AI Netizens: The State of Agents Online

Description

Human beings are no longer the only entities posting photos, tweets, checkins and blog posts online. There are other entities moving around us: social bots, emotive shadows of real people, and specifically designed spam generators. Sometimes they're upfront about who they are, sometimes they pretend to be real people, but they're everywhere, and their number is growing. In this panel we'll review a short history of autonomous online agents, their activities, societies response, and then dive into the future of this new kind of life and what it'll mean for online interaction beyond 2013.

Questions Answered

Who is creating social bots, and why have they created them?
What have been the responses from people who have discovered these bots true natures?
What kind of capabilities do these bots have, and what capabilities will they have in the near future?
How can we use bots personally?
How do you begin to attempt to separate the wheat from the chaff when you don't know who's a person and who isn't?