I was reading the December issue of Scientific American yesterday. It had an interesting article about how bots are used. It seems they are becoming more and more intelligent. Let’s take an issue that somewhat controversial in the gardening community. Should you water your tomatoes first thing in the morning or late in the evening? If you run across an article about when to water your tomatoes and you are curious what the other side’s point of view is; i.e., better in the morning or at night? The bot will try to figure out which side you favor from your search history and things that you have read already so that it can point out articles that you favor. It won’t list a website or article that contains information on the other side of the question of when to water your tomatoes. This effect is what they call “the echo chamber.” It means you will only read things that you agree with.
There is a terrible downside to this echo chamber. It divides our country and we’re never presented with the other side’s viewpoint. We are left blind to other’s viewpoints. It was clear from the article because we do not see the other side’s reasoning we can think of them as crazies. Worse yet, bots have made it almost impossible to see the other side’s reason why they want to water their tomatoes at a particular time of day.
Why would bots want to do this to us? The answer is ad revenues. Advertisers want their ads to be seen by people who are likely to want to use their product. In the case of when you water your tomatoes and you believe you should water your tomatoes in the very early morning, you might be presented with ads for timers that will water your tomatoes at sunrise automatically so you don’t have to get up. Bots are all about the pursuit of money or power. I say power because bots were used in the last election to influence your vote. Now the elections are over, bots will try to show you ads that you’re likely to be interested in seeing.
Most of us know very little about bots. However, they are being used to influence us to buy a particular product or vote for a particular candidate. When this happens, the effort to influence us should be clearly labeled as the work of a bot. Perhaps, we should outlaw the use of bots. I don’t believe that will ever happen because there’s too much money to be made and too many elections to win.
