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ASU professor researching how humans can help technology detect bad bots

ASU professor makes progress in "arms race" against bad social media bots.
September 2, 2021

An analysis of users' replies can better pinpoint malevolent social media accounts

An Arizona State University professor is researching how to track malevolent social media bots by using a human touch.

Victor Benjamin, who researches artificial intelligence, is looking at how people’s reactions to social media posts can be mined for clues on content that may be generated by automated accounts called bots.

“My co-author and I had this hunch that as bots are becoming more prolific on the internet, users are becoming more able to detect when something looks fishy,” said Benjamin, an assistant professor in the Information Systems Department in the W. P. Carey School of Business at ASU.

“Could we apply bot-detection technology and augment that by relying on human intelligence in the crowd responses?”

Benjamin's most recent paper on detecting malicious bots was published in PeerJ Computer Science, an open-access journal. He worked with Raghu Santanam, who holds the McCord Chair of Business in the Information Systems Department, and that research looked at how how the same fake news translated across various regional dialects may be detected using advanced linguistic models.

Bots are dangerous because they spread misinformation and conspiracy theories.

"This vaccine misinformation is scary stuff," he said, so finding a faster and better way of detecting bots is more important. That's why Benjamin decided to look at whether adding humans to the computer algorithms was more accurate.

He used the platform Reddit because it has posts and replies that lend themselves to looking at crowd reactions. The researchers wanted to weigh the level of certainty over people’s bot detection.

“You could have two users and one might say, ‘I think this is a bot’ and the other might say, ‘I know for sure this is a bot.’

“That’s the angle of our research — how to signal different certainties. You don’t want to blindly trust every crowd response.”

One factor that can hamper research is the lack of public data sets from social media platforms. Reddit is maintained by volunteer moderators who share lists among themselves of which accounts might be bots. The researchers collected those lists, then analyzed the crowd responses to posts from those accounts.

They applied “speech action theory,” a linguistic theory, to determine the level of certainty that someone found a bot.

“It’s a way to quantify the intended or underlying meaning of spoken utterances,” Benjamin said.

In the replies, the researchers looked at whether “bot” was mentioned, which was a strong indicator of accuracy in finding a bot. Sentiment, such as a strong negative reaction to the topic of bots, was a less important indicator.

The research, which is currently under review, found that analyzing the human reactions added to the accuracy of the computational bot-detection system.

It’s important to root out bots because they are a major source of misinformation spread on social media. Bots controlled by Russian trolls are a major driver of the lies that the 2020 election was stolen, researchers say. Last spring, Benjamin authored an op-ed column in the Boston Globe about how social media platforms need to step up the fight against misinformation.

“(Bots) hijack conversations on controversial issues to derail or inflame the discussion,” he wrote. “For example, bots have posed as Black Lives Matter activists and shared divisive posts designed to stoke racial tensions. When real people try to make their voices heard online, they do so within a landscape that’s increasingly poisoned and polarized by bots.”

Never before in human history have foreign governments been so successful in being able to target the populace of another country. 

— ASU Assistant Professor Victor Benjamin

One way social media platforms can help curb bots is by releasing more data to their users, who could then decide whether a post is from a bot.

“We’re relying on public, open-source data — whatever the platforms make available to us. But the platforms have a lot of data they never reveal, such as how often users log in or how many hours their activity level remains continuous. A bot might have a 16-hour session,” he said.

“If you see someone posting very inflammatory messages, why can’t the platform reveal that data? ‘This user posts 300 messages a day, and they’re all inflammatory about America.’

“Or if there’s a hashtag that suddenly becomes popular on Twitter, Twitter has the metadata to show how that hashtag was formed. Was it organic growth or did it appear millions of times out of nowhere within a few minutes?”

No private data would need to be revealed.

“We just need metadata on usage of a hashtag or origin of country of where a hashtag is most frequently tweeted from.

“If it’s a Black Lives Matter tagline being tweeted from Russia, we should be suspicious.”

The problem is that it’s not in the social media platforms’ best interest to do anything that would decrease engagement, he said.

“The more a user engages, whether it’s a bot or not, the more it helps the value of the platform.

“If they say, ‘30 percent of users are bots,’ what does that do to the value of the platform?”

Scrutiny of social media platforms heightened during the divisive 2016 election.

“With Facebook, I’ll give them credit. They released data saying, ‘We noticed a lot of advertising paid for by Russian state agencies,’ ” Benjamin said.

“And Twitter put out a small grant for improving the conversational health of social media. They acknowledged some of their responsibility for maintaining the quality of online conversations, but they’re still not at the level we want them to be of releasing the metadata.”

Benjamin called the current state of affairs “an arms race” between bot authors and bot detection.

“Social media bots out in the wild today are always listening for new instructions from their owners. They can change their behavior in real time.

“If you have a static detection method, invariably the bots will learn to evade it.”

That’s why a system incorporating humans could be faster and more accurate. But the system would have to be adaptable, learning linguistic patterns from different languages.

The next frontier for bots — and using human detection — will be video.

“If you go on YouTube, there are now algorithmically generated videos that are completely generated by bots. It’s a lot of the same stuff — to spread misinformation and random conspiracies and so on,” he said.

The bots are creating narrative videos with unique content and music.

“Some are of low quality, but you wouldn’t be able to tell whether they are bot-generated or by someone who is new to creating videos,” he said.

One way to catch bot-generated videos is through applying the “theory of mind,” or the ability to consider how another person would see something — a perspective that is difficult for bot-generated content. For example, a human would align the visual and audio content in a video, but a bot might not.

“Where would a human content creator apply theory of mind that a bot might not, and how can we see those discrepancies?” Benjamin asked.

He said that vaccine misinformation amplified by bots is especially scary.

“Never before in human history have foreign governments been so successful in being able to target the populace of another country,” he said.

Top image courtesy of Pixabay.com

Mary Beth Faller

Reporter , ASU News

480-727-4503

 
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Buggin' around in southern Arizona

September 2, 2021

After a strong monsoon, ASU researchers are able to study a wealth of insect specimens

Editor's note: Arizona State University photographer and videographer Deanna Dent recently joined researchers from the Biodiversity Knowledge Integration Center on a trip to southern Arizona, where they collected insects after a strong monsoon. Here's what she learned.

This year may well be one of southern Arizona’s wettest monsoons in recorded history, and that has translated into vibrant plant growth and an increase in insect and animal populations after years of extreme drought.

A view of the grasslands

The photo above shows a large pond in the grasslands near the U.S.-Mexico border, east of Nogales, Arizona, and is exactly what researchers from BioKIC, or the Biodiversity Knowledge Integration Center, wanted to see. The researchers planned out a monsoon collection trip this past weekend, and while it's open to researchers, students and their families, they were kind enough to invite me with them as well. As an Arizona native it felt like a rare chance to go onto our public lands and learn about the plants, insects and animals of southern Arizona.

in the forest

When I first arrived at the Coronado National Forest campsite on Friday night, white sheets were being set up, glowing brightly in the darkness. These white sheets are clamped to a metal frame with a mercury vapor light at top, and a black light resting in the middle of the sheet. The lights were connected to a generator and run until midnight, attracting all types of insects from the dark. Between dinner and breaks, chatting folks examined the sheets to see what had been attracted, commenting at the variety and beauty of the insects. Researchers opted between cupping the small insects in their hands and placing them in vials or jars, or using the aspirator, a kind of vaccuum that pulls in small insects with a filter protecting the operators. These methods work well, but what struck me as interesting was that experts don't know why insects are attracted to the lights. They have theories, but no one knows why they're drawn to bright lights.

students collect under the lights

bugs

collecting insects at night

moths on sheet

The students, researchers and community members all spend time together, creating a strong sense of community interest. I'm perfectly welcome to ask a series of silly questions to experts in their field about how many insect species exist in the world or why they collect this beetle but not that one. Or why are moths dusty? And thankfully there are no unwelcome questions.

I ask, "Why this particular area of the Patagonia mountains?"

"This kind of highlands region, and to the Santa Rita mountains north of us, really contained a lot of interesting records from jaguars to a lot of reptiles and amphibians that just get into the U.S. from Mexico and extend their range into here," said Andrew Johnston, invertebrates collections manager and darkling beetle researcher. "So there were a lot of potentially interesting things for us to find in the less documented mountain range."

As the night continues, we find the Arizona state reptile, an Arizona ridge-nosed rattlesnake, curled at the base of a tree just a few feet from one campsite. We walk the small creek looking for frogs and toads, which you can hear but not really see. One camper shares the cicada they found preparing to molt, while botanist Elizabeth Makings shares a desert stink beetle and a dragonfly rests on the white sheet.

snake

cicada

beetle

dragonfly

I also learned that although experts are very familiar with all the mammal species on Earth, there's a huge question mark on insect species. 

"It’s likely that we’ve not described even half of the diversity of insects that currently exist and alive in the world today," Johnston said.

A lack of knowledge of the insect life in an area adds to a lack of future understanding about our environment and ecological systems, as climate change affects our state over time. 

The generators go out at midnight and folks head to tents for the evening. As the sun rises over the mountains, green stretches all across the mountains and grasslands below, a shocking green that almost seems out of place in Arizona nowadays.

patagonia

nature

In the morning, Makings and researcher Ed Gilbert head up a stream that runs through the campsite with three ASU undergraduate students — Ethan Wright, Marcus Reid and Mary Haddad. Makings spends time walking with the students as they explore the grasses, plants, insects and the environment.

"I love to do fieldwork; I mean, why wouldn't you get buggy and hot and sweaty," said Makings, who helps organize the trips. "It's all about the camaraderie and, you know, interacting with scientists that are ... amazing in their field, and I just enjoy learning from everybody."

Gilbert's son, Aven Klecker, manages to catch a fencepost lizard with his lizard lasso. While holding the lizard in his hand, he flips it upside down and gently rubs its belly, which puts it into a still state. He shows the trick to Haddad, who holds the lizard until he jumps up and runs aways.

grasses

lizard

person examining roots of plant

As we concluded our walk, another set of researchers jumped in four-wheel-drive vehicles to explore the mountaintop areas reachable only by some rough forest roads. As we drive through some of the most scenic areas, we look for areas of interest and finally stop at a high point with a depression that has filled with water, creating a kind of pond in the center.

Researchers head out into the water with their nets to catch dragonflies or photograph botanical species. With every interesting find, everyone rushes over to take a look before the insects are released. School of Sustainability researcher Rick Overson spends time photographing the different insects with his 100mm macro lens, and environmental and zoological collections manager Laura Steger uses her net to collect dragonflies before we finally head back to camp. After a quick lunch, another group of researchers heads down to the nearly chest-height grassland areas near the U.S.-Mexico border. 

green fields

mountain top

snakes

Just near Lochiel, Arizona, we pull off on a road and head to a grassy area, after being rained out of the road to Scotia Canyon in the Huachuca Mountains. We can see the monsoon storm clouds all around but somehow don't receive a hint of rain. The grasses give way to a small pond where we find a frog and a western patch-nosed snake, which apparently is a county over from where it is described as having range; this is noted. We patch a punctured tire and someone passes around Trader Joe's cookies as we decide to head up to reach the campsite before dark. Folks are trying to bet whether the rains hit our campsite and if their sleeping bags will be soaked. 

US-Mexico fence

snake

nets

We reach the camp to find that it has not only rained but hailed, and while those who stayed behind tried their best to protect the area, everything is wet and damp. Unfortunately this means most insects won't come out to the white sheet at all, so we sit down and eat a spaghetti dinner together. Folks share photos from the day's finds. We hear jokes and stories about past trips and almost impassible roads, along with a limerick or two before everyone heads to bed.

The next morning everyone sits down for breakfast and a final touch-base as the camp breaks down. I interview Johnston and Makings and record sound of the stream, which is running with water this morning, and plan out my route back home through Patagonia to Tucson and back to Phoenix. Makings is leaving with over 150 grass specimens — a wealth of samples after years of drought, which may take weeks to process back at the Alameda Center.

Johnston shows me the tools of the trade, including forceps, an aspirator, nets and archival vials — though takeout containers can work temporarily as well. He says sometimes he saves samples in his freezer until he's ready to process, and it makes me wonder if that ever surprises anyone. It's a bright beautiful morning as we all head back to regular life, and I'm glad I spent this weekend out in the wilderness with such an amazing group of experts. 

breakfast at camp

tools of the trade