Twitter auto tweets to counter global warming

Washington, Nov 10: An Australian software developer has taken on to micro-blogging site Twitter to stop people from spreading incorrect information about global warming.

Nigel Leck has created the Twitter account @AI_AGW, also known as Turing Test, that automatically reply to tweets that contain set phrases associated with global warming skepticism.

Leck said his program includes an algorithm that is supposed to learn false positive phrases, and it will get more accurate as it response to more tweets.

The phrase 'climate change denier' is one of hundreds that Leck's creation scans Twitter for. His account's responses are drawn from an extensive database of countering phrases with links to more accurate information on global warming.

Leck used to write the responses himself, but he now extracts many of them from a university source, which he refused to identify.

However, the program is not full proof, as it doesn't always work as it is supposed to.

Since it is a chatbot program that automatically replies to a set of canned phrases, it doesn't know how to pick up sarcasm or know when the tweet is using one of those key phrases to reject the global warming deniers' logic.

ANI