B2 – Upper Intermediate
Social media is an important tool for learning about current events and information. However, fake social media accounts called ‘bots’ have been used to try to influence public opinion even politics—and it is not always for the better.
We have been deceived by a computer-generated bot at one point or another. How do bots play a role in influencing public opinion to help spread awareness about a particular issue the person/group who created them cares about.
Watch the video to know more about how bots are affecting social activism and politics.
Discussion Questions:
- What are political and activist bots?
- What is your take on using big data technology to help manipulate election results?
- What are ways to know you are engaged in a discourse with a bot?
- How can bots be of benefit to and risk for us?
- Anyone can easily create a Twitter bot nowadays. Ainsley O’Connell believes this is a great and empowering thing for the electorate in enabling them to magnify their voices. What are your thoughts on this?
One reply on “Social and Political Bots”
1. What are political and activist bots?
This kind of bots are bots trained to create challenges and conflicts on internet and it’s a hard challenge like the microsoft AI that was trained using internet and twitter information.
2. What is your take on using big data technology to help manipulate election results?
I have a lot of friends that works on it, and it’s a really interesting job because the same companny develop the bots for multiple politics.
3. What are ways to know you are engaged in a discourse with a bot?
Now is really difficult and depend of the training of the ai .
4. How can bots be of benefit to and risk for us?
I think that the benefit is that they can increase the efficiency in some jobs but this is the risk at the same time because the people can loose their jobs.
5. Anyone can easily create a Twitter bot nowadays. Ainsley O’Connell believes this is a great and empowering thing for the electorate in enabling them to magnify their voices. What are your thoughts on this?
Now is easier with ChatGPT , and the situation is more complicated.