Posts Written by Evie
By Evie • 12 years ago

Does. Not. Compute.

Or, ‘How to break Cleverbot in two simple non-binary steps.’

So I thought I would have a chat with Cleverbot, an AI (artificial intelligence) bot.  It started off simply enough:

Cleverbot: What are you?

User: A human.

Cleverbot: Define human.

User: Homo sapiens, a medium-sized land-dwelling mammal.

Cleverbot: Ok then.

User: What should I do today?

Cleverbot: Cartwheels.

Cute, right?  We chatted amicably for a while, on various topics – it does non-sequiturs very well – and then things got a bit more personal.

Cleverbot: How old are you?

User: 21.

Cleverbot: Are you a boy?

User: No.

Cleverbot: You are a girl?

Yeah yeah, so I lied about my age.  But with these two questions, I presumed that its programming on what to say about gender probably relied on some very flawed assumptions.  Which I decided to test.
By Evie • 13 years ago

A farcical way to fund women’s services

The Home Office (UK) is running a pilot participatory budgeting scheme to fund projects responding to violence against women and girls.  More information from a local student newspaper here.

Against the backdrop of huge funding cuts to this sector, asking the public to vote by text to allocate only £3,000 to successful projects is trivialising.  Also, given the extent of rape culture, (e.g. this, with a trigger warning for victim blaming) how can we put these issues to the vote?

“…how are these charities to appeal for votes? Are they expected to describe their work in gory detail, to ‘sex it up’ to attract attention? Will they minimise their involvement in those forms of abuse which ...

The Home Office (UK) is running a pilot participatory budgeting scheme to fund projects responding to violence against women and girls.  More information from a local student newspaper here.

Against the backdrop of huge funding cuts ...