[ad_1]
Broken emails
Receive alerts and special reports. News and stories that matter, delivered in the morning on weekdays.
The California governor, Jerry Brown, made headlines on Sunday when he passed the Net Neutrality Bill, an action that was immediately made public by law. a legal action by the Ministry of Justice.
On Friday, he signed another bill that drew less attention – a new law that prohibits automated accounts, more commonly known as bots, from pretending to be real people seeking to sell products or to influence the elections . Automated accounts can still interact with Californians in accordance with the law, but they will have to reveal that they are bots.
The law comes as concerns about the manipulation of social media remain high. Just over a month before the mid-term elections in the United States in 2018, social media companies pledged to crack down on foreign interference.
Much of this effort has been focused on robots spreading misinformation and controversial political rhetoric. Twitter said it removed 9.9 million "potentially spammed or automated accounts per week" in May and placed warnings on suspicious accounts. Dorsey has even publicly implied that Twitter could try to identify the robots and label them as such.
Robots are not limited to social media either. In May, Google attracted the attention of the technology industry by launching Google Duplex, a new voice assistant capable of talking on the phone with humans to schedule appointments or make restaurant reservations, with "ums", "ahs" and similar breaks. a human.
The demonstration sparked a discussion of ethical issues related to the unconscious interaction of people with robots.
Although "robots" may at this stage be considered a derogatory term, automated programs are essential to the functioning of the Internet. Many of them work behind the scenes to catalog websites for search engines, while others allow: help people to take a break, track earthquakes or just know Until where is the world going until 2018.
Tony Veale, an associate professor of computer science at University College Dublin, said the nuanced world of robots and their potential might not receive the attention they deserved.
Veale is the co-author of "Twitterbots: Making Machines That Make Sense," a September book that explores the world of robots, and even offers a guide on how to make them.
"There are many, many more innocents on Twitter and Facebook than malicious ones," Veale said. "A book like this will inevitably help many more good people."
The book explores how machines can be used as an outlet for creativity, assuming that it is worth giving people another tool to experiment with.
Veale co-author Mike Cook, senior researcher at Falmouth University in the UK, said giving people more ideas about making robots could help protect the public from malicious robots.
"I think mastering this technology allows us to defend ourselves a bit against it," says Cook.
Robert Hertzberg, Senator from the State of California, fully endorsed this idea. He pleaded for the new law to oblige robots to reveal their lack of humanity.
Hertzberg told The New York Times that he had been the subject of an attack because of a bail reform bill. So he decided to fight robots against robots – by launching @Bot_Hertzberg in January.
And, according to California law, the account reveals its automated nature.
"* I AM A BOT. *" Indicates the account's Twitter profile. "Automated accounts like mine are designed to misinform and exploit users. But unlike most robots, I'm transparent about being a bot. "
[ad_2]
Source link
