Tag Archives: communicating

Roblox Prohibits Children from Communicating with Unknown Adults Following Legal Actions

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The online gaming platform Roblox is set to restrict interactions between children and adults, as well as older teenagers, starting next month. This decision comes in light of a new lawsuit that alleges the platform has been exploited by predators to groom children as young as seven.

Roblox, known for popular games like “Grow a Garden” and “Steal a Brainrot,” boasts 150 million daily players. However, it now faces legal action claiming that its system design facilitates the predation of minors.

Beginning next month, a facial age estimation feature will be implemented, allowing children to communicate with strangers only if they are within a certain age range.


Roblox claims it will be the first gaming or communication platform to enforce age verification for chats. Similar measures were enacted in the UK this summer for adult sites, ensuring that under-18s cannot access explicit content.

The company likened its new approach to the age structures found in schools, differentiating elementary, middle, and high school levels. The initiative will be launched first in Australia, New Zealand, and the Netherlands, where children will be prohibited from having private conversations with unknown adults starting next month, with a global rollout planned for early January.

Users will be classified into categories: under 9, 9-12, 13-15, 16-17, 18-20, or 21 and older. Children will only be allowed to chat with peers in their age group or a similar age range. For instance, a child whose age is estimated at 12 can only interact with users under 16. Roblox stated that any images or videos used during the age verification process will not be stored.

“We view this as a means to enhance user confidence in their conversations within the game,” stated Matt Kaufman, Roblox’s chief safety officer. “We see it as a genuine chance to foster trust in our platform and among our community.”

This lawsuit emerges alongside growing concerns from family attorneys regarding the “systematic predation of minors” on Roblox. Florida attorney Matt Dolman mentioned that he has filed 28 lawsuits against Roblox, which has rapidly expanded during the pandemic, asserting that “the primary allegations pertain to the systematic exploitation of minors.”

One of the more recent lawsuits, filed in U.S. District Court in Nevada, involves the family of a 13-year-old girl who claims that Roblox conducted its operations “recklessly and deceptively,” facilitating her sexual exploitation.


The alleged incident involved a ‘dangerous child predator’ who posed as a child, developed an emotional connection, and manipulated the girl into providing her phone number and engaging in graphic exchanges. The manipulator then coerced her into sending explicit photos and videos.

The lawsuit claims that had Roblox implemented user screening measures prior to allowing access, the girl “would not have encountered the numerous predators that litter the platform,” and if age and identity checks had been conducted, the abuse could have been prevented.

Other recent cases in the Northern District of California include a 7-year-old girl from Philadelphia and a 12-year-old girl from Texas, both of whom were reportedly groomed and sent explicit materials by predators on Roblox.

“We are profoundly concerned about any situation that places our users at risk,” a Roblox spokesperson remarked. “The safety of our community is our highest priority.”

“This is why our policies are intentionally more stringent than those on many other platforms,” they added. “We have filters aimed at protecting younger users, prohibit image sharing, and restrict sharing personal information.

“While no system is flawless, we are continually striving to enhance our safety features and platform restrictions, having launched 145 new initiatives this year to assure parents that we prioritize their children’s safety online.”

“One platform’s safety standards alone aren’t sufficient; we genuinely hope others in the industry will adopt some of the practices we’re implementing to ensure robust protections for children and teens across the board,” Kaufman commented.

Bevan Kidron, UK founder of the 5Rights Foundation, advocating for children’s digital rights, stated: “It’s imperative for game companies to prioritize their responsibility toward children within their services.

“Roblox’s announcement asserts that their forthcoming measures will represent best practices in this sector, but it is a bold statement from a company that has historically been slow to tackle predatory behavior and granted unverified adults and older children easy access to millions of young users. We sincerely hope they are correct.”

Source: www.theguardian.com

Chatbots Perform Best When Communicating in Formal Language.

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Your approach to chatting with AI may matter more than you realize

Oscar Wong/Getty Images

The manner in which you converse with an AI chatbot, especially using informal language, can significantly impact the accuracy of its replies. This indicates that we might need to engage with chatbots more formally or train the AI to handle informal dialogue better.

Researchers Fulei Zhang and Zhou Yu from Amazon explored how users begin chats with human representatives versus chatbot assistants that utilize large language models (LLMs). They employed the Claude 3.5 Sonnet model to evaluate various aspects of these interactions, discovering that exchanges with chatbots were marked by less grammatical accuracy and politeness compared to human-to-human dialogues, as well as a somewhat limited vocabulary.

The findings showed that human-to-human interactions were 14.5% more polite and formal, 5.3% more fluent, and 1.4% more lexically diverse than their chatbot counterparts, according to Claude’s assessments.

The authors noted in their study, “Participants adjust their linguistic style in human-LLM interactions, favoring shorter, more direct, less formal, and grammatically simpler messages,” though they did not respond to interview requests. “This behavior may stem from users’ mental models of LLM chatbots, particularly if they lack social nuance or sensitivity.”

However, embracing this informal style comes with challenges. In another evaluation, the researchers trained an AI model named Mistral 7B using 13,000 actual human-to-human interactions, then assessed 1,357 real messages directed at the AI chatbot. They categorized each conversation with an “intent” derived from a restricted framework summarizing the user’s purpose. Unfortunately, Mistral struggled with accurately defining the intentions within the chatbot conversations.

Zhang and Yu explored various methods to enhance Mistral AI’s understanding. Initially, they used Claude AI to transform users’ succinct messages into more polished human-like text and used these rewrites to fine-tune Mistral, resulting in a 1.9% decline in intent label accuracy from the baseline.

Next, they attempted a “minimal” rewrite with Claude, creating shorter and more direct phrases (e.g., asking about travel and lodging options for an upcoming trip with “Paris next month. Where’s the flight hotel?”). This method caused a 2.6% drop in Mistral’s accuracy. On the other hand, utilizing a more formal and varied style in “enhanced” rewrites also led to a 1.8% decrease in accuracy. Ultimately, the performance showed an improvement of 2.9% only when training Mistral with both minimal and enhanced rewrites.

Noah Jansiracusa, a professor at Bentley University in Massachusetts, expressed that while it’s expected that users communicate differently with bots than with other humans, this disparity shouldn’t necessarily be seen as a negative.

“The observation that people interact with chatbots differently from humans is often depicted as a drawback, but I believe it’s beneficial for users to recognize they’re engaging with a bot and adjust their communication accordingly,” Giansiracusa stated. “This understanding is healthier than a continual effort to bridge the gap between humans and bots.”

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Source: www.newscientist.com

The Future of Communicating with Animals: Why It Could Soon Be Possible

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Do you think you understand your pets well? What if they could actually talk to you? Veterinarian Jess French Researchers believe that humans may soon be able to communicate with animals, with potential for it to be a significant technological advancement in the near future.

In an interview with BBC Science Focus at the Cheltenham Science Festival, French explained that while humans primarily rely on visual cues, many animals have stronger senses like smell and hearing. She mentioned that artificial intelligence (AI) could be trained to understand animal communication using data and footage of animal interactions.

French envisions a future where this technology could revolutionize how we interact with our pets, potentially changing the way we take our dogs to the vet. While it may not translate a dog’s thoughts into human language, it could help pick up on signals that humans might miss, acting as a more silent version of Dr. Dolittle.

French believes that AI could help bridge the gap between animals “speaking” and humans understanding them, especially in species like whales, bats, parrots, and elephants. This technology can identify and analyze animal noises faster and more accurately than a human could.

She also mentioned that AI could enhance our ability to detect sounds outside the range of human hearing, like bat calls, and even signals in smells beyond what humans can perceive. This advancement in technology could help us better communicate with various animal species.

French highlighted that cats might already be communicating with humans in subtle ways, and AI could help in deciphering their signals. Cats, like other animals, could benefit from AI-powered communication, enabling humans to understand their behaviors and needs better.

She emphasized the importance of using this technology to learn more about animals worldwide, even if it means hearing messages we may not want to hear, such as the impact of human actions on animal populations.

About our expert: Jess French is a veterinarian, zoologist, and presenter known for her work on children’s television shows like BBC’s CBeebies. In addition to her media work, French has authored educational books for children, with her latest publication being The Animal Body Book: An Inside Guide to the World of Animal Anatomy.

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Source: www.sciencefocus.com

Here’s How a spacecraft on the edge of interstellar space is communicating with Earth

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NASA stays in touch with its space probes, like Voyager 2, through the Deep Space Network (DSN), which consists of radio receiving antennas located in three different spots globally. These locations include Goldstone in California, Robredo near Madrid, and Tidbinbilla near Canberra.

Voyager 2 can only be observed from the southern hemisphere, making the DSS-43 antenna at the Australian site the sole antenna on Earth that can communicate with the spacecraft.

Currently positioned more than 20 billion kilometers from Earth, Voyager 2 has a transmitter that outputs approximately 23 watts (around eight times more powerful than a typical cell phone). By the time a radio signal reaches Earth, it has only about one-tenth of this power.

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To detect this extremely faint signal, DSS-43 and Voyager 2’s transmitters use narrowband, high-frequency signals that are highly directional and transmitted at slow bit rates.

Advanced signal processing techniques, minimal interference, and the fact that radio signals can travel through space with little obstruction allow DSS-43 to overcome long distances.

The antenna can transmit a signal to Voyager 2 at a much higher power level (up to about 400,000 watts) than it receives. This strong output can be easily picked up by the spacecraft even at far distances.

This piece (by Elouise Pace) addresses the question, “How can we communicate with Voyager 2, which is billions of miles away?”

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Source: www.sciencefocus.com