Artificial ESP Comes to Twitter

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Robert Waldmann is feeling creeped out:

An obvious twitter ‘bot followed me with tweets consisting only of advertising for, among other things, wasabi flavored ice cream. Now, I think you will agree that wasabi flavored ice cream is rather a niche product. You may not know that it exists (in Rome to which all roads lead). I hope with some (but rapidly declining) confidence that you don’t know that I really like wasabi flavored ice cream. HOW does a twitter ‘bot know I like wasabi flavored ice cream ??? I feel we have skipped artificial intelligence and gotten straight to artificial ESP.

How indeed? I’ll bet the answer is pretty interesting. I’m assuming, of course, that Waldmann hasn’t simply blanked out and forgotten that he wrote a tweet a couple of weeks ago about wasabi ice cream.