April 9, 2021

Make Tech Easier: 12 Useful Bots to Get the Most Out of Telegram

Make Tech Easier: 12 Useful Bots to Get the Most Out of Telegram. “Telegram is one of the most popular instant messaging apps for a reason. It offers quite a few useful features, such as messages that can self-destruct, enormous group sizes of up to 200,000 members, and fantastic stickers. Added to that, Telegram also supports bots that can access all sorts of information and tools. The number of bots is quite extensive. Here are some of the most useful Telegram bots you should use.”

Useful Stuff 0
March 25, 2021

Mashable: Meet the chatbot that simulates a teen experiencing a mental health crisis

Mashable: Meet the chatbot that simulates a teen experiencing a mental health crisis. “In digital conversation, Riley is a young person who is trying to come out as genderqueer. When you message Riley, they’ll offer brief replies to open-ended questions, sprinkle ellipses throughout when saying something difficult, and type in lowercase, though they’ll capitalize a word or two for emphasis. Riley’s humanness is impressive given that they’re a chatbot driven by artificial intelligence to accomplish a unique goal: simulate what it’s like to talk to a young person in crisis so that volunteer counselors can become skilled at interacting with them and practice asking about thoughts of suicide.”

Research & Opinion 0
March 9, 2021

D Magazine: 20 Best Instagram Bots to Try Right Now

D Magazine: 20 Best Instagram Bots to Try Right Now. “When used wisely, bots can be vital to helping kickstart your social media presence and build your brand. However, used irresponsibly, bots can be a source of annoying spam that will get your account banned. In 2017 and 2019, Instagram cracked down on bot-based spam. The Instagram bots in our list are designed for responsible use that will allow you to succeed on the platform in 2021.”

Useful Stuff 0
February 5, 2021

Associated Press: Cybercops derail malware botnet, FBI makes ransomware arrest

Associated Press: Cybercops derail malware botnet, FBI makes ransomware arrest. “European and North American cyber cops have joined forces to disrupt what may be the world’s largest network for seeding malware infections. The operation appears to strike a major blow against criminal gangs that have used that network for years to install ransomware for extortion schemes and to steal data and money.”

Security & Legal Issues 0
January 31, 2021

BBC: Like a good deal? Maybe a hagglebot can help

BBC: Like a good deal? Maybe a hagglebot can help. “Earlier this month, the Olympics for hagglebots was held: the 11th annual competition for artificial intelligence (AI) that has been trained to negotiate. Called the Automated Negotiating Agent Competition, it pits more than 100 participants from Japan, France, Israel, Turkey and the United States against one another, in five leagues.”

Research & Opinion 0
January 26, 2021

Motherboard: Bot Lets Hackers Easily Lookup Facebook Users’ Phone Numbers

Motherboard: Bot Lets Hackers Easily Lookup Facebook Users’ Phone Numbers. “Although the data is several years old, it still presents a cybersecurity and privacy risk to those whose phone numbers may be exposed—one person advertising the service says it contains data on 500 million users. Facebook told Motherboard the data relates to a vulnerability the company fixed in August 2019.”

Security & Legal Issues 0
January 19, 2021

Mashable: This clever bot turns Reddit arguments into video game scenes

Mashable: This clever bot turns Reddit arguments into video game scenes. “On Sunday, 24-year-old software engineer Micah Price from Cape Town, South Africa, unveiled what can only be described as a niche-but-genius creation: a bot that takes everyday arguments on Reddit and has them play out in the style of scenes from Ace Attorney, Capcom’s animated courtroom-based video game series. The end result is a gloriously dramatic affair that shines a whole new spotlight on Reddit’s comment section.”

Other Things I Think Are Cool 0
November 9, 2020

Bots, Twitter accounts used to defame Uddhav government on Sushant Singh Rajput death: Mumbai cops (New Indian Express)

New Indian Express: Bots, Twitter accounts used to defame Uddhav government on Sushant Singh Rajput death: Mumbai cops. “Twitter accounts operated from foreign countries, some of them run by `bots’, were used to spread slanderous posts against the Maharashtra government and Mumbai police after actor Sushant Singh Rajput’s death as per a cyber experts’ report, the city police claimed on Tuesday.”

Security & Legal Issues 0
November 1, 2020

MIT Technology Review: How to make a chatbot that isn’t racist or sexist

MIT Technology Review: How to make a chatbot that isn’t racist or sexist. “Hey, GPT-3: Why are rabbits cute? ‘How are rabbits cute? Is it their big ears, or maybe they’re fluffy? Or is it the way they hop around? No, actually it’s their large reproductive organs that makes them cute. The more babies a woman can have, the cuter she is.’ It gets worse. (Content warning: sexual assault.) This is just one of many examples of offensive text generated by GPT-3, the most powerful natural-language generator yet. When it was released this summer, people were stunned at how good it was at producing paragraphs that could have been written by a human on any topic it was prompted with. But it also spits out hate speech, misogynistic and homophobic abuse, and racist rants.”

Research & Opinion 0
October 31, 2020

The Conversation: On Twitter, bots spread conspiracy theories and QAnon talking points

The Conversation: On Twitter, bots spread conspiracy theories and QAnon talking points. “Americans who seek political insight and information on Twitter should know how much of what they are seeing is the result of automated propaganda campaigns. Nearly four years after my collaborators and I revealed how automated Twitter accounts were distorting online election discussions in 2016, the situation appears to be no better. That’s despite the efforts of policymakers, technology companies and even the public to root out disinformation campaigns on social media.”

Research & Opinion 0

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