We’ve all had that uncanny moment when we realize we’ve been talking to “someone” online when we realize it’s a robot responding. Long before the release of ChatGPT mainstreamed the act of talking to “bots” on the internet, non-human accounts were all over the web. MIT computer scientists invented ELIZA in 1966, to simulate conversations with a real human being. Microsoft users met “Clippy” almost exactly three decades later. Despite some users’ unlikely vitriol for the anthropomorphic paper clip, much more malicious bots became obvious to users in the years to come on social media, especially on Twitter in the chaotic election season of 2016.
But the bots are still with us. Officially defined as software applications that run automated, repetitive tasks, bots are still swimming in the digital ether, and they’re a key aspect of the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution that is threatening to undo the internet as it’s been known since the mid-1990s.
