1. “On Twitter as many as one in 20 active accounts are fakes… ”
Social Bots
“On Twitter as many as one in 20 active accounts are fakes… ”
Christo Wilson, 2015

2. What Is a Social Bot?
A “computer algorithm that automatically produces content and interacts with humans on social media, trying to emulate and possibly alter their behavior”

3. Why Do We Care About Them?
They infiltrate political discourse, manipulate the stock market, steal personal information, and spread misinformation—social bots even flirt with people

4. Why Do We Care About Them?

5. How Do We Detect Them?

6. How Do We Detect Them?

7. Ashley Madison: An Interesting Case

8. Ashley Madison: An Interesting Case
“What I have learned from examining the site’s source code is that Ashley Madison’s army of fembots appears to have been a sophisticated, deliberate, and lucrative fraud. The code tells the story of a company trying to weave the illusion that women on the site are plentiful and eager. … the company was clearly on a desperate quest to design legions of fake women to interact with the men on the site”

9. Ashley Madison: An Interesting Case

10. Microsoft’s Tay & Twitter: A 24-hour Story

11. Microsoft’s Tay & Twitter: A 24-hour Story

12. Microsoft’s Tay & Twitter: A 24-hour Story

13. Microsoft’s Tay & Twitter: A 24-hour Story

14. Microsoft’s Tay & Twitter: A 24-hour Story

15. Other Social Bots https://twitter.com/earthquakesSF

16. AI & Ethics
Carnegie Mellon created a research center to study the ethics of AI

17. Bots Are The New Apps

18. Conclusion
Social bots impose significant threats to organizations and society since they “are actually more common than you might think,” and because they “can do things beyond our wildest dreams or nightmares”