Technology has brought us a lot of wonderful
things, such as ordering a pizza with a single button, or receiving text alerts -- about
how close your pizza is. However, not everything is sunshine and pizzas
in the digital age. Once upon a time, you could say with confidence
that the person you were talking to is, well, an actual person. That's no longer the case as robocalls and
chatbots, computer programs designed to simulate human interaction over the phone or on the
web, are more common than ever, and getting more sophisticated every day. If you want to know whether the person on
the other end is flesh and blood, or silicon and circuits, you'll want to hear about these
five tricks for catching chatbots in the act. Number One: The Account is too Active
While you're poking around for your favorite game, Pizza Master Pro, you notice one account
seems to be posting quite a bit of content in rapid succession. While it's understandable that people would
be enthused about the best pizza simulator, twenty posts a day seems like a bit much. They have to sleep at some point, right? Not if they’re a bot. They can post all night long. My point is that since bots don’t need to
sleep, they can spend all night spamming your feed with suspiciously similar posts. So, if one account is posting comments 24/7
365, you've probably got a bot on your hands. While we’re on the subject of samey posts… Number Two: Suspiciously Similar Comments
Not everyone has a direct line to the muses, so maybe you shouldn’t be too harsh on people
for leaning on the same old jokes. It might get annoying, but it doesn’t mean
they’re a machine. Now, if they’re posting the exact same comment
all the time and every single one has a link to the same website, you probably have a bot
on your hands. An annoying bot, which is the worst kind;
and I’m including the ones designed to steal your credit card numbers. Chatbots may be complicated machines, but
they’re still just machines. Creative thinking isn’t exactly their forte,
or their pommel either. And if you get that joke, you deserve a prize! Bots pick words out of comments posted by
real humans and run them through an algorithm to select the appropriate response. The complexity of the algorithms and number
of responses will vary depending on the resources available to whoever programmed it, but it
doesn't take that much programming knowledge to get a basic bot up and running. This is easier to pull off in a text-based
medium like Facebook, Reddit, or YouTube’s comment section, but it can work over the
phone too. The weakness here is that there are only so
many responses the programmer can plan for, so a similar question or statement will usually
result in an identical response. This means that if you're ever not sure what
you're dealing with, you can try asking them a series of very similar questions. If they respond with the same thing over and
over again, and don't notice you're asking slight variations on the same question, then
you've got a bot in your chat. Number Three: They Have Trouble Answering
Simple Questions Chatbots are pretty good at pulling trivia
out of thin air. They're basically just a search engine with
delusions of humanity, so it would be pretty embarrassing if a bot designed to pass as
a human can be outsmarted by Siri or Google voice. Conversations are more than just listing facts
and answering yes or no questions. They require a little bit of common sense,
a field that computers don't exactly excel at. Bots often don't know what to do with jokes
and have no understanding of context or the nuance of social interaction. Sarcasm? What’s that? You can take advantage of this failing through
a trick known as “Two Step Dissociation.” This is where you ask the potential bot a
question, then follow it up with a second question that only makes sense in the context
of the first. When explaining this concept, digital marketing
expert Anthony Helmstetter uses the following example. The human caller asks the bot where it’s
located, and it replies, "Seattle." The caller then asks, “What’s the weather
like outside?” and the machine replies, “Can you please rephrase the question?” A human would understand that the caller was
asking what the weather was like in Seattle, but the bot just can’t connect those dots. If your customer service rep can’t make
a simple connection like that, it probably isn’t a real person on the other end. On the subject of things that aren’t real
people, why doesn’t Google’s voice have a name? Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft all named their
digital assistants, so why not Google? Don’t feel bad, Google voice, I think you’re
fantastic. What about you, BrightSider? Tell me in the comments if you prefer Siri,
Alexa, Google, or Cortana when you need to look something up, but don’t want to get
your hands dirty on that filthy keyboard. Number Four: Sparse Profiles
Do you remember the first time you logged into Facebook? They wanted you to set a profile picture,
a background picture, enter a birthday, job, school, hometown, relationship status, and
plenty of other things. While not everyone fills out every single
field, most people will at least cover the basics. Just enough for people to get an idea of who
you are beyond the pictures of cats, eggs, and cats in egg cartons. That’s a real thing, by the way. Since humans are big on oversharing, you can
probably guess that bots aren’t that into it. Most websites that allow users to leave public
comments require them to register an account. Not every site expects a full bio, and not
every person is willing to give it, but if the account is nothing more than a name and
placeholder profile pic than you might have a bot on your hands. While this might not be conclusive evidence,
it’s a pretty big red flag. If you notice a whole bunch of these barren
accounts, that's a much bigger red flag. In that case, you don’t just have one bot,
you have an infestation. You see, the automatic responses bots give
out tend to be chock full of keywords. Those keywords attract other bots, whose responses
attract more bots. This can lead to a feedback loop of automatic
responses to automatic responses. Even when things don’t escalate that far,
bots still love to follow each other around. Particularly nefarious programmers will go
as far as creating bots specifically to upvote the comments of their other bots. So, if you ever see a bunch of incomplete
accounts with obviously randomly generated names are tagging each other’s Tweets, you’ve
got yourself a flock of bots. Number Five: Clumsy Attempts to Steer the
Conversation People don't just go around programming bots
for the sake of it. They serve a purpose. Some are ads, some are scams, and some are
there because even trolls need to get their beauty sleep. As a result, bots have something of a one-track
mind and will continuously try to twist the conversation around to whatever their programmer
wants it to be. This can overlap with its inability to read
the room when they try to warp the discourse in nonsensical ways. What does laser hair removal have to do with
the game review you just read? Nothing. Is there a paragraph-length comment raving
about it? You bet! Users and moderators have gotten pretty good
at spotting the clumsier attempts, but more sophisticated bots can slip under the radar
as long as no one looks too closely. Still, a bot is a bot, and even when the programmers
try to be subtle, they tend to fixate on one topic exclusively. While a clever bot might be able to slip past
the casual observer, get them talking, and it’s not long before their limitations start
to show. Hearing about all this, you might get the
impression that all chatbots are bad. That isn't the case, and many serve useful
functions. Customer service bots can be frustrating,
but they can help troubleshoot problems that don't require human intervention. Robocalls can be a pain, but also serve essential
purposes, such as appointment reminders and emergency alerts. Still, there are enough sneaky robots out
there that it’s handy to know how to tell a person from a machine. Like me! Ha ha ha. Okay yes, I’m real. And hey, if you learned something new today,
then give the video a like and share it with a friend! And here are some other cool videos I think
you'll enjoy. Just click to the left or right, and stay
on the Bright Side of life!
