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Microsoft's Cortana Doesn't Put Up With Sexual Harassment (hothardware.com)
MojoKid writes: Not long after Apple unveiled its Siri personal assistant to the world, it took very little time before people began asking her outrageous questions, sometimes inappropriate or just humorous, if for no other reason than they just could. When creating Cortana, Microsoft was well-aware of what its digital assistant was going to have to deal with, so, believe it or not, it was designed in such a way to handle abuse in a specific manner. According to Microsoft's Deborah Harrison, who is one of eight writers for Cortana, a chunk of the earliest queries were about Cortana's sex life. A specific goal was to make sure Cortana wasn't treated as a subservient. If she's insulted, she doesn't apologize or back down. She handles it with tact, so as to reduce the chance of further abuse.
We're talking to a fucking machine. There shouldn't be any sexual harassment when talking to a machine.. It's not like you're actually calling a person and asking them about their sex life.
The damn thing better be subservient. It's my phone and I can abuse it if I want to. Honestly I can't see myself propositioning my phone but the first time the thing comes back at me with a put down it's not long for this world. As an aside I remember a guy that came into my shop TDY and he had just gotten a new iPhone with Siri when all that started at Apple. One of our guys asked it where the nearest whorehouse was as a joke and it brought up a list of escort services. We all laughed but 3 of the guys came in the next week with new iPhones. An accurate answer to any question should be the standard.
A good AI (outside of some sort of drama-like context imposing constraints on what works) should be configurable, to have as much or as little subservience as you want. That's what ownership means.Your computer should do whatever you want it to.
Blah blah Slashdot + read article blah blah.
But really, the summary is pretty much the article. There's no actual content.
All they discuss is the loose intention. No examples, discussion of how that intention was tested or even challenges in design.
This is barely a sidebar article in a checkout-lane magazine.
What is this, a weakly veiled invitation to discuss sexist issues de jeur? I'm cool with that, I just don't appreciate the tactic - this article is mega-weak.
Alright - I'll give you a better one:
Question: How many angry feminists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Answer: That's NOT funny.
Discuss.
Microsoft falls on its face again. Cortana isn't a woman. It's a piece of software, and it damn well better be subservient.
If the AI in Cortana were any good it would be able to predict which of its users are most likely going to engage in harassing behaviors.
And then what?
So, what is an "inappropriate question" when you're asking a fucking COMPUTER?
Computers don't have feelings.
They don't have personality.
They aren't people.
I can't insult my table, nor a rock.
When will this SJW crap stop?
-Styopa
"Will this get me fired from my job?"
"We're talking to a fucking machine. There shouldn't be any sexual harassment when talking to a machine."
"The damn thing better be subservient"
"Cortana isn't a woman. It's a piece of software, and it damn well better be subservient."
"It's a machine. If it doesn't do what I tell it (within its design parameters), it's broken."
"This is how social justice warrior feminists destroy companies, by imposing their own sense of self-hatred on their customers."
"When abuse becomes a personal challenge. Cortana, you ignorant slut."
"Cortana is the one guilty of sexual assault!" (this one is worth quoting in full but I'll refrain from doing it here)
"If you are going to give a machine a sex you are implying things about that sex and one of those things is that the sex is an object rather than a person with a mind" (I know your post was trying to be more nuanced that this, but.. whoa what??)
"Challenge Accepted. Millions of teenage boys just said "Ha, I'll prove you wrong"."
Anyone concerned about endemic sexism and harassment in the software industry need only reference these initial comments to make their case for them. Really, nothing more needs to be said. If I ever wondered how much adolescent, out of control sexism there really is in the industry, well now I know. And it's not just the statements themselves, but the apparent vehement anger with which these males are reacting to something that I thought might be rather sensible and probably necessary. (I wasn't sure before, but now I KNOW this kind of programming is necessary...)
This makes a pretty convincing case for why so few women have any interest in joining the software development "club".
And yeah, I know you all probably think "you're a moron, you missed the part where I feel this way about MACHINES not WOMEN." But you know what? I see through you and I can tell it's not just that.
That is true, but also used to describe some pretty ridiculous people. People who genuinely consider themselves in the same league as people who put themselves in the way of bodily harm to advance the civil rights movement back in the day. Except they are just posting stuff on the internet and sometimes fighting against purely imagined circumstances, and sometimes launching into campaigns of harassment against the stray random person who makes even a slightly insensitive twitter message, saying they deserve to be fired and blackballed in the industry, and all sorts of things.
It's the campaigns of harassment that I find particularly unsettling, as they don't take any effort in understanding the perspective of the person who offended. For example a young man I knew in high school would say some pretty intolerant things about gay people. Ultimately it was an expression of his difficulty coming to grips with being gay himself, and fortunately he found the right friends and support to get him through it. I shudder to think if he had to go through that today in a more public forum and earn the wrath of some of these people, going after him relentlessly and trying everything they can figure out to further ruin his life moreso than how screwed up he was by his predicament.
Some of these people are more bully than 'educated caring intelligent people', doing what they can to feel better about themselves first and foremost, thinking they are doing 'good'.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
SJWs are just the icing on the cake of this mess.
You have to remember that Win10 (and specially cortana) is actually actively spying on your every move and giving your shit to microsoft to sell to whatever pay first, and microsoft is pretty much trying to force this spyware on you with their every strength, even downloading the OS behind your back via updates and going to a point where they're actually making both intel and AMD make CPUs that only work with win10.
Does nobody realize who "Cortana" was named after?
You know, Master Chief's naked floating blue digital assistant? It seems like the majority of the public doesn't, because I pointed this out to a friend who bought a new Windows 10 laptop (against my recommendations) and he was quite surprised that they named their Siri rip off after a character who looks like that (her latest in-game model for Halo 4 is pretty curvy).
Furthermore, I'm really surprised nobody brings up the fact that the same character has been turned into a genocidal maniac hell bent on controlling or destroying ALL OF HUMANITY in the latest game, Halo 5. Great advertising there guys, really makes me want to run an operating system where she's been embedded in it so deeply you can't actually remove her without crippling other portions of the OS.
Now, don't get me wrong because I think all humans should be treated with respect (regardless of gender), but this is a lot like a woman going out and getting a boob job, then wondering why all the men are staring at her chest. 343 specifically designed Cortana to have that particular over-sexualized look in Halo 4, and now Microsoft is trying to back peddle on that because people are starting to realize who "Cortana" actually was. I don't normally say this, but because of that, I think "Cortana" (let's not forget it's a goddam machine) should deal with it.
If Microsoft didn't want it to have to respond to those kinds of requests, they shouldn't have named it after a naked blue floating super busty and extremely curvy digital character.
I would guess someone in middle management that decided they needed a "stake" in Cortana and suggested that corporate image issues may result from people playing with a bot that way. Thus probably just a pathetic attempt to be noticed and climb the ladder.
That sort of shit is why I prefer working for a smaller place instead of a large company where what seems like a large number of people do nothing but attend meetings.
Joking aside, I'm trying to figure out why this is even necessary. Who gives a shit if somebody is sexually abusive to a chat bot? The chat bot certainly doesn't give a shit.
Because interactions in virtual reality may influence non-vertual participants in what they percieve to be socially acceptable, leading to a real-world spillover.. This is the same argument as to why anime-style virtual child porn should be discouraged, in that such can encourage non-virtual expression of socially unacceptable behavior in susceptible persons.
Similar to the arguments concerning video game violence, the matter is not settled and so merits both discussion and research.
I think it's a very reasonable thing to do in order to discourage behavior that is universally looked upon as bad. Yes, being abusive to software does no harm to the software, but if you can have your chatbot, or whatever you want to classify Cortana as in this scenario, act in a way that does not fuel this behavior (which let's face it would only be done by idiots), without compromising the functionality of the tool, then I support Microsoft's efforts.
Our communication with each other is coarsening at a fast enough rate as it is.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
There are also times when its correctly applied, [...]
Even if we accept that as a correct application, that doesn't really characterise the vast majority of uses of the term, especially in the comments section on Slashdot.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
Lewd conversation to a crude AI bot is "universally looked on as bad"? Oh, I see what you're doing...
Your premise is that sexual harassment of real humans is bad. We are agreed on this.
Your hand-waving bullshit is that talking to a chat bot somehow "fuels" sexual harassment of real people.
You thus equate something harmless with something immoral and often criminal.
That's not even thought crime - it's pre-crime. It's an unsubstantiated hypothesis about a causal relationship. "I think people who do A are more likely to do B, so we'll ban A."
Here's the thing: Cortana isn't a human. It barely mimics the dullest human in responding to the requests it's designed for, let alone actually experiencing the emotions of a real human. To create some sort of etiquette around this chatbot is an insult to actual humans, who bear very little resemblance to Cortana. By asking people to treat Cortana as if human, even when this comparison is patent nonsense, you're not elevating the status of Cortana - you're lowering the status of humans.
You might as well ask people to treat a banana as a human because they share about half the DNA. "Treat bananas like humans!" - if your premise is that humans+bananas are so similar - becomes equivalent to, "Treat humans like bananas!"
Cortana is nothing like a human. Humans should be treated with the utmost respect. Cortana should be treated like a simple piece of computer software, and whether I want to use emacs' Eliza mode to write the next best seller or copy-paste LOL DONGS a thousand times is of no consequence.
Sorry but this is as asinine as saying the video game Doom makes people into mass murderers.
Until you mention that men have problems too and then they turn really nasty.
One of the selling points for Cortana, for the Android at least, is "Have a little fun in your down time — ask anything, get jokes, and much more". Sex is something that is a lot of fun to a lot of people. Treating sex-based queries as harassment is immature. If I want to flirt with Cortana, I'm not hurting anyone. If I'm someone who lives a particularly open sex life, and I want to talk to Cortana about sex in a mature fashion, I'm not hurting anyone. So, why exactly is an AI allowed to have a 'sense of humour', but not a 'sex life'?
Having a sex drive is a normal, healthy thing. Wanting to explore that sex drive is also a normal, healthy thing. As long as complete consent between all adult *living* parties is observed, then I fail to see how anything can be construed as harassment.
I'm not suggesting that Cortana be programmed with the ability to have in-depth erotic conversations or cybersex. I am stating that treating sex and sexuality as a hostile act (i.e. "harassment") is wrong.
I think it's a very reasonable thing to do in order to discourage behavior that is universally looked upon as bad. Yes, being abusive to software does no harm to the software, but if you can have your chatbot, or whatever you want to classify Cortana as in this scenario, act in a way that does not fuel this behavior (which let's face it would only be done by idiots), without compromising the functionality of the tool, then I support Microsoft's efforts.
Our communication with each other is coarsening at a fast enough rate as it is.
You are talking about a thought crime. Your "reasoning" can be used to criminalize all sorts of other accepted and even necessary behaviors.
Here are some other thought crimes along those same lines:
-viewing porn, creating porn, selling porn, talking about porn or just about anything else.
-any other simulation of anything that has an analog in real life, kicking a stuffed animal around the yard for example
-using memories of others from the "spank bank"
-using a completely fictional character you make up in your own head for the "spank bank"
-having a voodoo doll (fake or "real")
-having or using a punching bag
-any type of video game that uses violence, especially those where players go against other human players
It's up to Microsoft to decide how Microsoft's stuff behaves, however tacking on "should" to the reasoning is outrageously ridiculous and a great example of the stupid SJW stuff people have been complaining about on Slashdot. Your little utopia doesn't exist, and nobody WANTS it to exist. Go away.
- People are tired of the SJW shitposting.
I'm tired of dickheads using the term SJW at every possible opportunity as if it's an automatic argument winning statement.
If you are unable to discuss the nuances of human behaviour without reverting to standard name calling, then please go somewhere else.