It might be rare to see people building Watson-based projects. IBM Watson is an amazing tool for AI Developers, it's not just all about creating Bots, there are different solutions you can provide with the help of IBM Watson. Just if you do not know what IBM Watson is: Watson is a question-answering computer system capable of answering questions posed in natural language, developed in IBM's DeepQA project by a research team. There's IBM Watson Health, IBM Watson Studio and other resources in IBM Watson. Oh well, this article isn't all about IBM Watson - it's about an IBM Watson based Project, Aurora.

What is Aurora?

Aurora is an anti-cyberbullying bot built with IBM Watson and Integrated with JavaScript. I created this project because I was bullied on the internet last year from members of a tech communities. As a result of this, my mind towards folks in tech communities changed. A teenager shouldn't get bullied on the internet, it has a very negative role in victims' lives. Nothing ever went well for me since I got bullied. For this project, tech meets with social impact.

In February 2021, I joined a tech community of teenagers, with the intention of sharing resources or helping Developers just like me get jobs, make a difference, create projects, etc. All these did not happen because I got bullied by some of these people. I became friends with some of them, and at some point, I noticed they were toxic folks. Later on, I had to mute their WhatsApp statuses, because it was just not right for a 15-year-old to see their posts. Just a few months later, I unmuted their statuses just to see if they’ve changed what their contents were all about. At that point, social media was becoming so irritating to me, so I had to take a 2-week break off social media.

Immediately I returned to social media, I started seeing these folks using unacceptable phrases like “mad”, “stupid”, “crazy”, and sort of that (taking to me via their WhatsApp statuses). I’m still pretty much confused because I don’t know what I did to them. I lost a lot due to all these things, I had a very low self esteem because these words weren’t coming from just one person, it was from a group of people. I started hearing sort of stuff I’ve never heard in my entire life. Honestly, cyberbully is something a teenager should never experience! At this point, I’m still trying to get things right with myself.

A few months after completing high school - In December 2021, I came across Gitanjali Rao's Project, Kindly (also an anti-cyberbullying project). I was super interested in creating something just like that. Then I thought I could create something like it just with IBM Watson since I really loved the technology. After all these, I started building the project on the 5th of December, 2021.

I created a CSV file where I uploaded the intents, and sort of that. There is nothing much about this project - just that it helps get insultive phrases and sentences then it sends an error to the user that whatever they're saying is unacceptable. For example 👇🏽:

That's just how this project works. You can check it out on my Portfolio at the right bottom corner to use this. So far, I got a nomination from the International Children's Peace Prize for this, and they're so many folks who have used this already. Feedbacks will be appreciated. Thanks for taking out your time to read this, I cannot wait to hear from you! 🤩