This dude has written a chatbot that argues with anti-global warming people

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**sebster**

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog...s/25964/?p1=A3

Chatbot Wears Down Proponents of Anti-Science Nonsense
When he tired of arguing with climate change skeptics, one programmer wrote a chatbot to do it for him.

CHRISTOPHER MIMS 11/02/2010

Nigel Leck, a software developer by day, was tired of arguing with anti-science crackpots on Twitter. So, like any good programmer, he wrote a script to do it for him.

The result is the Twitter chatbot @AI_AGW. Its operation is fairly simple: Every five minutes, it searches twitter for several hundred set phrases that tend to correspond to any of the usual tired arguments about how global warming isn't happening or humans aren't responsible for it.

It then spits back at the twitterer who made that argument a canned response culled from a database of hundreds. The responses are matched to the argument in question -- tweets about how Neptune is warming just like the earth, for example, are met with the appropriate links to scientific sources explaining why that hardly constitutes evidence that the source of global warming on earth is a warming sun.

The database began as a simple collection of responses written by Leck himself, but these days quite a few of the rejoinders are culled from a university source whom Leck says he isn't at liberty to divulge.

Like other chatbots, lots of people on the receiving end of its tweets have no idea they're not conversing with a real human being. Some of them have arguments with the chatbot spanning dozens of tweets and many days, says Leck. That's in part because AI_AGW is smart enough to run through a list of different canned responses when an interlocutor continues to throw the same arguments at it. Leck has even programmed it to debate such esoteric topics as religion - which is where the debates humans have with the bot often wind up.

"If [the chatbot] actually argues them into a corner, it tends to be two crowds out there," says Leck. "There's the guns and God crowd, and their parting shot will be 'God created it that way' or something like that. I don't know how you answer that."

The second crowd, Leck says, are skeptics so unyielding they won't be swayed by any amount of argumentation.

Occasionally, the chatbot turns up a false positive - for example, it has a complete inability to detect sarcasm. This proved to be a problem when a record heat wave hit L.A. last summer, causing innumerable tweets of the form "It's 113 degrees outside - good thing global warming's a myth!"

Leck always apologizes when AI_AGW answers someone who isn't actually arguing about the science of climate change and then subsequently whitelists his or her account. The bot also has a kind of learning algorithm in it in that can be trained not to respond to phrases that cause false positives.

In the future, Leck would like to expand AI_AGW by giving it the ability to learn new arguments from the twitter feeds of others who debate climate skeptics - allowing it to argue into the ground an ever expanding array of anti-science tweeters who are unwilling or unable to look up the proper scientific literature themselves.

In a way, what Leck has created is a pro-active search engine: it answers twitter users who aren't even aware of their own ignorance.

It seems pretty damning that a debate can be so limited and so dependant on talking points that people could argue with a chatbot for weeks and not realise. That said, I have been driven to wonder about some people around here at times...

**Mr. Burning**

But surely, the debate would be limited by Twitters restrictions on the amount of characters used.

You are only going to put up the main fallacies if you have little space to present them.

That said, why bother arguing with anyone over twitter, just use the block button.

**sebster**

Your post was under 255 characters...

**mattyrm**

That's awesome, why has nobody made an anti science young earth one?

I think ill email the guy!

**Albatross**

mattyrm wrote:That's awesome, why has nobody made an anti science young earth one?

That's it GeneralGrog. You've been rumbled!

**Waaagh_Gonads**

Do Open-topped vehicles use the rules for fire points?

**Ed_Bodger**

Do open fire points create an open topped vehicle?

**Waaagh_Gonads**

All passengers in an open-topped vehicle may fire, measuring range and line of sight from the hull of the vehicle.

**Vindicator#9**

Hmm invoking the 'ALMIGHTY' Gwar! i see.

**WarOne**

Vindicator#9 wrote:Hmm invoking the 'ALMIGHTY' Gwar! i see.

Can Gwar! fire out of an open-topped vehicle, measuring range and LOS from the hull of the vehicle?

**Frazzled**

WarOne wrote:
Vindicator#9 wrote:Hmm invoking the 'ALMIGHTY' Gwar! i see.

Can Gwar! fire out of an open-topped vehicle, measuring range and LOS from the hull of the vehicle?

Is this a RAW or RAI GWAR and do you factor in FAQs?

**MeanGreenStompa**

WarOne wrote:
Vindicator#9 wrote:Hmm invoking the 'ALMIGHTY' Gwar! i see.

Can Gwar! fire out of an open-topped vehicle, measuring range and LOS from the hull of the vehicle?

No. But I can fire gwar out of an open-topped vehicle.

**WarOne**

Frazzled wrote:
WarOne wrote:
Vindicator#9 wrote:Hmm invoking the 'ALMIGHTY' Gwar! i see.

Can Gwar! fire out of an open-topped vehicle, measuring range and LOS from the hull of the vehicle?

Is this a RAW or RAI GWAR and do you factor in FAQs?

I think the DakkaDakka FAQ states that Gwar! must be standing up inside the vehicle in order to be able to fire. If he is sitting down, he must roll a leadership test to see if he stands first before measuring range and shooting from the hull.

And it is RAI Gwar!

Automatically Appended Next Post:

MeanGreenStompa wrote:
WarOne wrote:
Vindicator#9 wrote:Hmm invoking the 'ALMIGHTY' Gwar! i see.

Can Gwar! fire out of an open-topped vehicle, measuring range and LOS from the hull of the vehicle?

No. But I can fire gwar out of an open-topped vehicle.

Do you have to have the Gwar! Projectile Cannon to do so?

Gwar! Projectile Cannon

72"-12" Strength 11 AP 0 Super Heavy 1, D3+3 Templates (yes, flamer templates)

**Ed_Bodger**

MeanGreenStompa wrote:
WarOne wrote:
Vindicator#9 wrote:Hmm invoking the 'ALMIGHTY' Gwar! i see.

Can Gwar! fire out of an open-topped vehicle, measuring range and LOS from the hull of the vehicle?

No. But I can fire gwar out of an open-topped vehicle.

LMAO

**Major Malfunction**

...and what does LMAO mean to you?

**Tacobake**

your mom is a chat bot

**WarOne**

Tacobake wrote:your mom is a chat bot

Does she grant the ability to re-roll orders to Children Platoons if they don't understand their orders?

**Tacobake**

no but your mom does

**WarOne**

Tacobake wrote:no but your mom does

Can she give orders to non-allied Children's Platoons?

**daedalus**

Hi! I would like to learn more about chat bots. Is chat bots something to do with computers?

**Tacobake**

that's why it is called your mom

**Ed_Bodger**

The Green Git wrote:...and what does LMAO mean to you?

Laughed my ass off.

Why?

**Chibi Bodge-Battle**

Is the definition of a chat bot someone that talks out of his arse?

**Cannerus_The_Unbearable**

I need a chatbot to relate inappropriate stories. I can set it to go off when words like "homework," "allowance" and "hannah montana" are used

How awesome would it be to make a counter-arguing chatbot? Their debates would be amazing. "nuh-uh" "yeah" "nuh-uh" "yeah" "nuh-uh" "yeah"...

**RiTides**

Large targets do not benefit from shooting modifiers caused by obstacles in the way- they can, however, benefit from intervening models.

**WarOne**

RiTides wrote:Large targets do not benefit from shooting modifiers caused by obstacles in the way- they can, however, benefit from intervening models.

What happens if the model happens to be an angel or celestial being. Then does it become:

**Albatross**

Cannerus_The_Unbearable wrote:

How awesome would it be to make a counter-arguing chatbot? Their debates would be amazing. "nuh-uh" "yeah" "nuh-uh" "yeah" "nuh-uh" "yeah"...

ShumaGorath.

Also, RE: the film poster - how can a film be 'hysterical and devastating'?

**Tyyr**

Albatross wrote:Also, RE: the film poster - how can a film be 'hysterical and devastating'?

That was my question.

**HungryTaz**

Is the definition of a chat bot someone that talks out of his arse?

Please buy our hemorrhoid cream. Your arse will no longer ask for help.

**Ruckdog**

RiTides wrote:Large targets do not benefit from shooting modifiers caused by obstacles in the way- they can, however, benefit from intervening models.

I have trouble targeting large game with my bow. Do you like archery?