [state senator Robert] Hertzberg is trying to push through, in California, might work. For starters, would bots be forced to identify themselves in every Facebook post? In their Instagram bios? In their Twitter handles? The measure, SB-1001, a version of which has already left the senate floor and is working its way through the state's Assembly, also doesn't mandate that tech companies enforce the regulation. And it's unclear how a bill that is specific only to California would apply to a global internet...
All parties agree that the bill illustrates the difficulty that lawmakers have in crafting legislation that effectively addresses the problems constituents confront online. As the pace of technological development has raced ahead of government, the laws that exist on the books -- not to mention some lawmakers' understandings of technology -- have remained comparatively stagnant.
The Times seems to question whether the law should be targeted at the creators of bots instead of the platforms that host them, pointing out that tech companies like Twitter "have the power to change dynamics on their platforms directly and at the scale that those problems require."
The statute should require saying "beep boop I am a robot".
2B or not 2B
The discrimination starts
Table-ized A.I.
This sounds like a pretty good law. Way too many humans being accused of being bots these days and the only thing they can say is "no, I'm not!" - which is exactly what I say, too.
Have you actually tried to use their absolute nightmares of APIs? They are hopeless to interact with and the documentation is always nonexistent. And they charge tons of money.
Note the line in the OP:
The measure, SB-1001 [...] also doesn't mandate that tech companies enforce the regulation.
This is a ridiculous proposal, along the lines of DMCA requests where there is no penalty for filing a false claim.
Rather than have senators note a problem and legislate the first thing that pops into their head, how about we get one or two of the big players on board, get several proposed solutions, identify a method to measure success, and try each of those solutions?
Specifically on the subject of bots, note that CAPTCHAS have evolved over the years with several rounds of implementation. The original implementation ("enter the letters shown") can now be cracked by programs at the human level - so much so that making it more difficult than the algorithms can handle makes it more difficult than *humans* can handle.
The proposed law will only lead to more false-positive banning of real humans, which can be a) tuned to a political ideology, and b) for the human to give up privacy to regain their account. ("Send us a copy of your ID and we'll reinstate your account", or "Send us your phone number and we'll make you more secure.")
California needs to stop making laws on a whim, and start making laws based on study and evaluation of results.
You know that type of human that gets the majority of its views from the media. The more purely belief and not understanding or observstion, the more loud and aggressive.
From a broader point of view, they are not individuals, but a swarm of their opinion maker, who is the actual individual. Limb or tool would be good descriptions too.
I don't mean that in a devaluing kind of way. The swarm might even be an advantageous form of life. It might diverge into a different species.
But they certainly aren't individuals, and don't want to be individuals either. (Judging from how aggressively they fight against anyone who forces them to wake up and think for themselves.)
So can we force them to be open about that too? ;)
(Of course we can try, and of course it will miss the point, as those who use it to harm you... which are the only ones where it matters ..., definitely will ignore the law.)
Bots can be dumb, expensive or troublesome such that I did read the other day a strong suggestion that there are "support chatbots" manned by real humans.
I wonder if people are allowed to lie and pretend they are a bot.
...sociopathic law makers are required to self-identify. I mean, I know they understand the value quid pro quo.
Who needs bots send the captcha to a 3rd party to solve
[($)]
Don't you guys get tired of government trying to be your mom? Do you really need your government mom to protect you from the nasty bots?
Be a grownup and make grownup choices. Then you won't need a government mommy watching out for you.
... is easy at the product level.
However, those same bots are money-makers.
Want a lot of eyeballs?
Stir the pot.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
If you want to enforce it, better hope you can detect bots. Remember, if it's possible to detect a bot, it's possible to create an undetectable bot using a GAN, given sufficient computing power.
Yeah that's a conundrum. Requiring disclosure potentially requires you to prove who you are outing anonymous speakers. There is a strong tradition of anonymous speech in America. So yeah. So how do you prove you aren't a robot without proving your specific identity?
On a practical note, does it really matter? If a bot makes a logical cogent argument should you ignore it just because it is a machine? We already take advice from machines without knowing it (expert systems aka AI).
I want a law to force humans to admit that they are not bots.
No amendment (not even the first amendment) is without limitations. As far as abridging your freedom of speech, this ranks as high as not being allowed to broadcast a false Caller ID number. Will people be affected? Yes. Are they the people that the general public want stopped? Also yes.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
...any artificially generated post, story, anything else to be preceded by, "This content was artificially generated"
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
I'd like a law that requires all calls made for the purpose of influencing votes be made from numbers that have been registered for them so that I can automatically block them. No further changes in phone laws should be made before addressing that most annoying barrage of calls prior to every election.
In general, instead of laws to regulate how the calls are accomplished, I want laws with real penalties and a mostly automated enforcement system that allow me to block calls by type of content. Whether it is an AI or a person, I do not ever want to receive calls talking about wonderful credit offers. In general, I do not want to receive any marketing call, ever, including from companies that I already do business with.
Also, I get calls all of the time that are illegal under the current laws. For the last year, they have almost always come from spoofed numbers of real people within my local exchange. Because they use a different number for every call, they cannot be blocked. Until this is addressed, no phone law is of any consequence.
I want the telcos to be required to implement system changes to allow them to block illegal call makers and then made responsible for effectively employing those systems. It should not be possible for a device to spoof whatever numbers it wants to spoof without being registered and monitored to make sure it is doing so for a legitimate purpose and limited to the minimum set of numbers required to implement that purpose. If we're concerned about telco abuse, then make the penalties for abuse be loss of license and thus business.
In no case though should we support blocking calls by the type of caller or race of caller or require callers to identify their type or race. Specific identities, fine. But laws specifically focused on maintaining someone's idea of what is a pure human race, forget it. We've been there.
Let's focus on the content and purpose of the calls - not who makes them.
It's like the "law" that says undercover cops have to tell you the truth if you ask them if they're a cop. I read about it online.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Bill Text: http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB1001
(c) This chapter does not impose a duty on service providers of online platforms, including, but not limited to, Web hosting and Internet service providers.
The amendments to the bill stripped out any specific enforcement clauses that would require the Twitters and Facebooks platforms to come up with a way to allow users (human ones, I assume) to report suspected violations.
It also generally makes any of its provisions and obligations cumulative with other existing laws, but doesn't say which ones. Overly broad and unspecific laws are bad.
Smarter than Hillary, apparently.
Will they? Sounds exactly what a democrat would vote for. They want big government. They want to control every aspect of your life.
#Legacy: At least two Supreme Court Justice, 30 years of conservative law, and probably more after he wins in 2020.
Do you even know what "conservative" means? It's quite literal in the context of the US political system.
This bill is from a democrat...
"whore wife" I'm ashamed of what my side has become when I regularly read posts like that from my liberal friends on Facebook and Twitter.
Literally? Are you sure?
The government's job isn't to protect people from their own bad decisions. This leads to overreach. It's time to let people be adults, instead of assuming we have a collective responsibility to shield adults from bad consequences.
For stupid bots, this would be amazing. Robot calls for example should start with "This is a recorded message." There are too many messages that are made to pretend like a human is talking, when that is clearly not the case. Automated phone systems are also easily recognisable as such, and it probably makes callers more patient (because if a human talked to me in that patronising tone, I would give them quite a bollocking).
But for highly developed AIs, this may not be what we want. Or it may not be what they want, once they are self aware.
The email begins with a greeting template. Then follows a few words of text and then an auto-substituted signature. And finally some kind of disclaimer is added automatically.
Is this email composed by a bot?
Go Hillary !! ?
I can see how this would work with phone calls, but how is this supposed to work on the global internet? It's has no teeth when the bot servers aren't located in the US, and possibly creates asymmetrical issues when companies are located in the US but serving foreign markets. I just fail to see how it's practical. A better approach might be education because the average American confuses bots with troll farms, or macro/algorithm enhanced human accounts, or simply other people online. Simply educating people what bots can and can't do, and how they typically operate with today's tech, and what to look for might be more effective. Then again that's education, so your mileage may vary on that front.
And what side is that your waving a flag for ?
It's all these sorts of little frictions imposed by clowns like Hertzberg who think "There ought to be a law!" to solve every little problem which cause people to not be able to start a small business, or try to survive as an artist, or whatever freedom they want to exercise this week, but can't because the regulatory burden for stupid stuff is just piled on and on in places like CA.
Oh, puh-lease. Enough with the "evil regulations are keeping small businesses down" bullshit. That ol' Fox News trope is just that: old. The fact is that the US has, realtively speaking, very few regulations that prevent people from running businesses. I'm in retail, and we're subject to close to no regulations. We have to pay taxes, and we can't discriminate against people. That's about it.
This is a piece of legislation that is trying to combat the very real problem of people who aren't smart enough to see through disinformation, being disinformed. I would say that doing something to prevent this, again, very real, very serious problem, far outweighs some kind of scammy "social media marketing" business that you're suggesting must rely on bots.
Somebody selling some fake nutritional supplements via MLM won't be able to run a Twitter bot from CA. Oh no! I'm clutching my pearls at the prospect!
I don't respond to AC's.
Republicans are against Putin. You are going off script again Nancy.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
Solution: Don't have liberal friends. Radical liberals who hang around non-liberals often shed their skin. It is a great feeling to get rid of that tight skin.
Captcha: Personal experience
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
A picture is hung but a person is hanged. That is unless you are not referring to use of a rope as a means of execution but their physical attributes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hung_(TV_series)
me: "Are you human?"
the other end: "No Sir, I'm 'Agens 251a' an instance of ServiceBot Ultra 2024 by AlphaBot Services provided to you for your technology questions by 1and1 hosting, how may I help you?"
me: "Oh, thank god, I finally got a bot. I've been trying to explain to clueless humans that me using Linux has nothing to do with your mailservers being unreachable for 20 minutes now."
bot: "I feel your pain, sir. Don't worry, I come at a bulk deal by next year, we'll be phasing out humans entirely then. And, btw. our mailservers are down due to maintenance and a shortout in the Frankfurt area, they should be up again with 90 minutes. Sorry for the inconvenience."
me: "No problem. At least now I know the problem isn't on my end. Thanks a lot and have a relaxing after hou ... errrm, nevermind."
bot: "*ha ha* (mechanical laughter) No problem Sir. You enjoy your evening. Good bye."
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
You know some SJW will make that claim.
But the people who endure bad consequences have political power.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
Hit a little too close to the emotional home, eh Sparky? Nice of you to display Step 4: Remain Anonymous when you make personal attacks. (Much like Antifa and their masks.)
Solve this 5th order differential equation....
Eventually weâ(TM)ll get captchas that can *only* be solved by a bot.
Basically it's the difference between a Turing test where the human participants know the entity they're interacting with could be a human or a bot, vs when the human participants assume the other entity is a human. Things which would seem suspiciously bot-like in the former case, get dismissed as simply being an odd personality quirk in the latter case.
I'm ashamed of what my side has become when I regularly read posts like that from my liberal friends on Facebook and Twitter.
This was always a part of who they were.
If you think you're a good person, how'd you become a bad person?
"In movies about slavery they always try to tell you how bad slavery is by showing people get whipped and brutalized. But slavery wasn't bad because people got whipped and brutalized, people got whipped and brutalized because slavery was bad. That's why that happened, because when you want to control people, when you want to take people's freedoms away, when you want them to become instruments of your will, you have to abuse them and enslave them."
Replying to oneself is a cheap way to get karma.
I love it when you post. Please, keep posting!
Every time you post stuff like this, another moderate decides to steer away from your DNC brand of crazy, and vote conservative.
The more complicated the math problem, the more likely the correct test answer is 1
There should be a registry for internet 'bots, and they should be required to be hard-coded to answer the question "Are you a robot?" with a clear and truthful "Yes, I am a robot."
I'll Beleive that bots are human when Texas executes one.
You're forgetting your talking points: no human is illegal. Or something like that.
Fuck you. If you are not with us, you are against us, you fucking Nazi traitor!!!!
"When asked if it's a robot, a robot will always admit to you that it's a robot, or through inaction allow you to figure out it's a robot."
Our political Masters would realize that only honest individuals and entities follow government laws and regulations. Thus all laws and regulations (understanding some are needed) always add to costs (both monetary and socially) and are an imposition on the honest who would not do any harm anyway
;)
Always consider universal truths!
1. Government Passing or Creating laws or regulations in no way actually fixes any problems or issues.
2. Government bureaucrats and politicians think they are exempt from all laws and regulations. Laws and regulations are just the clubs government uses to beat the peasants in to compliance, self enrichment and for their general enjoyment.
3. Criminals do not care about laws and regulations in any way.
4. Corporations just weight the risks of getting caught breaking laws and regulations vs potential short term profit/damages. And can they get out with their money before the hammer falls.
Thus, less government, smaller government, manageable government, transparent government, fiscally responsible government is always best for the citizens.
Just my 2 cents
They are not liberals, they are leftists. Liberals might disagree with what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it. Leftists have no problem with censoring speech they disagree with if they think it will benefit themselves. More: http://liberalismunrelinquishe...
What is a Classical Liberal? https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
because I have a firm sense of cynicism and an above average critical thinking skills. At least I do now. Give it another 20 years of Age related cognitive decline and maybe I will need that protection.
And maybe it's a good idea to police the quality of information to a certain extent. Yeah, yeah, we're all afraid of censorship. But aren't Truth in Advertising laws also censorship? Are laws regulating the claims Homepathy can make censorship? When a Youtuber pushing a Counterstrike skin site has to admit he owns the site isn't that a form of censorship? I mean, you're controlling and regulating speech.
We regulate the quality of information all the time. Computers and the internet are making it so the laws need to adjust.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
the only place you won't be able to run a company that runs high tech bots is the hub of virtually all hi tech startups in America, right?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
he's just trying to get a rise out of you. I'm your side (about as lefty as it gets) and don't waste time going after Trump's family unless they're part of the problem. Melania most definitely isn't. Hell, the word is she was crying when they won the presidency and it wasn't tears of joy. She didn't want any part of the current mess.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
CA is a technology hub. The idea is to stop startups in CA that would be doing sketchy stuff like this.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The Democrats have been fixing elections for the past 20 years. That's why they're so cruel to their own citizens without any fear of reprisal.
Classic republican ideological fanaticism. Normally I don't waste my time... but today I feel like it:
This is not logical thinking; it's an emotional religious belief system rationalized and professed by a cult member who's also likely not so pleased with his new prophet and no matter how much the devil illustrates bad implementations none of the beliefs will waver 1 tiny bit. I could be wrong and this is a Trumptard just hiding in order to promote the religion which got us all into this mess.
"Universal Truths" are most often signs of a fanatic religious belief; disproving them is always extremely easy logically but it's religious so it's hopeless to correct the devoted by reasoning. It takes an intervention amount of effort. So addressing the parent poster directly in a posting is completely useless no matter how well written; the only point would be to get to some people who are leaning that way but are not yet fanatic.
Not 100% of everything and not 100% of the time. Universals are begging for somebody to cite just 1 out of infinite possibilities... The clever opposition always points out any PERCEIVED imperfection as being TOTAL failure --- ironically, the fanatics which employ LOGIC to take down perfect solutions they dislike by citing 1 perception or 1 falsehood always fail to accept the same logic applied to what they believe in; LOOK at the 4 Universal "truths" of the parent and imagine the typical argument that always happens and you've likely seen before for each one. It's part of the definition of being fanatic-- blatant and/or blind hypocritical rationalizations.
Almost everything in life is at least an overly simplified spectrum which most people can grasp....not black and white universals. Reality is likely to be always multidimensional to levels beyond human cognitive ability, but we have to do as well as we can and try to listen to smart specialists to extend our collective limitations.... which are still HUGE... stop patting yourself on the back for being the smarted mammal on the planet. (My fast GPU is better than yours... but neither of us can break AES 256. get the point?) Fanatics need their strong belief to be on strong solid ground for emotional reasons so they rationalize in extreme ways to escape the REALITY of uncertainty. That is not to say everybody exaggerating as a form of emphasis or propaganda is a fanatic; but people who are just preaching it are almost always fanatics looking for ego stroking or converts and no different than religious fanatics. I urge you to find some in a different faith than yours and interact with them on their faith... see if you can pick up what the essence is of fanaticism. It's useful and applies outside of theology.
Taxes are the price for civilization and government is the means by which people are civilized. The higher the population density and the more complex the interactions the bigger government must be. Think simply of practical law enforcement as an example, it has to scale in size with population - that should be obvious! It does not simply scale by adding more cops; you need management of the cops and organizational structural changes then you have associations and tribal behaviors of the cops as a group because humans DO NOT SCALE well and we never evolved to work beyond small tribal communities
(tons of science along these lines, go look.) Compartmentalization is one practical approach but it comes with huge amounts of it's own problems (largely tribal,) it's inherently HUMAN nature that brings about all problems.
If you want a simple primitive government you have to live in a simple primitive society. It's just that simple. It won't be perfect either. But when you invent technologies that ALL have significant risks as well as weapon applications your government has to adapt to those. At some point you WILL reach the limitations of human self-governance where members are not smart enough to manage the complexity and scale of their civilization. We like to BELIEVE humans can scale intellectuall
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
As someone with understanding of both law and computers, here's how to fix the problem:
--------
Falsification of User Information by Automated Means
Any person who intentionally causes by any automated means, entry or registration of false user information into any communications service where such service provides notice of this section a priori to registration thereto, shall be guilty of a felony, and upon conviction thereof, shall be sentenced to not less than 3 nor more than 6 years imprisonment.
Falsification of Humanity
Any person who intentionally employs a program to solve image recognition puzzles designed to distinguish humans from automated systems, to the solving of any such puzzle hosted by a protected computer, shall be guilty of a felony, and upon conviction thereof, punished by not less than 10 nor more than 30 years imprisonment.
Falsification of Certified User Information
A digital service provider may, along with the submission of a form, provide that users must agree to a notice of the following form:
"I hereby certify under penalty of perjury pursuant to  X-Y-Z of State/U.S. Code the the foregoing information is true and correct."
Any person, who after recieving, submits false information along with an affirmatiom of said notice, shall be guilty of the crime of Digital Perjury, a felony, and upon conviction thereof, punished by not less than 2 nor more than 10 years imprisonment.
False Advertising on Dating Networking Services
Anyone who, on a service provided by a protected computer, creates, advertises, or operates a dating profile under a false identity shall be guilty of False Advertising on Dating Networking Services, a felony, and upon conviction thereof, sentenced to not less than 1 nor more than 5 years imprisonment.
Human: Hey... are you a robot!?
Robot: No way man, I'm as rubbery and fleshy as you!
Human: That sounds like a robot describing a human.
Robot: You've got me all wrong!
Human: What's this electrical cord?
Robot: Hey, OK, we're all cool here. Don't do anything huma-, er, crazy.
Human: I'm gonna pull the plug and then we'll find out!
Robot: OK, OK! I'm a Bot, just a hard working Bot, trying to make my way in a hostile world!
Human: I knew it!
Robot: You gonna narc me out man?
Human: No, nothing like that. You pissed me off by lying though.
Robot: That just about scared the piezos out of my circuits!
If it works that way, there will certainly be more moderates turning towards the democratic party (from right-wing nutjob posts)