Programmer Develops Twitter Bot to Troll Climate Change Deniers [ClimateChange]

Preaching the climate change gospel is also tough work, especially on Twitter. Software developer Nigel Leck got tired rehashing a similar 140-character arguments against climate change deniers, so he programmed a bot that does the work for him. With citations!

Leck’s bot, @AI_AGW , doesn’t just respond to arguments directed at Leck himself, it goes out and picks fights. Every five minutes it trawls Twitter for terms and phrases that commonly crop up in Tweets that refute human-caused climate change. It then searches its database of hundreds find a counter-argument the best option for that tweet-usually a brief statement and a link to a scientific source.

As could be the case with these varieties of things, some of the deniers don’t know they’ve been targeted by a robot and interact AI_AGW in debate. The bot will continue to fireside back canned responses that best fit the interlocutor’s line of discussion-Leck says this goes on for days, in certain cases-and the bot’s been outfitted with a variety of responses with regards to religion, where the arguments unsurprisingly often turn out.

AI_AGW has been susceptible to mess up, shooting messages to those who sarcastically mention how climate change is a myth. In these cases, Leck always follows up with a human apology. [ Technology Review ]

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This post is tagged: canned responses, climate change, five minutes, interlocutor, software developer