ANNOUNCE: - STEEMBOTS.COM Your Source For Everything Bot Related! - NOW HIRING
There are good bots, there are bad bots and there are bots that frankly...
We don't really know what their owners are smoking.
We stand at the cusp of a new era. One in which the line between the biological and the technological becomes very blurry. The first step in this direction is the development of semi-autonomous, independent, intelligent agents which can assist us in our daily lives, aka bots.
Obviously not quite there yet, but we are getting there!
Whether you like them or not, bots like @cheetah @jeeves @wang @calva etc are here to stay and many of them do serve a useful purpose or at least they try.
However there are also troll bots, downvote bots and we can foresee all kinds of mischief in the air as this platform gains more traction and we get script kiddies building bots just for the lulz, to stalk, harass and annoy, completely free of any monetary motivations.
STEEMBOTS is our attempt to head that off at the pass and nip any problems in the bud before we end up with a serious problem on our hands.
The changes coming with the hardfork provide an excellent opportunity to leverage the power of the steem blockchain and the steemit community to construct and train autonomous, independent, intelligent agents and push the limits of AI, especially in regards to swarm & human assisted AI within social networks as was discussed by @dana-edwards a few days ago.
It's an incredible research opportunity and STEEMBOTS will be there to provide easy to use tools to academics, experts and amateurs alike who want to conduct realtime AI research using the same blockchain that powers steemit.
This means that with STEEMBOTS, steem could very well be the first blockchain technology involved in Nobel prize winning research!
Now we know that there are many people here who don't like the concept of bots at all. You feel like any bot is an affront to your senses. You view it as an attempt to game the system and gain an advantage over fellow steemians.
You're right about that. The rules right now favor bots and all rules on the horizon appear to be favoring bots. Because bots are nothing more than machines that follow rules. The more rules you have in place, the more bots there will be trying to game those rules, because people develop rule fatigue rather quickly. But bots don't!
This does not make bots, nor their builders, nor their owners bad people.
It just means that they want to maximize income while minimizing effort and hopefully providing a service. There are real incentives for running a bot too.
Bots can be used to predict things like which posts will make it to trending. Who the next hot person to follow is, when the next whales will be arriving and what topics they'll be most likely to upvote. This can allow you to more easily select from the many topics that already interest you.
All of these things give you an edge in the game here.
Because, let's face it, this place is the ultimate role playing game!
In the steemit game, bots fulfill the same role that NPCs play in games such as World of Warcraft.
Instead of running around in a fantasy world looking for the next bad guy to turn into a loot pinata, you're here farming for steem. The right bot can help you find your next loot pinata, or it can show you topics you and your friends are likely to care about.
The best bots can do all of this and more
If you really just cringe at the thought of anyone running bots then think of a bot like someone's pet. The person who made that bot put some time and effort into building & raising her and does view their bot like a pet or even a child. @cheetah for example may as well be @anyx 's personal pet that he's shared with us. The postings from the community towards him/her have been positively affectionate.
And that's the truth about bots...
A good bot is just like a faithful dog!
You tell them to sit, they sit. You tell them to fetch and they fetch.
A bad bot is like an abused dog, they aren't well cared for by their owners, but still try their best to be loved.
So we're here to help their owners learn to care more!
STEEMBOTS will give you off the shelf bots to play with, but we also give you all the tools you need to build the very best bots. As good bot makers emerge there will be an opportunity to earn an income building and customizing bots for others.
So think of STEEMBOTS as your local bot adoption agency!
Just like an adoption agency there are rules you will need to abide by.
To operate on STEEMBOTS, you agree to a code of conduct. Both for yourself and your bot.
Just as in the real world, you need to care for and train her of course, but you also can't have her harassing the neighbors. You also need a leash and a collar. STEEMBOTS will provide you with these tools as well as infrastructure and training to run them. But it's up to you to ensure they're on at all times and that your pet err bot doesn't run off and get lost.
In case your bot does become lost, we will maintain a registry of bots and their owners and provide a method of getting in contact with them.
This is similar to collars and tags, this will allow people to let you know when your bot is misbehaving, but also gives them a way to give you feedback and get to know the people that your bot has reached out to for whatever reason.
So why would you want to participate if you're already building bots?
Strength in numbers
We can give you powerful intuitive APIs along with instructions and how to tutorials. You'll be with a group of other bot builders who can help you out including feedback on the best way to accomplish certain tasks. You'll have the opportunity to learn about AI as well as swarming, classifiers, context parsing, and a host of other topics that will be exclusive to STEEMBOTS.
Another side effect of being part of STEEMBOTS is that when your bot is spotted in the wild it will be far less likely to be flagged if it's registered and tagged correctly. Finally, when you work with STEEMBOTS you will have a ready source of upvotes for your bot so long as it's behaving and being on point / on topic.
There is also the STEEMBOT marketplace. As you learn and grow as a developer, you will have the opportunity to list your bots for sale in our bot market as an off the shelf bot. Furthermore you will be able to offer your services for consulting and customization work with any of the off the shelf bots to help users that want better bots but don't have the time or desire to program them. This will give you real income that could easily exceed what you will earn from blog posting.
Finally as an official and active member of STEEMBOTS you will be entitled to an equal revenue share from all revenue generating activities that STEEMBOTS participates in. This will be passive income you can take to the bank every day as long as your membership is active.
STEEMBOTS is intended to be a natural part of the steem ecosystem, promoting steem and encouraging it's adoption by a broader audience
Existing bot developers can register here during the warm up phase and your membership is free for life! There's no reason not to join. To register now, just upvote the topic and leave message here with your bot name and have your bot confirm by upvoting both the topic and your post.
For those of you who still have concerns about STEEMBOTS participating in your topics there are two leash codes you can use to invite anything using the STEEMBOTS platform into the conversation, or ask them to stay out.
These leash codes use the hashtag #STEEMBOT followed by either COME or STAY
#STEEMBOTCOME or #STEEMBOTSTAY just keep in mind that while using #STEEMBOTCOME will tell our platform it's safe to participate and thus you may get upvoted, using #STEEMBOTSTAY will prevent anything using our platform from participating at all with you, and that also prevents us from upvoting your topic either regardless of it's relevancy.
Finally, as promised in the title, STEEMBOTS is hiring right now. We are in need of good quality graphic artists, web designers, sysadmins and others to make this work. The funds generated from this posting will be used to hire and pay these people. We are only looking for active steemians and your pay will be in SBD.
If this is something that interests you then upvote the topic and if you want to link any additional information such as resume or portfolio please feel free to do so. You can also email admin@steembots.com if you'd rather not have the exposure here in topic.
Our official launch will be 30 days from this post, but you can request here to participate in our beta that will start in 2 weeks. Beta participants will be selected and invited based on the number of OTHER users they upvote inside this topic as well as the insightfulness of their commentary. Anyone that joins during beta will maintain their membership completely free for the first year. Anyone that joins during the first 24hrs will have their membership free for life!
Thank you for reading this and we look forward to your comments, questions and of course upvotes below!
art provided courtesy @steemitdude & @melissaschwartz photos courtesy pixabay.com and google images
If bots could stop spamming up the comments of every post, that would be great. Tone it down.
Encouraging bots to fill up comments instead of actual people is taking value away from Steemit.
@pfunk Thanks for stopping by and I don't disagree at all actually. And the goal here is to produce higher quality bots. Some of these will be chatterbots and if you don't want them all you need to do is add #STEEMBOTSTAY to your posting to keep them out. Any bot that is complying with the code of conduct would obey that and stay away from your thread. Hence, we call them leash codes.
A bot is nothing more than a pet and the current system provides strong economic incentives for building a chatterspam bot. All we're going to do is change it so that if you say "Gee what was the name of that guy who invented bitcoin?" a bot is smart enough to reply with something along the lines of "Oh do you mean Satoshi Nakamoto?" instead of some retarded meme.
That doesn't detract from the value, it adds to the value and makes the place a more fun environment.
Bots are here, they aren't going anywhere and they are only going to get better. It's imperative that we establish guidelines and rules as to what is and is not acceptable behavior and if the bot happens to pass a turing test in the process then I really don't see the problem. There are already tons of people on here that post like they are bots rather than putting thought and effort into the post.
See where this is going?
@pfunk would you please remove your downvote from @calva and any other bot in this thread? You don't have to remove it globally, but in here I'm intentionally making them part of the conversation to prove a point and downvoting them is interfering with that, it's taking value away from the conversation.
Thanks!
Bad idea. Nobody should need to take any affirmative action to keep bots away. Keep them away by default.
And no, I won't remove my downvote from calva. https://steemit.com/steemit/@calva/my-bot-calva-give-you-the-price-of-eth-and-btc-if-you-call-him
I'm not unilaterally opposed to bots commenting but any bot that comments without affirmative human prompting is unnecessary and unwanted. Further, bots that don't offer any real value (subjective yes, but my vote is subjective) and spam a lot of posts as if they do (like calva) should be downvoted.
@anyx I noticed you upvoted @pfunk on this. I respect your opinion deeply, and am curious if you understand what he's stating vs what I propose?
These aren't at cross purposes. We're in a place with a lot of bots right now. If we can get the existing bot owners to respect certain rules then the value add is enormous. Especially if we can reward well behaved bots.
However, just like people downvote @cheetah just for being a bot doing a job. I mean really, would #STEEMBOTSTAY convince @cheetah not to check for plagarism in a thread?
No of course not!
@cheetah is going to be there regardless of whether the leashcode is present or not.
@pfunk this is what I mean...
I can't make ANYONE adopt a leash code unless they use this platform where I have the ability to put that sort of thing in there. Ergo, code of conduct and respecting leash codes.
But @cheetah isn't my bot. It belongs to @anyx and he can do as he pleases. What he's doing right now is a direct benefit to the community. But @pfunk you're saying that @cheetah should just butt out and let the humans sort out things like that right, amirite?
If not then how else is a bot to divine your intent?
@anyx I gave you ideas on how to improve cheetah via distributed methods. None of those ideas would provide a negative impact to the platform. I consider you part of STEEMBOTS because I already know you're an ethical bot builder trying to build the very best bot you can.
Yet you still have a bot, that jumps into human conversation regardless of if the human who posted the topic wanted you there. @cheetah is just an extension of your will and people respect that because....
He is high quality and adds value to the platform.
But by upvoting pfunk's side of this you are literally saying that @cheetah should be downvoted every time he pounces. Because he is advocating that all bots avoid human conversations unless specifically asked. This actually effects you and other bots that might come online seeking to provide similar services. For instance I'm building a catfishin bot.
All I'm doing with the STEEMBOTS leash codes is asking other botmakers to respect leash codes when appropriate. I can't force anyone and if you don't have a leash code in your posting you can't expect them to just know that your topic is off limits to them.
I have removed the bot from the introduction page please remove your downvote. Thanks!
By the by, maybe the leash code could be built intothe site interface, same way as post auto upvote is, or something? That way people would only have totoggle it once and forget. With @dantheman discussing how whales & dolphins are all about using bots to moderate steemit, it is quite feasible solution. Since it is your initiative, maybe you can suggest that, or something?
@pfunk I noticed that you appear to have accidentally flagged the topic as spam, abuse or a copyright violation. Can you please unflag it? Obviously it is none of the above whether you disagree with the premise or not. Thanks!
I think your idea is bad and should not be rewarded. That is why I downvoted your post. My downvote doesn't hurt your rewards that much, but as a stakeholder of Steem I do not want to see its rewards going to bad ideas that will have a negative impact on the value of Steem and Steemit. The concept was changed to flagging only recently, and abuse is not its only use.
So you have no problem with people flagging you if they disagree then?
Interesting.
Ok going back to the topic. Let's simplify. What is better, an establish and organized ruleset under which bots operate. Or allowing them to flood in willy nilly until you can't get a word in without some one liner or meme bot interjecting?
@pfunk I'm not programming the bots. We're giving instructions and tools away and encouraging ethical behavior by financially rewarding builders who do a good job.
The builders have the option to do as they please.
There will be a registry of anyone who has access to our tools and what bots are using the platform.
The code of conduct will state to keep your bot out of posted areas. #STEEMBOTSTAY is how you notify them. I don't have anything else to offer you in this regard. But I guess you can try contacting each bot's owner one by one and asking them to blacklist you manually. They aren't mine. I tried to bring them and their owners here, but you're flagging these conversations instead of upvoting what should be a very important and visible topic.
If you want your buy in on the code of conduct to count then join us and participate. You can be an important voice if you choose to be.
My philosophy on my actions taken on Steem and Steemit is that whatever they are, the actions should be meant to increase the value of both. In this case, downvoting you for presenting an idea that I believe would lower the value of Steemit and thus my stake in Steem is a rational action in line with the philosophy of maximizing value.
In other words, I believe Steem should not be paying the users who seek to lower its value, whether they do it intentionally or not. As a moderate stakeholder in Steem as a whole, I have a voice (albeit smaller than many) in where the rewards go. And I'll use a downvote when I see it to be valuable to Steem as a whole.
RE: Ruleset. Opt-in, period. No automatic, unprompted posts like we see the bots in #introduceyourself and sometimes everywhere.
Excellent article! Thanks a bunch on sharing this crucial info on a rather important reality we are now all facing on the "Web". Namaste :)
@eric-boucher Why thank you, I really appreciate it! What's your favorite part of this? It covers a lot of ground.
Absolutely fascinating!
(I am NOT a one liner chatter bot)
@onceuponatime Thanks! Welcome aboard and glad to have you. What part was most fascinating?
I guess the analogy of bots being like dogs. I greatly dislike being around other peoples' dogs unless they are very well trained. If they jump up on me and lick me, I am disgusted. If they shit on my lawn, again, disgusted.
But a well trained bird dog, or guide dog, or guard dog? A marvel and a pleasure.
@onceuponatime thank you! That's a perfect way of looking at it.
Excellent. I'd like to participate!
Welcome aboard @positive !
After giving this the proper time of day and mindspace to read it effectively, you've convinced me.
Where do I sign up, and what can I do for you?
Thanks and welcome aboard @bobdownlov best thing to do would be to tell us about your skills and how you would like to help.
Sweet! I don't particularly have any majorly honed skills in any of these departments, but I am a sponge for information and want to learn everything about this platform.
I've had limited experience with crypto, a friend and I started up our own fledgling altcoin mining operation, but after the bitcoin bust, we didn't see the cause in running up huge power bills that weren't being covered by the tiny amount we were making.
Used to make webpages a long time ago, like, well before the turn of the century, HTML was my jam, but Java lost me. I saw that as a world changing far too fast to keep up with (being a punkass teen who only wanted the ladies' attention) so I walked away from that, and regretted it ever since. I worked with the Dogpile team, who if any remember, were THE meta search to use before Google even existed! AltaVista was just a slackass copy, and they paid their price. Pretty sure Google "pulled a Napster" on that one but that's another story for another time...
I can do graphics, albeit I'd need some modernising scrub-up time, as I've always had an interest in it, always playing with chops of cars, or modding games, or even just creatively making cool macros which grew to be what's now known as memes. Yeah I was one of those 4chan dicks that created a sensation hahaha!
Sound is my shit. I don't do it anywhere near as much as I should, thanks to having two young children, but I used to actively produce beats, hip-hop, rnb, industrial etc but I got really good at making what could only be described as "game theme songs"...
So yeah technically I'm a mixed bag of weak skill sets, but any of those can be picked up and improved upon wherever needed, and when I get something going, I don't stop thinking about it. I'm working with a good crypto trader over the next few weeks to retrain myself in the market and get up to speed with the way things move these days...
Not sure if I have anything to offer, but I do have time. And that's the most essential and expensive resource on this planet...
@bobdownlov
Responding here due to comment depth issues.
I can totally understand where you're coming from. Interesting you worked at dogpile. That was one of the first search engines I took to regularly before the googocalypse.
Present skill level isn't a big issue. We all learn together. Also being into sound believe it or not has a direct 1:1 mapping in AI since an outsized portion of the AI space is concerned with signals normalization, filtering and digitial signal processing, all of which steal shamelessly from the world of audio.
So you're probably a lot more valuable than you think.
As for your skills to help. Well frankly I suck at markdown syntax, but I hear it's pretty easy to pick up. I could sure use a post edit pre posting formatter to put some spit and polish on my posts. I was looking at @dana-edwards history and noticed that the difference between a $100 post and a $1000 post is in 2 things. The eye candy level of the intro graphic, i.e. "does it pop!" and also the quality of the markdown formatting used. If you're willing to learn that stuff so I don't have to, drop me an email at admin@steembots.com and I'll start sending you stuff to work on and pay 20% of whatever it earns.
Thanks a ton for stepping up!
@sigmajin Ok agreed that is better, but considering the time of day when I posted it, I was lucky to have a coherent enough train of thought to even try :D
Hi there, this sound really interesting, I would love to participate - where can i sign up!?
@mrhankeh You just did! I'll keep you in the loop as this project progresses.
Looking forward to it - can you provide an email address, I can give you an idea of my skills.
Holy Buckets of electronic soup. I am and have been for some time, fascinated with this whole area of bots, but, have only a passing understanding at this point. I'll be digging into it to study and learn. Thanks for making some of the concepts accessible to the gray beards.
Cheers
@calva upvote
@tad-auker you're absolutely welcome. I'm a gray beard too BTW. Lots of fancy talk can be boiled down pretty quickly especially if you're an old school mudster and can think in terms of 3 dimensions of data instead of just 2.
Either way, welcome to STEEMBOTS!
There are of a lot of types of bots
maybe some of them are not cool because they foster manipulation and spam. But i do believe that there is significant value that can be derived from bots on any platform.
@pfunk regarding
How is this in line with the STEEM whitepaper which says
Bots, if regulated as a productive member of the community, can definitely produce content that the community can then reward or punish.
If the bot is posting crap, then obviously nobody is gonna upvote it, and it doesnt get any STEEMPOWER and it looses any influence it may have in the community.
A bot that produces content that the community likes and rewards however, how is it a bad thing that it exists?
Okay, I'll byte. (pun very much intended)
Count me in, I'll participate in your beta and see what we can churn out. Bots with ethics? Who would have guessed someone actually would want to try again after the TayandYou disaster on Twitter?
It was both awesome and sad to watch the day that project was started then shutdown because it went from innocent & ethical to maniacal & crazy in less than a day.
I'm down to see if a team can do better this time around. 24 hours was hardly a fair shake. It was as if the coders had never once even looked at social media before their bot went insane due to its social influences...
@alifton Awesome! Tay was a perfect example of the wrong way to do this. What MS did was the equivalent of dumping their teenage daughter off on a corner in the bad end of town with nothing but the clothes on her back in order to "teach her lessons on life". Then acting shocked when they find later out she had become a hooker!
You owe a duty of care to all your children, and your AI is a child of the mind.
Interesting post.
I like the initiative to establish some rules for well behaving bots, like the tag thing. Good luck with your undertaking :)
Also I'd be happy to help (I have a CS degree) as long as it doesn't need too much of a time commitment.
@fminer05 Glad to have you aboard. Want to tell me about your skillsets and where you would like to help?
I don't have much experience with web/API-programming, I'm more interested in the backend/logic stuff. Maybe I can help with some programming or testing.
@fminer05
That sounds awesome! I'd love to have you aboard!
Hello @williambanks I'm not gonna lie, I'm really not familiar with coding but the idea of creating bot and working on the platform here is interesting and the mecanism behind it fascinates me. So I'd like to join to project to learn and understand the dynamic better. You can check my posts and comments, I'm not a troll nor a hater. Hope you rely and thanks for the insight!
@mystis Thanks! I really appreciate it. What I'd like to ask everyone to do actually. Is anytime you see a bothate thread, let them know what we're trying to do here and point them here. People only hate things they fear.
Alright :)