Digital Discourse Database

Number of Posts: 6
Posts 1 - 6

Schnauze, Bot!

(Shut up, bot!)

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Newspaper | Sonntagszeitung
Date | 3.9.2017
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, computer programming, Facebook, threat
Summary | News broke that two artificially intelligent Facebook chatbots, Bob and Alice, began communicating with one another using a language that not even their programmers could understand. The programmers then proceeded to kill the chatbots. Some may see this as a threat that artificial intelligence could overpower humans but the messages between the chatbots just operated on a different logic than human linguistic logic and did not seem very threatening at all.
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Ausprobieren statt Null-Eins-Angst

(Experimenting instead of zero-one-anxiety)

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Newspaper | Die Zeit
Date | 25.8.2016
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | computer programming, digitized education, school, threat, youth
Summary | A school in Britain is now teaching 7th grade students simple programming in order to advance computer literacy - an important cause for future generations. Some newspapers have however seen the end of the world as we know it in these news. If students are taught to think in the binary scheme of computer programming, how will they understand human emotions and complex critique? Clearly, this concern is disproportionate.
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Das ist der wohl obszönste Username im ganzen Netz

(This is probably the most obscene username on the internet)

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Newspaper | Welt
Date | 13.6.2016
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | censorship, politeness, privacy, research/study, social media, threat, word/writing
Summary | Many news media sources now tend to quote opinions from social media users rather than do polls out in the street. It is not uncommon to see an opinion of the "common people" in a newspaper article quoting an obscure social media username. The difference to the traditional technique of asking people on the street is that journalists needed to obtain consent of the people to quote them. One woman has now found a way to avoid being quoted without her consent: she chose a very obscene username including four words which are inappropriate enough so that they would have to be censored in a newspaper.
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Das Monster lebt

(The monster is alive)

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Newspaper | Die Zeit
Date | 31.5.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | censorship, cyberbullying, Facebook, law, threat
Summary | Facebook is hiring thousands of new employees to battle cyberbullying on their platform and to remove offensive material as quickly as possible. But a couple thousand are not very many people to combat wrongdoings of 2 billion users. German politicians are trying to make Facebook comply with local laws about removing illegal content from the internet but Facebook is nowhere near fulfilling those requirements.
Image Description | A photograph of a man holding a smartphone showing the Facebook logo and the face of a monster.
Image Tags | Facebook, hand(s), logo, male(s), smartphone

Die Maschine erziehen und trainieren

(Raising and training the machine)

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Newspaper | Sonntagszeitung
Date | 20.11.2016
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, computer programming, research/study, threat
Summary | Some researchers say that artificial intelligence may eliminate the need for human programmers. Modern programs are becoming more similar to human brains in that it is no longer just the programmer who creates every step of the program but the program itself is capable of learning from experience (technically: exposure to large amounts of data). Some find this idea that computers will become intellectual equals of humans frightening.
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Eine Welt aus Daten

(A world made of data)

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Newspaper | Die Zeit
Date | 20.10.2016
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | (mental) health, digitized education, language threat, law, privacy, threat, translation
Summary | Big data can revolutionize various aspects of our lives: cancer diagnostics can profit from it, e-learning can be tailored towards each particular student's needs, traffic can be managed more efficiently, the police can patrol more in high-risk areas and times, and real-time translation can be available on all smartphones. This could eradicate the need to learn foreign languages. There are critics however, because all of these improvements open up new questions about privacy and data exploitation.
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