Wednesday, April 07, 2004

Latest ill-thought out scheme to stop dem paediophiles from groomin' dem kids via the interweb is Chatnannies. Sign up with them and get a unique and untraceable ID, with which you can file reports on Chatnanny about unsafe chatrooms and people that are 'acting suspiciously' in cyberspace. The people behind Chatnanny seem to be blissfully unconcerned about the danger of malicious users filling deliberately incorrect information and the only qualification you need to be involved is access to a computer, which surely counts some of the mob who couldn't distinguish between a paediatrician and a paedophile. Let's hope they don't find any podophile chat rooms.

The Guardian is right to be concerned about amateurs dabbling in this area, no matter what Chatnannies might say.

There are basically two positions on this, which all revolve around their claims regarding their 'Nanniebot'. [O]ur NannieBot which uses the most advanced Artificial Intelligence ever built. Nanniebots behave like humans, sound like humans, and report to ChatNannies as if they were human, but with one massive difference - they never sleep. NannieBots self replicate so as you read this there are already thousands of them watching over chatrooms. The only limit is the processing power of the PCs and servers upon which the Nanniebots are running...so with more funding we can have even more NannieBots and make chatrooms even safer. Now, look at what is apparently a genuine transcript of someone talking to a Nanniebot from the New Scientist website. Of course I'm happy to admit that I'm no technical expert, but basically Chatnanny are asking us to accept that they have made the first artificial intelligence capable of passing the Turing Test. Which means either, a) they're lying, so have no business in the realm of paedophile detection, or b) they're geniuses, and have no business in the realm of paedophile detection because they should be solving the big problems in the world today.

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