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Incident 243: Bots Allegedly Made up Roughly Half of Twitter Accounts in Discussions Surrounding COVID-19 Related Issues

Description: Bots by anonymous actors were found by researchers to make up roughly half of Twitter accounts participating in COVID-19 discussions, many of which posted tweets about “reopening America“.

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Alleged: unknown developed and deployed an AI system, which harmed Twitter , Twitter Users and Twitter users participating in COVID-19 discussions.

Incident Stats

Incident ID
243
Report Count
2
Incident Date
2020-01-01
Editors
Sean McGregor, Khoa Lam
Applied Taxonomies
GMF, MIT

MIT Taxonomy Classifications

Machine-Classified
Taxonomy Details

Risk Subdomain

A further 23 subdomains create an accessible and understandable classification of hazards and harms associated with AI
 

4.1. Disinformation, surveillance, and influence at scale

Risk Domain

The Domain Taxonomy of AI Risks classifies risks into seven AI risk domains: (1) Discrimination & toxicity, (2) Privacy & security, (3) Misinformation, (4) Malicious actors & misuse, (5) Human-computer interaction, (6) Socioeconomic & environmental harms, and (7) AI system safety, failures & limitations.
 
  1. Malicious Actors & Misuse

Entity

Which, if any, entity is presented as the main cause of the risk
 

AI

Timing

The stage in the AI lifecycle at which the risk is presented as occurring
 

Post-deployment

Intent

Whether the risk is presented as occurring as an expected or unexpected outcome from pursuing a goal
 

Intentional

Incident Reports

Reports Timeline

Incident Occurrence+1
Twitter Bots Drove the Push to 'Reopen America,' Study Finds
Twitter Bots Drove the Push to 'Reopen America,' Study Finds

Twitter Bots Drove the Push to 'Reopen America,' Study Finds

gizmodo.com

Roughly half the Twitter accounts pushing to 'reopen America' are bots, researchers found

Roughly half the Twitter accounts pushing to 'reopen America' are bots, researchers found

businessinsider.com

Twitter Bots Drove the Push to 'Reopen America,' Study Finds
gizmodo.com · 2020

This might not come as a surprise if you ever use Twitter, but it turns out bots are driving the push to “reopen America” on the platform.

According to Business Insider, researchers from Carnegie Mellon University found that about half of m…

Roughly half the Twitter accounts pushing to 'reopen America' are bots, researchers found
businessinsider.com · 2020

As parts of the US have lifted shutdown orders during the COVID-19 pandemic, there's been a fierce argument online about the risks and benefits of reopening. New research suggests that bots have been dominating that debate.

Carnegie Mellon …

Variants

A "variant" is an incident that shares the same causative factors, produces similar harms, and involves the same intelligent systems as a known AI incident. Rather than index variants as entirely separate incidents, we list variations of incidents under the first similar incident submitted to the database. Unlike other submission types to the incident database, variants are not required to have reporting in evidence external to the Incident Database. Learn more from the research paper.
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