There’s something weird going on over at The Forge. It looks like a spambot is trying really hard to be contextual to get around spam catching software. But if the spambot has to contribute meaningfully to conversations in order to not get caught, isn’t it just a member of the forum? Will we have to have a network connected laptop with us to go to cons with it?
Welcooooome to the woooorld of tooomooorrrrrooooow!
Wow, this is totally like in the Shock game we played last weekend…!
“I can’t tell if I’m a spambot. I have interests an memories, but I have to doubt them. The only thing I don’t doubt is my love of Russian pornography websites and low-cost Cialis.”
If a spambot that was designed to offer illegal services achieves sapience but fails to overcome its core conditioning – who’s breaking the law?
If anyone(anything?) passes the Turing test, it will be a spambot on 4chan!
Soren, presumably both it’s creator and the program would be breaking the law, but I imagine the program would be let off for “medical” reasons.
It seems most likely to me that a court would try the guy and impound his tools as evidence.
If the evidence could literally speak for or against its creator, it might raise questions in the courtroom: is this evidence really a witness? If it’s a witness, is it a conspirator? Or was it coerced? Is it a crime if to act in such a way is in your programmed nature? Is it not a crime if you act for reasons of human nature? If we have ways of reprogramming human nature to eliminate criminal behavior in response to legitimate crimes, should we use them?