Ask HN: Is the word “bot” losing its meaning?

A bot is something that looks like a human or pretends to be one, but is actually a machine. That always was the meaning of it and nothing changed here. In a game a bot is software controlling the player-character and doing things, like a human player would do it. In web a bot is software visiting sites and scrapping them, like a human user would do with a browser. In social media a bot is software which creates and posts content and answers, like a human would do.

But, as everything is virtual, you have no direct way to proof whether some virtual actor is human or software. Only the quality of their actions can give you hints on it. So people go around accusing people left and right if their arguyments are to much following the protocol, and don't show signs of self-thinking by their understanding.

This on this other side has an additional meaning in form of human bots. A bot technically does not nead to be all virtual and digital, it could be also a meatbag with wetware following a guidebook, just acting out pre-definend routes. You see this usually in companies, call-centers and propaganda-jobs.

This is BTW a funny roundtrip, as the original meaning of robot was coinend for humans who do braindead labor, just following the rules, not thinking on their own. It just later moved to machines.

My son, 9, is a keen Fortnite player. He uses this word to criticize newer or less capable players. "You're a bot"

If I remember correctly, when you start playing the game, they match you against actual bots, which are pretty much unskilled. Maybe that’s why he uses that word.

How interesting. Probably because playing against bots in a multiplayer game usually sucks. If really high AI difficulty was the norm, then that wouldn't work.

They're not very skilled in a lot of games. They can be a threat to newbies, but they're easily fooled by experienced players, and can even be less accurate vs more advanced moves, involving motion.

It seems like "bot" and "drone" has the usage flipped. You don't really accuse them of being corporate drones anymore. You accuse them of being mindless bots.

No. It has the same meaning. The layman just wildly overestimates the current capabilities of AI. The average Twitter user who sincerely accuses another account of being a “russian bot” actually does think it’s some autonomous entity regurgitating propaganda.

> I can understand what they mean if they use "shill"

You kind of answered your own question. Many people never differentiate between bot and shill, instead preferring to lump those two words together. A bot is programmatic; a shill is a human agent that likes to amplify messages or spread disinformation manually. Although some shills may still use some level of automation, for example, often using several accounts at the same time using some bespoke software arrangement.

It means the bottom lane in League of legends.

Or people on reddit accusing you of being paid to post because you don't share their Uber liberal religion.

Yes. It is indeed losing its meaning.

This word has been abused to the point where it has become meaningless just like how I keep hearing the word 'literally' used in every sentence. Even worse, it's used carelessly as an insult to criticise others or used towards anyone who disagrees with them rather than describing the actual quick and automatic actions of an enity being closer to a 'robot', 'botnet' or 'aimbot-like' behaviour.

> Within the past few years, I have read a lot of comments in social media and forums where people respond with accusations of people being a "Russian bot" or "Chinese bot". I can understand what they mean if they use "shill", but using the word "bot" means to me that the original poster is an autonomous web scraper or automatic program to vigorously defend or attack something.

I think shill is a better word here to describe this. If people cannot distinguish between a real user account and a bot account then either this bot account has passed the turing test or Twitter is not doing enough to disclose actual bot accounts. They should do what Keybase did with disclosing bot accounts by signing them up differently and then tying them to the real account holder. Google ReCAPTCHA + phone verification for sign-ups solves the mass automated sign-up issue, distinguishing between real and bot accounts by linking them up with 'owners' would clear this mystery up.

> You can argue that programs like GPT-3 are generating the posts, but I think it's obvious by the flow and logic/emotional response chain between accusers and accusees that it is between real people because GPT-3 simply cannot handle pulling in knowledge of theory-building in a coherent, substantive way (at least not yet)

While it can generate very convincing sentences, it has the limitation of always accepting and responding to nonsensical input, especially in very divisive / heated discussions which is likely to be the case. The output will also be limited to data up to 2019 which it was trained on.

> My conclusion then is that real people are pushing their viewpoints still, not "bots", but I may be misunderstanding the way the term is used. Or, has "bot" changed in meaning/use? Is it just a word used to effortlessly shut down opposing viewpoints?

Exactly. This is almost exactly what this Twitter blogpost outlines about the misunderstanding of the word "bot" [0]. However, My point still stands: If the accuser cannot prove that a particular account has the properties of being a "robot" which issues replies very quickly in an automated fashion [0], then perhaps the fault is on Twitter not being able to find a way to disclose if these accounts are either a "bot or not". They should overhaul the sign-up process like the way Keybase dealt with bots: Link the bot account with a real account and disclose which real account owns that bot account.

[0] https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/bot-or-no...

Wow, thanks for showing that post on Twitter. I think I did five different Google searches on this topic and I could not find a single link because Google kept feeding me garbage search results (Off-topic: Google Search is getting really, REALLY frustrating recently to find what I want and I'm not sure if it's me or the search engine. It seems like Google Search is getting worse and worse with every passing month, like it's not specific anymore and it doesn't care what words or quotes I put in the search query).

Anyway, half that Twitter post is about platform manipulation, which I agree definitely relates to bots. However, I still have this gut feeling that platform manipulation is done almost unilaterally by swarms of people, not bots. I think the definition of the term I am familiar with is clashing with how the word is being used.

> However, My point still stands: If the accuser cannot prove that a particular account has the properties of being a "robot" which issues replies very quickly in an automated fashion [0], then perhaps the fault is on Twitter not being able to find a way to disclose if these accounts are either a "bot or not".

I really don't think it takes a genius to realize which accounts are automatons and not-automatons, because the former replies nonsensically. So, I was going to reply to your comment saying that it's not really necessary for Twitter to disclose which accounts are bots or not. However, after typing out that sentence, I realize that technologists (which I identify as) have a better understanding on what is capable by state-of-the-art automation.

Do you really think that people genuinely can't tell which social media accounts are bots or not? My emerging understanding was that "bot" was a label used to mostly maliciously insult others, but I did not consider that these people could genuinely not tell if the accounts were bots or not.

I'm not saying I could not be fooled by a program, because there is that recent instance of someone from my university claiming to have fooled Hacker News with GPT-3 [0]. Unlike a blog post or article, however, it's much easier to tell when you are having an interactive discussion and a back-and-forth of talking points. This is why I have a hard time believing that anyone actually thinks someone they are talking to is a "bot".

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24164470