http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/virtual-lolita-poses-as-schoolgirl-aged-14-to-trap-online-paedophiles-8700920.html

A virtual Lolita that poses as a 14-year-old schoolgirl to trap paedophiles on social network sites has been created by scientists.

The conversational agent or “chatbot” known as Negobot is a sophisticated computer program capable of fooling sexual predators into believing she is real.

Well, at least we’ll be protected from perverts who speak Spanish.

Well, I do hope Spanish police can distinguish between genuine and sarcasm better than they distinguish between sarcasm and irony.
I guess it’s only fair to use the same tactics against peadophiles as they use themselves (that’s irony).
A program created by scientists, no less, who would have thought (that’s sarcasm).

I’m so glad you pointed out the semantics behind your comments, Don. Maybe when the “lolita-bot” is done helping round up child molesters, “she” might be interested in entering the Loebner Competition.

This is actually kinda interesting.  I wish there were an English version floating online someplace where we could test it.  I’m interested in how it might “take the lead in conversations,” which isn’t always a good idea, and can sometimes result in the visitor saying, “You already asked me that.”

My fear in testing out such a thing is the possibility of having the local comstabulary come knocking on my door.

Definitely don’t need that.

Just ask it if it is wearing a dress. That should give it away

Dave Morton - Jul 12, 2013:

My fear in testing out such a thing is the possibility of having the local comstabulary come knocking on my door.

Definitely don’t need that.

I’ve never seen a case where someone was arrested for simply chatting. People never give their correct identity, age, or even gender.  I think the part involving handcuffs is when someone shows up for the rendezvous.

Just a bit of humor, Thunder. And yes, chatting is fine… MEETING (among other things) is not.

Pardon me, but this thread and that article are unbelievably ignorant and extremely politically naive. This is also a highly political topic, and not everybody subscribes to this supposedly universal political point of view.

A virtual Lolita that poses as a 14-year-old schoolgirl to trap paedophiles on social network sites has been created by scientists.

“Paedophiles” have nothing to do with 14-year-olds. “Paedo-” as a Greek prefix means “child”, therefore “paedophilia” is focused on significantly prepubescent children, up to maybe age 9-10 at *most*. I know the APA stands by an extremely distorted definition that ranges up to age 14 and conspicuously/suspiciously omits any mention or definition for ephebophilia (not even ephebophilia reaches up to age 14, so inclusion of that definition would alert the public that psychologists don’t consider such attraction abnormal!), but the APA definition is extremely scientifically inaccurate, and remember that the APA is the same association that told us for decades that homosexuality was a type of mental illness. They even tried to change their official wording about pedophilia about ten years ago in order to be scientifically defensible but the public outcry was so great that they reverted back to their old definition and issued a formal statement appease the hysterical public. It’s like being back in the 1950s again, where you don’t dare side with sexual minorities, no matter how correct you know you are. It’s all politics.

Dave Morton - Jul 12, 2013:

Maybe when the “lolita-bot” is done helping round up child molesters,

Pedophilia has nothing to do with “child molestation” or actual sexual activity any more than homosexuality has to do with actual sexual activity. It’s defined as an *attraction*, not an activity. In fact, most paedophiles *don’t* ever have sex with children.

Thunder Walk - Jul 11, 2013:

Well, at least we’ll be protected from perverts who speak Spanish.

“Pervert” an outdated, unscientific, overgeneralized, biased, and therefore meaningless term.  It’s a colloquial term that is avoided by professionals because it imparts a value judgment that is often fallacious, like the term “queer” was for used for “homosexual”. (See Katchadourian’s textbook “Fundamentals of Human Sexuality” for most of these topics.) When I was growing up, we used the word “pervert” to refer to homosexuals, and I’ve heard people apply the term to food fetishists. It merely confers a personal bias that has no scientific validity, meaning, or specificity.

What’s truly ironic and bizarre is that as I write this in a Starbucks, there is a huge gay pride celebration going on immediately across the street this weekend, two men were just holding hands in front of me even as I wrote this, yet a heterosexual who dared hold hands with an 17-year-old female in this Starbucks might well be arrested. Talk about the tables having turned on heterosexuals!

Thank you, Mark, for yet another scholarly lecture.

True enough, people aren’t always careful with the words they choose, especially when dealing with socially taboo subjects while trying to mix in a little humor.  Since you included a quote of mine, allow me to first get this out of the way.

Thunder Walk - Jul 11, 2013:

Well, at least we’ll be protected from perverts who speak Spanish.

The point of my remark had more to do with the notion that the program referred to in the linked article linked was in Spanish, and therefore limited to a certain segment of the population—a fact not disclosed in the original posting. 

As to the use of the word “perverts,” while in the scientific community, the term may be an outdated, unscientific, overgeneralized, biased term, I think it’s far from being a “meaningless” term.  It still appears in the dictionary, and while the definition might differ slightly between individuals, to paraphrase U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart in Jacobellis v. Ohio (1964) concerning obscenity (and protected speech) “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description, but I know it when I see it.”

Regardless of the terminology, I think that most people don’t want children being exposed to “bad people” even if their intent is only to take photos of them without actually having sex.

I agree with some of your political views on the topic.  I’ve always found it ironic that humans are required to ignore or refrain from admiring the beauty of another until they reach a certain age.  A flower remains lovely simply because it’s visually pleasing, regardless of the age or gender of the observer.  Still, alarms will go off and truck-loads of people brandishing pitchforks will appear at your door if you seem to be paying too much interest in youngsters of a certain age, or for that matter, if you even suggest that pedophilia is really not the problem it’s generally thought to be.

As for the computer chat program that’s intended to single out people with bad intentions,  anyone reading the chatlogs I see would understand how, despite all efforts to do otherwise, it’s easy for people to misunderstand your meaning.  For example, if the word “order” is mentioned to an ALICE clone, “Are you out of order?” or “Are your files in order?” the next response is, “What is your credit card number?”

Until I changed the reply, quite a few visitors threatened to report the bot.  It’s also common for people to suggest that my bots must be getting paid to send people to Wikipedia or a particular search engine for an answer, or to complain about advertisements which are actually reciprocal links to sites where the bot is promoted.

Thunder Walk - Jul 13, 2013:

Regardless of the terminology, I think that most people don’t want children being exposed to “bad people”

And thank you, Thunder Walk. I truly expected to log back into this forum and find everybody and their grandmother spouting something hysterical about the topic, whereupon this thread would go seriously and permanently off-topic into the topics of politics and sex. I saw exactly that happen in one forum that had nothing whatsoever to do with either topic, and finally the moderator had to lock the thread from further posts.

Mostly I agree with you. My main point is that this topic is *extremely* political in every way, people should realize that, and people using the above-mentioned terminology should be aware of the nature of the terminology they are using, and aware of the agendas of the groups with which they are implicitly siding by using such terminology. There really are a few dangerous, sick people out there who want to exploit young people, but they are quite rare, and no normal person would do that, not even within the groups that are described by such faulty terminology.

““Pervert” an outdated, unscientific, overgeneralized, biased, and therefore meaningless term. “

Great. Now Im going to have to scrap my plans for building “PERVO”

(sorry…just trying to lighten the mood)

V

Quote of the day

“Why are you wearing tha that toy on your head”
“Because if I wear it anywhere else it chafes”

On a more serious note, the algorithm they created is available online, and from a legal standpoint the first (2) sections should more have the bot named LSWTH (for lawsuit to happen) When a “target” attempts to leave the conversation and the bot attempts to “entice” them back, legally I believe that this would be considered entrapment. (so much for scientists creating real world apps)
The whole thing does raise a slew of legal ramifications that we have touched on elsewhere that will necessarily become more mainstream in human\robot interaction. For instance, would it be illegal at all to have a conversation with a robot pretending to be a human of any age? That isnt solicitation of behavour with a human minor, its solicitation with a machine. To prosecute it would have the person being prosecuted for what you believe they might do, rather than what they have done, even if the solicitation itself was a crime. I just read an interesting article about proposed “robot prostitution” (I think it was in Thailand ) which raises similar questions.

VLG

The “entrapment” issue comes up a lot in a couple of reality TV shows in the states.  One called “Bait Car” shows repeated scenarios where the police fake an argument between two people in two cars.  After the cars stop, usually in a neighborhood known for car theft problems, one driver exits their car and gets in the other and drives away, often leaving the door open, the keys in the ignition, and the motor running.  When a suspect is apprehended and complains of entrapment, the police cite the ruling that, “In criminal law, entrapment is conduct by a law enforcement agent inducing a person to commit an offense that the person would otherwise have been unlikely to commit.”

I don’t know how the whole Negobot scheme works, but at some point there would have to be human involvement—the bot must go on a sort of fishing expedition, and when it locates a possible violation, it would have to alert law enforcement to step in and take over the conversation, make arrangements to meet, and through on the handcuffs.

I suspect that my bots all get visits from law enforcement people, otherwise they wouldn’t try directing the conversations to adult matters so often, and then begin introducing their underage status in the chats.  There, again, they’re persistent, and fake misunderstanding once they’re banned, often making claims that they were just joking.

Algo
http://www.esi.uem.es/~jmgomez/papers/cisis12.pdf
V

Vincent Gilbert - Jul 14, 2013:

Algo
http://www.esi.uem.es/~jmgomez/papers/cisis12.pdf
V

Ah… Now we’re getting someplace.  Very interesting reading, thank you, Vince.

“Negobot uses the Artificial Intelligence Markup
Language (AIML) to provide the bot with the capacity of giving consistent answers and, also, the ability to be an active part in the conversation and to start
new topics or discussions about the subject’s answers.
Although the AIML structure is based on the Galaia project, which has
successfully implanted derived projects in social networks and chat systems, we edited their AIML files to adequate them to our needs. Those files can
be found at the authors’ website.”

“Our AI system’s knowledge came from the website Perverted Justice. This
website offers an extensive database of paedophile conversations with victims, used in other works. A total of 377 real conversations were chosen to
populate our database (henceforth they will be called assimilated conversations).
Besides, Perverted Justice users provide an evaluation of each conversation’s
seriousness by selecting a level of \slimyness” (e.g., dungy, revolting thing). Note
that this evaluation is given by the website’s visitors, so it may not be accurate,
but we consider that it is a proper baseline in order to compare future conversations of the chatter-bot.”

“... and character and word repetitions
are removed. Then, ‘emoticons’ are replaced and misspelled words are corrected…”

“Next, the CU is translated into English if the input language is different.
This translation is performed with Google’s Translation Service. The decision
of translating resides on the intention of normalising Negobot’s knowledge base
to English, to be able to scale the system to other languages.”

The involvement with Perverted Justice is an interesting revelation.

From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverted-Justice

“Perverted Justice’s methods are controversial, and a number of critics have labeled these actions harassment. The site additionally attracted media attention, both laudatory and critical, as a result of their collaboration with Dateline NBC on a series of televised sting operations called To Catch a Predator.”

Claims of their successes seem exaggerated.  Their involvement with law enforcement has produced legal issues… cops performing raids without obtaining warrants… failure to provide complete transcripts, etc.  The indication that they make spelling corrections and emoticons are replaced is a novel method for preserving evidence.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGptggF2mf8