Regarding My ai Thread . . .

[Ulu]

Several things popped out at me as I was reading that thread.

The system quit notifying me of replies and I quickly lost track of it.

Losing track can be easy for me to do because I also belong to a welding forum, an old car forum, and a custom bicycle forum. I posted my same observations on at least one other forum.

That thread went nowhere and I thought this one was the same. (BUT was I unsubscribed there too, and if so, why? I must go check!)

I did not know about the AI advertising bot debacle here.

Coincidence?

I do not have time for fiction anymore, however I read a lot of science fiction when I was young. Most of the “cosmological” things discussed in that thread were also the subjects of various novels, or were mentioned etc.

I believe that rather than trying to destroy or deflect astroids coming dangerously close to earth, we should perhaps send them into a stable orbit, where we can mine the materials.

I gotta wonder now, Is there any novel of creative fiction successfully produced by Al? I must check on this as I don't know, but I have heard reports from a few people on its unreliability, and derivative nature. One person said that it was often mistaken but another one simply said that it creates lies when it doesn’t know the truth.

I see that more than one of these robots have popped up here at MFK.

Have you fellows detected more than two yet?

Do these things perhaps just show up for some minimal number of posts in order to gain a particular forum privilege?

I don’t think I know this place well enough to have a good handle on these things. I will start all look-out for them on my other forums though.

 

[esoxlucius]

They stick out like a sore thumb Ulu . They are extremely easy to detect once they are "in the system".

They are usually newbies, they seem to resurrect a lot of old posts too. And the biggest giveaway of their presence is that they seem to cleverly, or maybe not so cleverly in some cases, rearrange and regurgitate information that someone else has already posted earlier in the thread!! And of course the links too, oh my word, the links. The links they direct you to can be absolutely anything, nothing related to what the original thread was about.

The problem is, our system shouldn't be allowing them in in the first place, which, to me, shows a lack of something on our end, and more worryingly, once they're here what damage are they potentially doing by incorporating nonsense links in their ridiculous posts, some of these links could be damaging to the forum.

I've said it before, I'm not tech savvy enough to understand all this stuff. But I am savvy enough to say that they're a pain in the arse!

 

[esoxlucius]

Something I've just remembered, rather pertinent to this topic. A bit of a giggle for you guys actually!

When I first joined in Dec 2015, within a couple of weeks I was spam banned from the site. I don't know why, other than that koltsixx made a mistake. He apologised at the time and to get me reinstated he had to further my case up the chain of command. It was Oddball who actually got me reinstated.

Genuine mistake, no problem, it was all ironed out swiftly.

So it is evident from my experience that even back then we did have some form of a "look out" system in place. I was a genuine new member and got banned!!! So we weren't beating about the bush here, we were serious about identifying potential issues and eradicating them.

The question has got to be.....what happened, why has it slipped?

 

[jjohnwm]

I see that more than one of these robots have popped up here at MFK....Have you fellows detected more than two yet?

More than two? Are you kidding?

I wish I had thought to keep a list of those that I was 100% sure were bots; I'm sure it would number at least a dozen. The only username I specifically recall is S sixog1634 but numerous others have piped up here and there.

 

[esoxlucius]

TobyDerk , C carry2693a and B brentonwilliams are recent suspects i've come across, there were two or three more but I'd have to do some further digging. And yes, who can forget S sixog1634 . I didn't really want to mention that guy....err...bot, because John has become quite close to that dude, lol.

Now i've mentioned those bots, and tagged them, what's the chances of them all piping up telling me they're real dudes, lol.

 

[jjohnwm]

TobyDerk , C carry2693a and B brentonwilliams are recent suspects i've come across, there were two or three more but I'd have to do some further digging. And yes, who can forget S sixog1634 . I didn't really want to mention that guy....err...bot, because John has become quite close to that dude, lol.

Now i've mentioned those bots, and tagged them, what's the chances of them all piping up telling me they're real dudes, lol.

Well, as you know, Esox, I PM'd S sixog1634 just to say hi; never heard back.

AI/bots masquerading as humans? Don't need 'em or want 'em.

Real dudes who sound enough like bots to fool us? Not sure that's much better...

 

[Ulu]

I attend a bicycle forum, a welding forum, a truck forum, and a shooting forum. None of them are seeing this issue.

Maybe this is just the silly revenge of some disgruntled former fishkeeper.

 

[esoxlucius]

I attend a bicycle forum, a welding forum, a truck forum, and a shooting forum. None of them are seeing this issue.

Maybe this is just the silly revenge of some disgruntled former fishkeeper.

The other forums I'm a member of also have no issues. Could it be that all these forums have up to date anti bot systems in place and that their admin team run said systems in ship shape fashion!!

The fact is.....Admin are absent on this forum, and have been for a long time. We are being inundated by these bots which could cause us god only knows how many issues if left unchecked.

The poor mods can't do nothing about it other than pass our concerns onto these guys, but time and time and time again, nothing is being done at the very top.

At one time it was just the pathetically out of date awards system that members were concerned about. But at the end of the day the awards system is a bit of fun........whereas these bots are not!

 

[jjohnwm]

Yeah, we are joking around a lot about bots, but in truth I am concerned about both the short-term negative effects they may have upon the smooth functioning of this forum, and also the bigger-picture problems that they may pose out "in the wild", so to speak.

I belong to a couple other forums as well; one in particular is a discussion forum but is also heavily dependent upon the Equipment Exchange section, which is probably the largest of its type for online buying/selling/trading in Kanada. That site is run like a Soviet Gulag compared to the lackadaisical free-for-all we see here on MFK. Just getting into the EE section requires a specific request to be submitted and reviewed by the mods; ads are carefully monitored for content and for infractions of the numerous rules. Ads can be bumped only once weekly; any individual user can have up to two active ads per EE section at a time; nobody other than the original poster can comment in or respond to an EE ad; any individual item can appear only in one place on the whole EE; sold items must have their thread titles changed by means of a specific procedure to "Please Remove". Failure to remove your old ads results in not being able to post new ones due to the two-ad-thread limit. Users are not allowed to post any personal information in their ads, no phone numbers or email addresses; first contact must be done via Private Messaging in the forum. Most appealing of all, to me, is the Trader Rating system, which displays a numerical rating for each trader indicating his/her ratings as submitted by other traders on the forum...and the ratings system has its own set of rules governing how one can be rated.

In the discussion area, the rules covering allowable topics, personal attacks, etc. are more or less the same as they are here...but they are enforced with an iron fist.

Sound terrible? Nope; it's great! The mods and admins are very active, they do what they say they will do, and I think I have seen maybe one single solitary post which had the distinctive bot "signature style". That thread...and that poster...disappeared within an hour, never to be seen again. I never feel as though that forum is letting people...or digital/virtual imposters...get away with murder.

Here? Not so much...

 

[jjohnwm]

There may have been some kind of vital development in the "Bots of MFK" story.

I just received a typical email alert that a thread in which I had posted...in this case, it was Esox's "Sports and fitness (of lack thereof) 2022."...had received a new post, by the inimitable and almost certainly non-living TobyDerk . The post appeared in the email, and it actually quoted a previous post by that digital parasite. I chuckled; now they're actually responding not only to us and to each other...but to themselves!

So I hit the View Thread button, which took me to the thread in question...but there was no post there by the bot...and in fact, the much older post by that bot, to which it was now responding, was also gone!

The bots are eating themselves!...or maybe each other!...or maybe an MFK mod or admin has woken to the digital peril and has launched a campaign against them!?!?!?!

Will this result in an end to the Bot Plague? Sounds like a new installment in the Star Wars movie franchise, doesn't it? There was an instance recently when a bot post disappeared, practically right before my eyes, and I remember thinking at the time that thebiggerthebetter had done it; sorry, can't recall the details of that instance. And if I happened to notice it once or twice...how many times has it happened?

This is getting interesting!