Science AMA Series: I’m the MIT computer scientist who created a
Twitterbot that uses AI to sound like Donald Trump. During the day, I
work on human-robot collaboration. AMA!
Abstract
Hi reddit! My name is Brad Hayes and I’m a postdoctoral associate at
MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL)
interested in building autonomous robots that can learn from,
communicate with, and collaborate with humans. My research at MIT CSAIL
involves developing and evaluating algorithms that enable robots to
become capable teammates, empowering human co-workers to be safer, more
proficient, and more efficient at their jobs. Back in March I also
created @DeepDrumpf, a Twitter account that sounds like Donald Trump
using an algorithm I trained with dozens of hours of speech transcripts.
(The handle has since picked up nearly 28,000 followers) Some Tweet
highlights: https://twitter.com/DeepDrumpf/status/705480367239659520
https://twitter.com/DeepDrumpf/status/705480113018707969
https://twitter.com/DeepDrumpf/status/705465462721744896 I’m excited to
report that this past month DeepDrumpf formally announced its
“candidacy” for presidency , with a crowdfunding campaign whose funds
go directly to the awesome charity “Girls Who Code”. DeepDrumpf’s
algorithm is based around what’s called “deep learning,” which
describes a family of techniques within artificial intelligence and
machine learning that allows computers to to learn patterns from data on
their own. It creates Tweets one letter at a time, based on what letters
are most likely to follow each other. For example, if it randomly began
its Tweet with the letter “D,” it is somewhat likely to be followed by
an “R,” and then a “A,” and so on until the bot types out Trump’s
latest catchphrase, “Drain the Swamp.” It then starts over for the
next sentence and repeats that process until it reaches 140 characters.
The basis of my approach is similar to existing work that can simulate
Shakespeare. My inspiration for it was a report that analyzed the
presidential candidates’ linguistic patterns to find that Trump speaks
at a fourth-grade level. Here’s a news story that explains more about
Deep Drumpf, and a news story written about some of my PhD thesis
research. For more background on my work feel free to also check out my
research page . I’ll be online from about 4 to 6 pm EST. Ask me
anything! Feel free to ask me anything about DeepDrumpf Robotics
Artificial intelligence Human-robot collaboration How I got into
computer science What it’s like to be at MIT CSAIL Or anything else!
EDIT (2:30pm ET): I’m here to answer some of your questions a bit early!
EDIT (3:05pm ET): I have to run out and do some errands, I’ll be back at
4pm ET and will stay as long as I can to answer your questions! EDIT
(8:30pm ET): Taking a break for a little while! I’ll be back later
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