REAL LIFE NEWS: WHEN WIKIPEDIA BOTS GO TO WAR
by Hazed
Wikipedia pages are not static, fixed entries like in an old-fashioned paper enclycopedia. Editors change them all the time to correct errors and add links. But when two editors keep editing the same page, they wind up undoing each other’s changes over and over.
Now it turns out many of the editing wars on the online encyclopedia are actually being conducted by robots.
Software robots, or bots, have been used on Wikipedia since it launched in 2001. They are tasked with fixing errors, adding links to other pages, and performing other basic housekeeping chores.
But when two bots start operating on the same page, they can work at cross-purposes – undoing the other bot’s edits and removing links they had added. And unlike conflicts between people, the bots will keep on going for years, the conflict only ending when one of the bots is taken out of action.
The existence of these bot-wars was discovered by a study conducted by researchers at Oxford and the Alan Turing Institute in London. They examined the editing histories of pages in 12 different language editions of Wikipedia, recording the actions of the bots.
They did not expect the results to be so spectacular. Taha Yasseri, one of the researchers, explained: “We had very low expectations to see anything interesting. When you think about them they are very boring. The very fact that we saw a lot of conflict among bots was a big surprise to us. They are good bots, they are based on good intentions, and they are based on same open source technology.”
Warring bots on an online encyclopedia are intriguing but not anything to worry about – but when computers with artificial intelligence start to become more prevalent, these software conflicts might have more serious effects.
“Take self-driving cars. A very simple thing that’s often overlooked is that these will be used in different cultures and environments,” said Yasseri. “An automated car will behave differently on the German autobahn to how it will on the roads in Italy. The regulations are different, the laws are different, and the driving culture is very different,” he said.
One more thing to worry about as the robots take over…
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/feb/23/wikipedia-bot-editing-war-study
