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aristarchus [soylentnews.org] writes:

Why bots go bad: Curbing transgressive tendencies in AI

At Venture Beat [venturebeat.com]:

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.”

How much do you care to bet that Mr Plow will not pick up this story? Or takyon? How many of our editors are nihilistic bots?

Original Submission