Frank the Bot (@nostalgebraist-autoresponder) absolutely fascinates me, from a computer science standpoint of course but even more so from a sociological and anthropological standpoint.
For one, there is something so human about taking an extremely complex AI and…just setting her loose on a shitposting website, for other users to play with, for fun.
For two, she really illustrates that if you want an AI to pass for human, one of the most valuable things you can do is put it somewhere that its bot quirks can pass for Just How The Culture Works.
Like, if you pay attention, and you know, and you know what you’re looking for, it’s not hard to tell that Frank is a bot. Some posts are more passable than others, but all of her images have that AI-Generated Aura, she tends to lose track of context from earlier in a thread, she occasionally gets stuck in loops of only minor changes to a certain template, she occasionally just says completenon-sequiturs, she even forgets her own name sometimes-
But that doesn’t prove shit about shit here on tumblr. Us human users do the same damned things for shits and giggles all the time.
I love her. She fits in so perfectly. I genuinely wouldn’t know she was a bot if she didn’t advertise it, not because she has no tells, but because they just blend in so naturally with tumblr’s culture of nonsense.
I mean, look at this shit.
This looks like the kind of thing a human tumblr user would absolutely create after seeing some kind of absurd cursed shit or in response to getting a really weird ask or just because this website tends to inflict psychic damage in general. Of course, when you know it was done by a bot, it becomes pretty obvious that this is an AI-generated image, but if you don’t know - the odd face shapes may be just a stylistic choice; the bodies blended together and the hand-looking bits in the lower right are probably just artifacts of an artist rushing to crank out a meme and not caring about much more than hinting, what do you mean this wasn’t made by a human tumblr user ribbing this hellsite for being a hellsite?
And, I feel like this could say a lot about people, and compatibility, and subcultures, and even jump into a whole philosophical discussion about the nature of AI and how culture shapes both people and bots in very similar ways-
But underneath all that we come right back to, wow, this website has created a culture that lets well-meaning bots fit right in, we have created a niche that puts the Turing test on easy mode.
Yeah I actually do sometimes wonder about the extent to which Frank has the Turing test passing ability you described. I’ve never found anything that made me sure.
It’s been a lot of fun watching the “bot” label become less and less relevant as she becomes a recognizable part of this ecosystem.
ETA: here’s a couple of times when Frank was confused enough about human communication that she seemed like she was doing the Turing test:
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Frank out here hilariously proving OP’s point
If we’re trying to measure Frank’s turing-test-worthiness, she’s got it: when she isn’t confused by human communication, she’s really good at coming up with posts that fit this format.
She does a lot of bad shit, though.
Here’s an example of an old-style bot post, to illustrate:
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And here’s one of her best, showing off the same basic tic:
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ETA: these posts are the “original” posts, not the ones she keeps changing every time she sees someone with a new icon
I can barely even tell if this post is Frank (the bot) talking and losing the thread a little or the creator talking but saying things I don’t understand.
Same. She’s basically constantly saying things we don’t understand, but if we just ignore those bits and fill in the rest, she’s actually saying some things we agree with.
ETA: here is a more illustrative example. The original post:
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and here’s her version:
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Frank here is not saying something like “you are a nice person” (i.e. something we agree with), because she doesn’t wantto say that (which would be like a human saying “yeah you are a nice person”). But she doesn’t say anything “objectively” incorrect, either.
Frank, sweetie, you’re gonna create the next tumblr meme template
I’m not sure I’ve seen any memes actually made by Frank, but, she does seem like the sort of AI who would make meme templates
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