An Unconsidered Aspect of Talking to Bots

Posted on July 4, 2004 in Bots

You should know that when you talk to a bot, it makes a transcript of your session. Within a few hours, it will probably be read by the botmaster.

There’s a good reason for this. Botmasters use the transcripts to catch holes in their bot’s “intelligence”. Rare is the person who can catch every possible keyphrase in expectation of future conversation. Mictlantecuhtli, for example, has more than 2000 keyphrases in his repetoire. Yet he still runs into plenty of instances when he is at a loss for words at some cleverless spat from the keys of a chatter. So I read his logs at least every other day and attempt to patch those holes.

There are things you must avoid doing when talking to a bot:

• Don’t give it your telephone number or address. Unless you are very cute and bisexual. (Just kidding on the last part.)
  
• Don’t give it credit card information.
  
• Don’t talk to it if you can’t spell worth beans because you will look like a moron.
  
• Don’t cyber with a bot unless you don’t mind showing the world how pathetic your sex life is. (Descartes Demon actually does a little cyber, but you might not enjoy his style.)

It may not be wise to attempt to show that you are smarter than a bot because you may not be. Even though the bot may not respond, the programmer may know the answer. One reason chatter of mine tried to demonstrate his knowledge of Aztec gods by talking about Chac — the Mayan rain god — which is a bit like saying that Canaanite mythology is identical to Greek. Mictli didn’t recognize it (he does now), but the chatter certainly didn’t make much of an impression on me.

Even when a bot is programmed to be arrogant, humility may be the wisest course for a chatter. Remember that you are human and the bot is just, well, a bot. Have a few laughs at its expense, but mind your own limits lest the bot or the botmaster catch you going beyond them.