NTK this week savages the UK media for gullibly swallowing the story of the NannieBots, chatbots that entrap paedophiles:
The BBC, The Register, New Scientist and all fell over
themselves this week to promote "NannieBots", a set of
"self-replicating" bots to fight chatroom "grooming". These
bots, relays their master Jim Wightman, guard kids'
chatrooms from predators, and "behave like humans, sound
like humans… but with one massive difference – they never
sleep". The idea of handing over your kids' safety to Eliza
the Psychiatrist may not be that reassuring. But don't worry
– these bots use "neural networks" to become "the most
advanced artificial intelligence in the world"! Looking
through the transcript of a NannieBot/Human interaction in
New Scientist, maybe he's right. Certainly this "IT
consultant from Wolverhampton in the West Midlands" has
either managed the greatest step forward in Artificial
Intelligence since Marvin Minsky scraped a pass in the
Turing Test – or this was a very carefully rigged demo. In
the transcript given, NannieBot seems to be able to make
logical deductions, parse colloquial English, correctly
choose the correct moment to scan a database of UK national
holidays, comment on the relative qualities of the Robocop
series, and divine the nature of pancakes and pancake day.
We look forward to the NannieBot sweeping the board at this
year's Loebner Prize. Either that, or journalists to stop
suspending their disbelief whenever someone starts waving
a paedophile on a string.
