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California law banning bots from pretending to be real people without disclosure

newyorker.com

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Re: California law banning bots from pretending to be real people without disclosure

#91

Post by repolfx »

sushid wrote: post #59
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #9

That will be a fun one to interpret. So if I use autocorrect, am I a bot? What if the device makes next word suggestions and I use them? What if the device suggests the entire post, but I manually approve it? What if it suggests five separate posts and I approve them all at once?

I'm not sure why you're being so facetious. In fact, I wonder why HN always has comments like these. Lawmakers are purposefully vague because judges can decipher what the spirit of the law is and fine corporations or condone specific use cases when they are brought up in court. You can't go into court to challenge a law with hypothetical cases for a good reason. Do you want lawmakers to arbitrarily impose constraints…

You're not answering the question, you're just asserting someone will figure the answer out later and this is totally fine, even though it may not be fine for the person who thought they were doing things right and then suddenly discover they weren't.

Vagueness in law isn't a good thing. It leads to people randomly losing everything, even if they made a good faith attempt to follow the "spirit" of the law (whatever that actually is), for no better reason than lazy or incompetent law making. After all, lawmakers can easily update or change laws to reflect changing circumstances - they just prefer not to because regulating entirely new areas of life makes them feel better than the relatively boring work of updating existing laws.

Re: California law banning bots from pretending to be real people without disclosure

#92

Post by Slartie »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #50
floatingatoll wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are different by your intended use of the tool and whether the work is judged to be authored by you or by the tool, not by some specific aspect of technology or implementation. Do you intend to prepare your thoughts as written word, and you use technology to write those thoughts rapidly? Then that’s probably fine. Do you intend to prepare written works written by algorithm, software, or technology, to a degree t…

You're still not providing any meaningful distinction between the two. How do you actually distinguish between a tool-assisted human and a human-assisted tool? What's the test and where is that written in the legislation? > If you want another way to look at this problem, imagine that out society grants algorithms copyright over the works they produce with our assistance, while granting us copyright of the works we p…

> How do you actually distinguish between a tool-assisted human and a human-assisted tool? What's the test and where is that written in the legislation?

That will probably be distinguished between by a judge looking at all the facts that apply to a specific case, and making up a decision. Details such as these are the reason why there's a justice system with actual humans in it and not just some software bot calling shots by following if-then-else statements written in law documents.

Re: California law banning bots from pretending to be real people without disclosure

#93

Post by kodz4 »

jlangenauer wrote: post #69

I am reminded of Thoreau's quote: "There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root." The root of the problem is not that we have bots, but that we have normalised lying and deception as part of everyday business. We allow companies to pretend that bots are human beings, and allow call-center employees in third-world countries to pretend (even sometimes though elaborate lying) t…

Some part of the population is always going to use deception and weakness of others.

I don't think there is a "general fix". You just have to constantly show them where the boundaries are and the cost of crossing them.

Taking advantage of the expectation, that a general fix is possible, is what gets Charlatans and Panderers into power.

That said, despite the fact that it has been easier to take advantage of the weaknesses in the population faster and at scales never before, (imagine a shark, overnight, growing more efficient at hunting/doubling its kill count and hunting grounds, and that trait spreading to all sharks by the next day) that same pace causes natural born predators to bump into each other more, clashing more frequently, expending more resources/energy in empire defense.

There is no free lunch, even to the mindlessly ambitious douchebags of society. They put up an appearance that there is.

Re: California law banning bots from pretending to be real people without disclosure

#94

Post by repolfx »

I really hate this stuff. The article starts out with a paragraph of complete nonsense:

"When you ask experts how bots influence politics—that is, what specifically these bits of computer code that purport to be human can accomplish during an election—they will give you a list: bots can smear the opposition through personal attacks; they can exaggerate voters’ fears and anger by repeating short simple slogans; they can overstate popularity; they can derail conversations and draw attention to symbolic and ultimately meaningless ideas; they can spread false narratives."

Since when can bots "smear the opposition through personal attacks"? Bots that post the same stuff written by humans over and over have existed for years and are easily filtered out by spam filters - bulk spam doesn't change people's politics anyway so in practice such bots are always advertising commercial products. Bots that constantly invent new ways to smear the opposition don't yet exist, not even in the lab.

This whole story is asserting that there are programs routinely running around the internet indistinguishable from humans, making points so excellent they successfully persuade people to switch their political affiliation, which is simply false.

In the article the word "experts" is a hyperlink. I was very curious what kind of bot expert might believe these fantasies. To my total lack of surprise the link goes to a single "expert" who in fact knows nothing about AI, bots or technology in general - they're a political flak who worked for the Obama campaign and studied a PhD in "communication".

This sort of manipulative deception is exactly why so many people no longer trust the media. The New Yorker runs an article that starts by asserting a fantasy as expert-supported fact, and then cites a member of the Obama campaign who went into social science academia (i.e. a field that systematically 'discovers' things that are false), and who has no tech background or indeed any evidence of their thesis whatsoever.

My experience has been that actual experts in bots are never approached for this sort of story.

Re: California law banning bots from pretending to be real people without disclosure

#95

Post by Slartie »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #77
WAHa_06x36 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking back at half a century of horrendous bug-ridden code, and you still say this? I mean, people have tried! Ethereum created a system of contracts implemented as a programming language. Know what it led to? People losing huge amounts of their money after someone found a bug in the contract and exploited it. And after that, the money was gone. The hacker had followed the contract as written, and the money was the…

Yup. And it led into split of Ethereum into two chains, one followed by people who believed that code should be law, and other who believed the code should be law only when it works in their favour.

Which can be considered a concession of failure for the idea of "law-as-code", because apparently when the going gets tough, that concept needs to fall back to good old "law-by-humans" in order to continue being relevant and accepted by people. As a system that should not ever be in need of any fallback, that spells fundamental defeat.

Re: California law banning bots from pretending to be real people without disclosure

#96

Post by amelius »

jonnydubowsky wrote: post #56
dessant wrote: post #22

I felt stupid, but I have fallen victim to this on dpd.com while tracking a package. A helpful chat popup has appeared where I could request assistance from a support agent, but it was not disclosed that the agent is a bot. Needless to say I have spent a couple of minutes repeatedly asking a question, and even rephrasing it while being frustrated that this person does not seem to grasp my issue.

My recent experience with a credit card customer support agent might as well have been me conversing with a bot. It was actually more frustrating for both me and the agent, that they were so strictly bound to a script, with no room for their creative human brain to actually adapt their response to the unique context of my issue. When customer service is nothing more then an agent choosing from various scripted respon…

I guess the point is that they still save on average. Most calls can probably be handled using a simple script.

Re: California law banning bots from pretending to be real people without disclosure

#98

Post by perfmode »

murat124 wrote: post #75
jlangenauer wrote: post #69

I am reminded of Thoreau's quote: "There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root." The root of the problem is not that we have bots, but that we have normalised lying and deception as part of everyday business. We allow companies to pretend that bots are human beings, and allow call-center employees in third-world countries to pretend (even sometimes though elaborate lying) t…

Not disagreeing with you but I believe Thoreau said that about philanthropy. > There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve.

imho, this strengthens the OP’s use of the quote.

successful Tech founders are especially guilty of producing what they strive in vain to relieve.

Re: California law banning bots from pretending to be real people without disclosure

#99

Post by MrGilbert »

dorgo wrote: post #85
sushid wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why you're being so facetious. In fact, I wonder why HN always has comments like these. Lawmakers are purposefully vague because judges can decipher what the spirit of the law is and fine corporations or condone specific use cases when they are brought up in court. You can't go into court to challenge a law with hypothetical cases for a good reason. Do you want lawmakers to arbitrarily impose constraints…

>I wonder why HN always has comments like these It's a work related disease. A coder must consider all corner cases in advance. There is no judge to decipher the spirit of a program.

slight-OT: Yes, it is. Which is frustrating in itself. In general, I've developed a strategy:

Me: "So, what should the program do when XYZ occurs?"

Marketing: "Uhm... Dunno, haven't thought about it. I'd decide by, you know, gut instinct. We haven't thought about that yet."

Me: implements a virtual coin-flip using Random.Next()

Once you've done that, it's easier.

Re: California law banning bots from pretending to be real people without disclosure

#100

Post by m1sta_ »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #9

That will be a fun one to interpret. So if I use autocorrect, am I a bot? What if the device makes next word suggestions and I use them? What if the device suggests the entire post, but I manually approve it? What if it suggests five separate posts and I approve them all at once?

I know this is going to sound disingenuous, but are you right-leaning politically?
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