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.

Comments

Sexual Assault

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't wait for the first case of sexual assault of an "AI." Will this get me fired from my job?

Re:Sexual Assault

[ArmoredDragon]

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.

Re:Sexual Assault

[Pseudonym]

Cortana is modelled on real-world personal assistants. They spent a lot of time interviewing PAs to understand the job that they have to do. One of the things which came out of the research is that PAs are assistants, not servants.

If it helps, consider that not putting up with your shit is one way of keeping you on track.

Re:Amazing

[LaurenCates]

Okay, fine. Here's a hypothetical situation for you.

Last week, a coworker openly insulted me in a meeting last week. No consequence will befall said coworker for reasons that aren't relevant.

I go home and see his face on my 80-lb punching bag. I spend an hour beating on my punching bag because I'm frustrated.

Do you think that me using my punching bag for an avatar of a real person is going to make me more abusive to other people? Or do you think that maybe it channels that energy into doing something constructive because the limited amount of energy I had to spend on the matter has been expended on the punching bag?

Now, one could argue I have anger issues. One could also say that if I took to my punching bag at 5:00 pm when the insult I took was at 9:30 am and didn't punch (or in any way abuse) ANYONE during the day means that if I DID have anger issues, that's I'm perfectly able to control it and not abuse people.

So, then, what's the difference? Because it's sexual and not violent that the people who think in sexual terms are likely to do the opposite than my strategy for dealing with my frustrations? Or because sexuality is so sacred that it can't be misused with inanimate objects for fear of misinterpreting it in the "real world"? Or because people dwell on a situation so much that once they expend their energy on it once, they unhealthily obsess about it by re-creating the situation where any person will lie down and take it? And even worse, that these people are the norm?

I'd say yours is the bugaboo with sexuality. At least moreso than those people who you would claim to "abuse" Cortana.