On paper, “Epic RPG” is a fully fleshed-out video game. Intrepid adventurers grind out currency to purchase enchanted armaments from their local outfitters, and delve into dungeons to slay wolves, scorpions and killer robots. You fish, cut down trees, and scavenge for food, and a continuous drizzle of experience points showers your character. Every two […]
The pandemic has given rise to social media accounts operated by malicious actors who aim to sow misinformation about COVID-19. As vaccination campaigns get underway, they threaten to stymie the push toward herd immunity around the world. Misinformation about masks and injections could contribute — and have contributed — to low adoption rates and increased […]
Getty Images Black Friday and the Christmas shopping rush is here. But any great deals on a new games console or hot-ticket piece of electronics will probably be snapped up by an army of bots working for those looking to make a profit. Bots are constantly-running software programmes that have hit online retail for years. […]
For decades, science fiction has been promising a future filled with robots performing all of our mundane daily tasks for us. From Rosie the maid on The Jetsons to C-3PO in the Star Wars films, we’ve all pictured a day when we won’t have to lift a finger, but instead are surrounded by all manner […]
A few months back, we wrote about the Animal-A.I. Olympics, a then in-development competition which aimed to test top artificial intelligence agents by putting them through cognition tests designed for animals. This was intended to be open to anyone who wanted to create an A.I. they thought would be able to pass a battery of […]
Questions have been asked about whether a government petition calling for Brexit to be cancelled has been swamped by bots. Bots are automated programmes which can carry out a command thousands of times. The BBC spoke to three cyber-security experts about how likely it is that a number of the 3m signatures gathered so far […]
Contact centers will shrink by 50 percent in the next three years as routine tasks are automated by bots that offer an 8.6 percent increase in profit margin per customer. For a closer look at the long-term implications of automation, how to invest in the brave new world of work, and more, don’t miss this […]
Enlarge / Visualization of the spread through social media of an article falsely claiming 3 million illegal immigrants voted in the 2016 presidential election. Filippo Menczer Shortly after the 2016 election, newly elected President Donald Trump—peeved at losing the popular vote to Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton—falsely claimed he would have won the popular vote if […]
Enlarge / Shadow Fiend, looking shadowy and fiendish. Valve A team of computer-controlled bots took on a team of top human players in a Dota 2 show match this weekend, and the computer didn’t just beat the humans—it crushed them. We were first introduced to OpenAI’s Dota 2 bot at last year’s International, the multimillion […]