Category: Group C

Warning: Undefined array key 0 in /home/digitald/public_html/courses/wp-content/plugins/radgeek-FWP---Add-Attribution-70acf52/add-attribution-feedwordpress.php on line 363

Samuel Woolley’s “How to Think About Bots” provides fodder for important ethical conversations around culpability and digital autonomy, but also for philosophical conversations around authorship and art. I was vaguely aware that bots routinely produce articles and writing, but I always thought it would be easy to distinguish such articles as “bot writing.” But when I took the New York Times quiz that Woolley cites, “Did a Computer or a Human Write This?”, I earned a devastating 3/8 (apparently better than 8% of players). All this is to say that bots are incredibly successful at reproducing patterns of human writing and discourse. It really makes me wonder why I have spent my college education programming my brain with the rules of Strunk and White, agonizing over word choice and split infinitives, when a bot can produce similar-quality writing at a much faster pace.

Indeed, even the kind of carefully crafted speech called for in response to a tragedy may be predicted and replicated by a bot. My friend and fellow Davidson student Arianna Montero-Colbert created a bot that generates institutional responses to tragedies—you know, the kind of campus-wide email we get from CQ after a devastating shooting or police killing that makes vague calls for “unity” and “dignity” rather than any kind of coherent political action. Arianna’s bot is scary good at imitating those detached, performative responses, and the results are chilling . We might consider tragedies as occasions that call for some novel or groundbreaking commentary, but Tragedy Bot shows us that even CQ’s eloquent prose adheres to discursive patterns, tropes, and clichés that can be replicated by a bot.

 

Posted from Digital Studies by Hannah L.

Warning: Undefined array key 0 in /home/digitald/public_html/courses/wp-content/plugins/radgeek-FWP---Add-Attribution-70acf52/add-attribution-feedwordpress.php on line 363

When reading How To Think About Bots, I realized that most of the things that these bots were doing were considered to be human actions. They were buying things of the dark web and acting independently of the humans that made them. That begs the questions can bots be considered independent of their creators? Or maybe even human?

I think these are important questions to ask, especially in the age of rapid progress in AI and bot technology. It might also to be asking certain questions as to the authorship or responsibility of works of literature or actions in a certain situations in which the bot generated literature or bought drugs on the Internet. This idea of authorship relates to my DIG 220 class in which we have pondered whether or not bots should be credited as authors or the people making the bots should.

It is interesting though to explore the responsibility of the bots for buying drugs. For example, in How To Think About Bots says that even though the drugs that were bought were in ownership of the people who made the bots, “our lawyer and the Swiss Constitution say art in the public interest is allowed to be free” (Power). But isn’t this a loophole in the system? Honestly, I don’t think that this should be able to happen legally. It is a sly way to buy the 10 ecstasy pills, which are illegal, but since it was a bot, it is not illegal.

In think that these scenarios illustrate the way in which technology are becoming more and more like human beings in the way that our actions are becoming more and more similar as time passes. My question to you is: should they start to be treated as people?

 

Posted from My blog by Will M.

Warning: Undefined array key 0 in /home/digitald/public_html/courses/wp-content/plugins/radgeek-FWP---Add-Attribution-70acf52/add-attribution-feedwordpress.php on line 363

I’ll never forget my first online account. I was in fourth grade when my friends told me about AIM instant messaging. Having grown up in a house with no other kids my age in walking distance, opportunities to talk to my friends outside of school during the week were highly limited if those friends were not on my baseball team. Naturally, I loved AIM and spent hours online chatting with my friends. However, there were times when I would get online to find that none of my friends were on at that time, and that’s when I discovered Smarterchild.

Conversations with Smarterchild were interesting (especially to a bored 10-year-old) because of how human it sounded some times, and how clearly artificial it sounded most times. Either way, it usually made me laugh for a bit until I got bored and signed off. It entertained me, but never for longer than 10-15 minutes.

In his book The Industries of the Future, Alec Ross explains how the need for more eldercare in an aging population is driving Asian robotics companies to develop robots that can take care of grandma and grandpa. While such firms have successfully created robots that can perform a multitude of tasks for their dependents, developers are still struggling to create robots that can connect on an emotional level. However, as the AI that powers these robots advances, they will learn more quickly than ever, and will soon be able to mimic human emotions.

Posted from DIG101 Blog by Noah R.

Warning: Undefined array key 0 in /home/digitald/public_html/courses/wp-content/plugins/radgeek-FWP---Add-Attribution-70acf52/add-attribution-feedwordpress.php on line 363

Last week in class, we discussed internet trolling at length. Essentially, these trolls are people who engage negatively with others online just because they want to. I found similarities in how Samuel Woolley talks about bots to how we talked about trolls in class.

The first thing that made me think of this was the story of a bot sending a death threat on twitter. A twitter user made a bot that took chunks of his tweets and rearranged them into new tweets. One of these new tweets sounded a lot like a death threat, and the Dutch police came knocking. Many examples of trolling on the more malicious end of the spectrum include making death threats to a target, like in the Gamergate “shitshow” where women received violent messages from online trolls.

The article’s discussion of bots also reminded me of trolls because of the difficulty in moderation. For both, the issue of free speech comes into play, because to limit bots or trolls could also limit free speech as a consequence. As Woolley says: “rumination on bots should also work to avoid policies or perspectives that simply blacklist all bots.”

The problem with comparing bots to trolls is that bots lack the sentience that trolls possess. One of the key points of a troll is that they get a kick out of what they’re doing to other people, and that is their motivation for continuing to troll. Bots, on the other hand, don’t have feelings, and therefore can’t get satisfaction out of what they’re doing.

Can a bot be an evil troll if they’re not even aware of what they’re doing? Is sentience a critical part of being a bully? These are questions that further investigation, persecution, and revision of bots will hopefully answer.

Posted from Digital Studies 101 by Alivia

Warning: Undefined array key 0 in /home/digitald/public_html/courses/wp-content/plugins/radgeek-FWP---Add-Attribution-70acf52/add-attribution-feedwordpress.php on line 363

Trolls control the internet and wear many different masks. There are some that aim to personally attack and insult others, and there are some that look to annoy and or mildly inconvenience. I personally have been lucky enough to have never faced a “troll” whose intent was to offend me. Granted I don’t have a big persona on the internet, which makes me a pretty irrelevant target for trolls. In my experience trolls have always been a part of my experience when playing games online. I am not a huge gamer, but I dabble in the occasional game here and there. The first time I was ever trolled was when I snuck onto my brother’s computer and played the multiplayer of Halo: Combat Evolved. 2 guys were standing at the spawn just shooting everyone on their own team when they respawned. They would call you a name in the chat once you died and were being just generally annoying. It was enough to discourage me from playing games until I was older and understood what they were doing.

This to me in hindsight was frustrating but harmless, as I think most “trolls” are. Usually they are in it for a laugh, though it comes often at the price of another person’s inconvenience or mild frustration I seriously doubt most people have true malicious intent. I think that when someone has the goal of mentally hurting and or attacking someone personally that there should be another word for their actions. It is no longer the mildness of a “troll” but rather the aggression of a bully. I feel like calling the actions of those who delivered threats and attacks during “Gamergate” the ones of “trolls” really makes the whole situation too lighthearted. When I hear trolls I think of those guys who ruined my Halo game, not of misogyny and brutality. I agree with the article in that we need to reevaluate how we act online, but I think the first step comes with recognizing the impact that “trolls” and or “bullies” have on people’s lives outside the digital world.

http://ei.marketwatch.com//Multimedia/2016/07/14/Photos/NS/MW-ER478_trolli_20160714084402_NS.jpg?uuid=a4a30a84-49c0-11e6-82a4-0015c588dfa6

 

Posted from My blog by Patrick H.

Warning: Undefined array key 0 in /home/digitald/public_html/courses/wp-content/plugins/radgeek-FWP---Add-Attribution-70acf52/add-attribution-feedwordpress.php on line 363

 

Reaction gif

These are some of the most commonly used gifs in today’s worlds. Finding a counter-gif for this wasn’t too hard due to its regularity. I decided to take a different path with this though as the gif I chose as my counter is a reaction gif itself. Ironic I know, but reaction-gifs are all about context and this gif is making fun of that context. To elaborate, the internet loves trends and gifs are no exception to this. Currently Reddit is packed full of Michael Scott gifs reacting to a caption about how people’s wives are already starting to take out Christmas decorations. It is a relatable idea for many and his simple and or over-the-top reactions seem to fit it perfectly. Someone had the great idea of posting this gif of pam (image 2) with the title, MRW (my reaction when) I have no wife or girlfriend to take out the Christmas decorations early… or Christmas decorations to even take out.

Cinemagraph Gif:

These are my personal favorite out of any gif category. They are visually captivating and practically utterly useless. There is often not a very humorous meaning to the gif. It is meant as a piece of art. That is why I think Will Farrell’s gif couldn’t be more fitting. It tears down the fancy aspect of a Cinemograph. We see in the first gif a picturesque dinner table with the endlessly swirling glass of wine. In the second gif Will Farrell is in a massage chair, crying, and failing to get the wine from his swirling glass to his mouth, hilarious. In my mind that is what a “gif” should be. It should tell a story or describe a moment. The cinemagraph creates a moment, its purpose isn’t to capture a scene we can all relate to. Though I do thoroughly enjoy scrolling through these cinemagraphs I feel like they are the snobs of the gif world.

Wobble Gif:

The wobble gif can often be a parody of other gifs due to the fact that it can combine multiple gifs and or scenes into one. I picked the inception gif because it is such an iconic and frustrating scene that many people have often done some funny parodies of it. The gif loops endlessly with the top always wobbling every half second. People like to put captions such as, “wait for it.” Why you ask? Because they find it hilarious to know that you will stare at this endlessly looping gif with the expectation that something will eventually change. Even that wasn’t really a parody because the gif itself was unchanged. The second gif shows Richard Branson in a high speed car chase using some future device to help eliminate the cars in pursuit. Some creative animator realized that his device looked similar to a Gameboy so they edited in a Gameboy in place of the actual piece of technology. So now he is simply playing an intense game of Mario-Cart during what is supposed to be a suspenseful chase scene. I love this gif because it is able to totally transform the clip from serious to comical with one simple edit.

Sports Gif:

These are famous for two reasons, highlights and fails. That’s about all you get with a sports gif typically. Sometimes there is an exceptional fan reaction, but generally speaking they are, to no surprise, sports oriented. The first gif I chose is a classic play where the cowboys fail to touch the receiver down and give up a touchdown against the giants. The second gif is of Homer Simpson fading away into the bushes behind him with a cub’s shirt on and reemerging with an Indians shirt on. It is meant as a way to show the loss of faith in the losing team and the shift to the winning on. It is a funny comment and a good break from the standard sports gif. I think that as sports gifs go this is rather counter to the norm as it is breaking allegiances which is a big no go when it comes to sports.

Fandom Gif:

The nerdy brother of the gif world is the Fandom gif. I picked Game of Thrones as my topic because of its prominence in today’s culture. Even with its popularity it can be hard to use a lot of the show in gif form as people have a hard time separating a moment from the show as a whole. When I see a clip from game of thrones I remember everything else that was going on in the show and I cannot really separate it to apply it to a situation in my own life. Without that quality the gif either has to present a joke and or remind you of a classic scene. The first gif is an iconic scene for the show of the Night King, doing what the Night King does. The second is a totally different scene with a very different meaning. The gif of Tyrion is meant to make you laugh and it can be used as a reaction gif or just for a laugh. This to me makes it counter to the Fandom gif because it serves no purpose in really highlighting a moment in the show. It can be removed from all context and still manage to get a laugh or at the very least feel relatable in some way.

 

 

 

Posted from My blog by Patrick H.