Programmer Nigel Leck has written a program that detects arguments against climate change on Twitter, and automatically responds with appropriate information. The climate deniers are often unaware that they're not dealing with a human. This is just the latest in a long line of 'bots' -- computer agents designed to have conversations like a human. How do bots work, and can they fool a human into thinking they're real people? UWA linguist Daniel Midgley -- or a reasonable facsimile -- joins us on this week's Talk the Talk.
