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I built something like that more than a decade ago to identify alter-egos in an online game from in-game chat. It was reasonably successful and I thought about
by Zak 4y ago
I built something like that more than a decade ago to identify alter-egos in an online game from in-game chat. It was reasonably successful and I thought about commercial applications for it, but ultimately decided most things that could be used for are creepy or evil.
I remember hearing DARPA was actively seeking research in the field around that time. In principle, I'm not absolutely against my software being part of the chain of events that leads to the decision to kill someone, but I don't trust the US government (or, realistically, anybody else) to independently verify an identification made by such a system.
I'd be surprised if the three letter agencies aren't using something at least as good as what I wrote by now.
- copperx 4y agoHow sophisticated was your system? It sounds like you used cutting edge NLP techniques at the time.
- Zak 4y agoI'd describe it as fairly simple. It was just a classifier where each account name was a category: there was no fancy NLP. It used a single feature type and an algorithm from a well-known family. I don't want to say what either was lest I further proliferate the technique. I cross checked using statistically improbable words, which helped confirm or exclude weak matches.