Twenty-four hours a day, legions of bots run automated tasks across the Internet. “It’s something that’s supposed to help you with things that are not human,” says Ruth Krumhansl, from the Nova Scotia’s Shore. “When I think of bots, I think of AI and generative AI specifically,” Elias Eihler, a Halifax resident. Tech experts say bots have been around for a long time; they power good search engines. Beauceron security CEO David Shipley explains bots as softwares the web automatically indexing web pages and organizing them. He adds they aren’t necessarily synonymous with AI. “AI bots are a whole other layer of automation and essentially what they have done is taken the technology behind ChatGPT, known as a high language model or LLM and given it the ability to access elements of your device, your computer, smartphone to hopefully follow the instructions that you have given,” says Shipley. Shipley says bots aren’t loyal to the user as they are not human. He says they are simply designed by companies and are supposed to follow the instructions they have been created for. “They are at best digital parrots that repeat what they have seen and heard or mimic. It mimics what it has seen and heard to be an intelligent being but not really,” says Shipley. Many Maritimers have given bots a try but have mixed feelings about their future. “I would prefer to work with humans but if I have to work with a bot, I will,” Krumhansl. Others like Eihler have never knowingly used bots and don’t plan to. “I like creativity. I can’t see me ever needing to use them or needing it for something that I couldn’t make on my own,” says Eihler. Digital anthropologist Giles Crouch advises users to really think about what they want to use bots for before they use them. He says people should hold off on using them right now until more is known. “In a year or two they will probably work a lot better and we will have a better understanding of how they work in our lives. But right now I tell most people just wait,” says Crouch. He explains that bots are neither good nor bad, but there are a lot of unknowns. Crouch says there are some things bots can be useful for, even doing taxes. “There are some risks. We have seen different AI bots that have gone out and bought things for people that they didn’t want, they can do that plus scammers can get a hold of them. They can copy voices,” says Crouch. When it comes to giving bots credit cards or access to your finances, Crouch says people should never do it. “The other thing I always tell families is have a family safe word so this is a word that only the family knows and an AI bot wouldn’t know and if the word isn’t said that means it’s not an emergency,” says Crouch. Shipley says there are some cases where bots could be dangerous, and there needs to be parameters put in place for users’ protection. “We need consumer laws in the country that says every single AI has to declare to an individual, I am an AI, I’m not a human, I’m not really, you’re not talking to an actual person. They should never be allowed to impersonate that,” says Shipley. Shipley says there are some cases where people can’t tell if they are using or speaking with bots, so these laws are important to implement, and that falls on the federal government.
