October 25, 2010 07:59 AM UTC

EXCLUSIVE: New Goggle Blog Software

• 4 Comments
• by: JO

Over the weekend I encountered a group of inebriated geeks who work in Goggle’s emerging AI effort. For the price of a small consideration, one of them was willing to leak details of this program for the first time, which I’m happy to post here in a ColoradoPols.com EXCLUSIVE GNUS BRAKE.

JO: Another?

Goggle Programmer (GP): No, don’t think I should. It’s been almost 4 hours. God, do you think I should call my doctor right away?

JO: So, what exactly is it that you do?

GP: I’m writing artificial intelligence software that can engage in blogging.

JO: Is that related to Goggle’s Digital Graffiti effort?

GP: It’s the same thing, really. We were working on some more sophisticated stuff, but it wasn’t working, so they brought in their A Team for that, and we were given this stuff to do until our contracts run out.

JO: Can you give me an idea of what the new software does?

GP: Well, maybe you read about Goggle’s software that drives cars without a human driver? It’s kinda like that, only applied to posting comments on blogs. No human intelligence, just a server that reads the blog and makes up something to post.

JO: Are there any examples?

GP: Well, it’s secret, top secret, of course, but I can tell you that CogglePoggls is one of our experimental sites.

JO: How would you rate your progress?

GP: So-so. Last week, though, we scored a breakthrough, which is why I was celebrating at Nitwit Tavern where we met. See, we had been trying to get the software to generate posts that were at least on the 6th grade reading level, you know, both in terms of words and also in terms of the apparent level of mental development. Something better than just “me don’t believe no global warming ’cause I ain’t seen no chimpanzees evolve into senators at the zoo,” you know, the kinda stuff Senator Inhofe goes around saying. By the way, that’s an example of where our main competitor is in this race; they have a contract to generate his comments. Anyway, we’d been stuck for months at the 4th grade level, but now we think that when we load the new release in the next week or so, we can advance to 6th grade, or at least May of 5th grade.

JO: How this this software work?

GP: Well, first we programmed in some simple cliches, since of course artificial intelligence isn’t really “intelligence” so much as it’s knee-jerk reactions in response to certain phrases. Then, we make up some names for posters, and when the software detects a phrase on the blog, it generates a random sentence and posts it under one of these names.

JO: Does it always generate a sentence?

GP: Usually, but sometimes it’s just a phrase, you know, like “go fuck yourself,” or even a symbol. See, we reviewed a bunch of blogs and realized that some were mostly given over to what we informally call keyboard farts.

JO: Keyboard farts?

GP: Yeah, I know, but civility and thinking before you type are like, sooooo yesterday. Plus, it’s just a good excuse to introduce words like fucking and sucking into political discourse since sex is the one and only issue that most people are really interested in. We figured it would make our artificial posters seem more like real people.

JO: So, your experimental site is devoted to politics. Was that a problem?

GP: No, not at all. Actually, that’s why we chose it. See, right-wing, conservative posts are easy to program in AI. They always follow a knee-jerk reaction and don’t refer back to specifics or facts, which would be much, much harder to program. We’re having a lot harder creating Democratic-sounding posts. We figure that might come when the AI quotient is around junior year in college or so. That’ll be awhile yet.

JO: So, would you say the program is ready to go?

GP: Well, it’s be running for months now and we don’t think anyone is onto us. On the other hand, I wouldn’t want to ride in a car with our software driving! Hey, you’re not going to tell anyone about this, are you? Hey, where are you going? Where are my pants? Hey!