Programmer Nigel Leck has written a program that detects arguments against climate change on Twitter, and automatically responds with appropriate information.
The climate deniers are often unaware that they’re not dealing with a human. This is just the latest in a long line of bots — computer agents designed to have conversations like a human. How do bots work, and can they fool a human into thinking they’re real people?
Linguist Daniel Midgley — or a reasonable facsimile — joins us on this week’s Talk the Talk.
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Nigel Leck’s Twitter account for AI_AGW
http://twitter.com/ai_agw
Sorry we got your name wrong, Nigel.
A couple of news articles about the AGW bot:
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/mimssbits/25964/?nlid=3722
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/11/twitter-bot-challenges-climate-change-denialism/
Links to bots that you can play with
Eliza:
http://www.manifestation.com/neurotoys/eliza.php3
Alice:
http://alice.pandorabots.com/
Cleverbot:
http://www.cleverbot.com/
And Alan Turing’s Wikipedia page, if you want to know more about him.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing
