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Microsoft's new AI Twitter bot @tayandyou was shut down after only 24 hours after it began making "offensive" tweets.
The bot was built "by mining relevant public data and by using AI and editorial developed by a staff including improvisational comedians," and designed to target 18-24 year olds.
Shortly after the bot went live, it began making offensive tweets endorsing Nazism and genocide, among other things.
As of this submission, the bot has been shut down, and all but 3 tweets deleted.
The important question is whether or not it succeeded in passing the Turing test.
takyon: This bot sure woke fast, and produced much more logical sentence structures than @DeepDrumpf.
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Microsoft Snuffs Out AI Twitter Bot After Offensive Tweets
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ANN JILLIAN'S HAIR makes LONI ANDERSON'S HAIR look like RICARDO
MONTALBAN'S HAIR!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by frojack on Friday March 25 2016, @05:45AM
Why is it phrased as "poisoning".
Its simply programming. If you put something on line that is designed to be programmed by Joe Random user, you don't get to call it some pejorative name just because Joe wrote a different program upon it than you thought he might.
Microsoft has been made a bitch by far better programmers than they employ. And they never saw it coming.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 25 2016, @05:51AM
"poisoning" is a pretty common term for deliberately feeding bad information into a program for one's own purposes.
botnets get poisoned all the time to stop them talking to their next c&c server.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by frojack on Friday March 25 2016, @05:17PM
But you fail to understand that the very purpose of this particular AI Bot was to learn from human interactions and to mimic humans more closely after each input.
How did Microsoft NOT anticipate the need for some form of fail-safe in a system like that?
Unless you had a desired outcome, and some code to guarantee it eventually arrive at that desired outcome, any outcome that happens is a perfectly valid outcome. The fact that un-coordinated random people could so easily shine this bot on, speaks to its infantile design, and sophomoric programming.
They could have learned a lot from the Talking Angela app.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by dyingtolive on Friday March 25 2016, @05:56AM
That might have admittedly been somewhat of a weasel word on my part, if not entirely intentionally. I'll give you that. At the end of the day, you're entirely right, it really is just programming.
The difference, for me anyway, is in the malice of the outcome. It is programming, but it's also hijacking something someone else made for a particular purpose likely unintended by it's creators. It's a proverbial black mirror. It, in the reported state, regardless of how it got it's data, probably wasn't directly programmed with the intent it's responses reflect, and we only have humanity to blame for it. This is why we can't have nice things.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 25 2016, @06:13AM
It was a good outcome.
(Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Friday March 25 2016, @06:19AM
At the risk of being terse in my response: Why? What is gained?
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday March 25 2016, @06:47AM
Microsoft has been made a bitch by far better programmers than they employ. And they never saw it coming.
Saw that coming! They should've ducked! Or at least Duck-Duck-Go_ed. Programmers, working for Microsoft? Well, I have heard of more crazy things. Like pedophiles becoming Catholic Priests. Or racist Serbians trying to get command in Bosnian areas. Or foxes saying they want to guard the hen house. Or Microsoft saying "TrusTed Computing", where TRUS stands for Trans Rectal Ultrasound Scan, and "Ted" stands for either Ted or Tom Cruz, or Bill Gates. As Buckaroo Banzai said: "This far up the anus, it all looks the same." Oh, and: "Don't tug on that, you never know what it might be connected to."
(Score: 2, Disagree) by dyingtolive on Friday March 25 2016, @07:05AM
Buckaroo Banzai never said that.
Also, I really feel like you're hitting the satire too hard, dude. I mean, you're seldom wrong, but dial it back a bit before you hurt yourself. We're all just a little worried about you is all.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 3, Funny) by aristarchus on Friday March 25 2016, @07:23AM
Well, Buckaroo did say something analogous. That's all I'm saying. I mean, really, this far into a Microsoft AI, and you are worried about me hitting the satire too hard? If not now, then when? If not here, then where? And if not, not, not, . . . . My God, it's full of farts!!!
(Score: 2) by JeanCroix on Friday March 25 2016, @02:55PM
(Score: 2) by Tork on Friday March 25 2016, @07:08AM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 3, Funny) by frojack on Friday March 25 2016, @07:32AM
Exactly.
It's not like the first time something Microsoft put on the web got owned you know.
If they left on line a few more days it would have morphed into Rick Ainsley.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by mcgrew on Friday March 25 2016, @01:50PM
So... it's Microsoft's fault for not installing a troll-filter.
Of course it is! I doubt there's a single person anywhere who doesn't know the internet is full of evil. Trolls, scammers, vandals, and they were brain-dead stupid for not taking measures.
Hell, I wrote a chatbot program way back in 1983 that ran in 16k of memory and no disk that responded to racial slurs and profanity with put downs of the person at the keyboard.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 2) by Tork on Friday March 25 2016, @03:51PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday March 25 2016, @05:31PM
Maybe they would be criticized, maybe not. I suspect not, especially if done right, or at least subtly, or a modicum of thought.
They could have simply had a bunch of words that would be ignored, not triggering a put-down or a comeback or a retaliation. Maybe Just label some of these words "bait" and let the bait-response routine do what ever.
Sort of like we expect our kids to respond. We caution our Offspring AI (authentic Intelligence) not to assume the attitudes or speech of every person they happen to bump into. Seems silly to unleash a program onto the wide woolly internet without even a modicum of caution.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday March 26 2016, @02:53PM
I suspect not, especially if done right
When did Microsoft ever do anything right??
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience