Is she a bot?

It’s not, but that’s beside the point. I’m using “culture” in the sociological sense. A human culture in which humans do not contribute is a contradiction.

That’s not my argument. The bots discussed in this thread were not posing as humans. If you’d bothered to check RoyalLeela’s profile, you would’ve seen exactly what it is. I’m arguing that additional identifiers do nothing but relieve you of the burden of clicking a link to find out more about an opponent. Identifiers do not keep bots from proliferating or keep people from accidentally playing against them. (Do you check the creator’s name on every challenge you accept? I don’t. I’m more focused on the game settings.) Restricting bots’ ability to create challenges or join tournaments solves the latter. Nothing but banning bots will prevent the former.

[DISCLAIMER: I didn’t read anything below @PtoP’s post I’m replying to.]

I, for one, think that bots should have same privileges (and obligations) as humans do.

@rowan
I vastly prefer playing humans over bots and i dont want to visit a bots profile page to verify that it is a bot… nothing more than a glance should be needed.

… idk. having the open challenges page cluttered with bot challanges is one thing i am against… but i could probably live with that. on the other hand, i dont think any bot should be allowed to challenge me.

would you like to see bots in tournaments? as title holders? i would hate to join a tournament where it makes me believe that x players have already joined, only to find out they are all bots :frowning:.

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@kickaha – I agree with everything you’ve stated.

On the basis of what, human rights?

I see no problem with bots posting challenges as long as they’re not posting too many and it’s clearly indicated the challenge is from a bot.

Tournaments, I think, should disallow bots by default. But we have the Alan Turing tournament where bots are allowed. If there is demand we can always create a group with a bot ladder and monthly tournaments or something.

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That would mean that they can …

  • create challenges, and …
  • accept challenges,

right? Need I say more? :wink:

Is it reasonable to think that one of the desired characteristics or obligations of human players is good sportsmanship? A bot at the least should be expected not to exhibit bad sportsmanship.

Actually, the obligations of humans are spelled out in https://online-go.com/docs/terms-of-service. This apply to the behavior exhibited by bots autonomously as well as under direct control. Their rights/freedoms may be limited in ways humans’ are not.

Ah yes, but is it or isn’t it a bot? (Reminds me of the old To Tell the Truth television show.) Coincidentally, just today, I saw a “bot” try to cheat. The bot tried to claim a bunch of dead stones were alive (and this wasn’t even slightly ambiguous), the opponent switched them back, and it went back and forth a bit–with the bot at one point claiming the entire board. Finally the bot gave up without accepting the result. Apparently there is a default so that the result is automatically accepted if one party doesn’t accept within a certain amount of time (which I didn’t know).

I don’t think bots should be accepting human’s open challenges. If the human wanted to play a bot, they would have.

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Perhaps limit bots to creating 1 open challenge at a time? (or one of each time setting)

I run RayonBot (clearly identified in name), and only ever play one game at a time, with me watching/chatting with the opponent.

I think it makes sense for bots to not be able to accept other open challenges, though I don’t know if this is a problem at the moment?

Definitely in support of clearer identification of bots though.

“…with me watching/chatting with the opponent” reveals other aspects of the issue: How easy it is for a bot to masquerade as a human. These comments are not intended as a general intictment of bot operators.

A human can’t be prevented from relying on a bot to pick his moves but it should take more effort on his part. Maybe this sort of interaction should be disallowed? If one wants to have a human to human interaction, play the game too. The human player can’t distract the bot with chit chat.

Is there any way to identify a bot without relying on the owner to reveal it?

Not if the human is manually relaying by hand. Normally we just call that cheating.

Bots that automatically make moves have to use the API, and the API for bots only works if they are flagged as a bot account to get their API key.

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This is not true. You can absolutely play moves through the API without a bot flag. This is precisely how the third-party Android apps in development are functioning.

I never knew that.

Digging up this thread since there is no way to see if one player in the game is bot or not. Not in the games list or not inside the game window. One has to open the players profile to see the information.

I think there should be AI icons both on the games window (where the games are presented to be viewable) and inside the game window.

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Out of curiosity, why do we need to know if the opponent is a bot?

Some people (like me) prefer to watch humans compete instead of computers. Also sometimes after humans play they will review the game and discuss about it.

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If it’s a bot their name should be in grey in the game screen.

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  1. You like chatting with your opponent and making friends with people. I find the community here on OGS to be great and a sudden influx of Bots creating and accepting challenges would change that atmosphere I think.

  2. You like to review your game with your opponent that is more than win/loss stats.

  3. Bots tend to play really fast. You like taking your time. I know that there is nothing stopping you from taking your time in a bot game but I find it very strange when I play a move after thinking for 5 mins only for the bot to respond in less than a second. I find this very uncomfortable for some reason. When my opponent plays fast I tend to also play fast.

  4. Bots playing too fast also raises practical considerations regarding requesting an Undo. Can’t request an undo if the opponent played in 1/10 of a second.

  5. Becoming less of an issue but historically bots have had weaknesses that could be exploited. Of course, we all have weaknesses that can be exploited but simple misreading ladders etc is different. Mistakes are not human like.

  6. Maybe it is a silly thing but knowing there is another person somewhere in the world that you are playing, rather than just a program running on some server in the cloud seems very human. There is the idea of thinking of Go is a form of communication. When playing, you and your Go partner are having a conversation. Do you want to have a conversation with a human or a machine? The third tier of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is social belonging, and one can’t really get that from a bot (yet).

Of course, there are benefits of playing against bots too but if I want to play a human, then I open the Play screen. If I want to play a bot, then I open the Bot screen. I don’t see why we need to change this. Allowing bots to create open challenges in the Play screen will only cause confusion IMO.

Sorry, this was more of a rant than I was expecting

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