It has to be asked: Could the Russians have hacked DU?

[Aimee in OKC]

94. Pre-election, c. 3.8 million Tweets were chatbots engaging.

{Posted elsewhere but fits well here, too}

THE AGE OF CHATBOTS IS UPON US

Chatbots are software agents that engage in conversations with humans and may even take physical actions. < CLIP > According to the University of Southern California (USC) study, the 2016 US Presidential election has been influenced by chatbots interacting with social media, also called social bots.

The study concluded that 19% of the 20 million Tweets in a five week period just prior to the election were created by social bots.

In 1950, Alan Turing, considered one of the fathers of Artificial Intelligence (AI), proposed the “Turing Test” to quantify machine “thinking.” For a computer to pass the test, it must only dupe 30 percent of the people who chat with it for five minutes.

At the 2014 Turing Test competition, for the first time Russian chatbot impersonating a 13-year old passed the Turing Test by duping 33% of its interrogators.

http://techseen.com/2016/11/08/age-chatbots/

* * * * * * *

So, Oct. - Nov. = 3,800,000 Tweets by chatbots.

A Russian chatbot actually passed the Turing Test in 2014.

And we know, officially, Russia interfered with our election.

The KGB (of whom Putin was one) were masters of deception, misdirection, and sowing of dissent among allies. "Divide and conquer" has been a valid strategy since before the Romans used it.