We're deep into election season in America, and despite the feeling that the 2016 campaign began at the dawn of time, there are still 236 days left before the election actually happens. As good, concerned citizens, invested in the fate of democracy, there are a lot of good, productive things we can do, like show people how to register to vote or fact-check candidates' science claims. It's also important to avoid doing something unproductive, like spending all day arguing about politics online in comments sections. To skip that last part, maker Simone Giertz created a robot that argues online for her:
“Let the Comment Assistant™ fight your internet battles for you,” Giertz writes in the video description, “A sample of the logical arguments the Comment Assistant™ is capable of: DFGJKNABEHOÖägk'åD^KFIål'kuähiostöeagrluefykdtsrDY4579UEHOTI”
Years ago, we got rid of our comments section at Popular Science, noting at the time that “Simply including an ad hominem attack in a reader comment was enough to make study participants think the downside of the reported technology was greater than they'd previously thought.” This was before we had something like Comment Assistant™ to instead just do all our arguing for us!
It's a great robot. It frees up time spent typing and thinking, and it turns what could be an emotionally fraught experience into a machine-types stream of garbage. If we could, we'd give Giertz a round of applause for it. Fortunately, she already built herself an applause machine that can do it instead.
Great work. Watch the full Comment Assistant™ video below. It's like the gif, but with Sound™:
