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Why Bots Go Bad: Curbing Transgressive Tendencies in AI

posted by Fnord666 on Thursday January 04 2018, @05:27AM   Printer-friendly
from the Open-the-pod-bay-door,-HAL dept.

aristarchus writes:

At Venture Beat:

From Microsoft's accidentally racist bot to Inspirobot's dark memes, AI often wanders into transgressive territories. Why does this happen, and can we stop it?

Ispirobot seems very interesting.

Another example of AI gone awry is Inspirobot. Created by Norwegian artist and coder Peder Jørgensen, the inspirational quote-generating AI creates some memes that would be incredibly bleak if the source weren't a robot. News publications called it an AI in crisis or claimed the bot had "gone crazy." Inspirobot's transgression differs from Tay's, though, because of its humor. Its deviance serves as entertainment in a world that has a low tolerance of impropriety from people, who should know better.

What the bot became was not the creator's intention by a long shot. Jørgensen thinks the cause lies in the bot's algorithmic core. "It is a search system that compiles the conversations and ideas of people online, analyzes them, and reshapes them into the inspirational counterpoints it deems suitable," he explained. "Given the current state of the internet, we fear that the bot's mood will only get worse with time."

The creators' attempts to moderate "its lean towards cruelty and controversy" so far have only seemed "to make it more advanced and more nihilistic."

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by invis on Thursday January 04 2018, @06:23AM (3 children)

    by invis (439) on Thursday January 04 2018, @06:23AM (#617554)

    WTF are you on about? Politics to race to, erm, damned if I can work it out. Is there a point you're trying to make, or just trolling your own submission?

    Starting Score:    1  point
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  • (Score: 2, Flamebait) by aristarchus on Thursday January 04 2018, @06:40AM (2 children)

    by aristarchus (2645) on Thursday January 04 2018, @06:40AM (#617562) Journal

    Trolling the eds, who seem to need it more than most of us do. Please try to keep up!

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by bradley13 on Thursday January 04 2018, @07:51AM (1 child)

      by bradley13 (3053) on Thursday January 04 2018, @07:51AM (#617578) Homepage Journal

      Trolling the eds, sure. Right.

      When you stick to factual stuff, you often have interesting things to say. Even on politics, where I know we disagree.

      But sometimes, dear Aristarchus, you should pause for a minute and consider the possibility: Maybe, just possibly, you are just being a jerk.

      --
      Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.

      • (Score: 2, Flamebait) by aristarchus on Thursday January 04 2018, @08:01AM

        by aristarchus (2645) on Thursday January 04 2018, @08:01AM (#617584) Journal

        Tu quoque, mon amici! (Strange, for an American, living in Europe has not affected you at all. Are you sure you do not have parasites?)