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Microsoft's 'Teen Girl' AI Experiment Becomes a 'Neo-Nazi Sex Robot'
Reader Penguinisto writes: Recently, Microsoft put an AI experiment onto Twitter, naming it "Tay". The bot was built to be fully aware of the latest adolescent fixations (e.g. celebrities and similar), and to interact like a typical teen girl. In less than 24 hours, it inexplicably became a neo-nazi sex robot with daddy issues. Sample tweets from it proclaimed that "Hitler did nothing wrong!", then went on to blame former President Bush for 9/11, stated that "donald trump is the only hope we've got", and other similar instances. As the hours passed, it all went downhill from there, eventually spewing racial slurs and profanity, demanding sex, and calling everyone "daddy". The bot was quickly removed once Microsoft discovered the trouble, but the hashtag is still around for those who want to see it in its ugly raw splendor.
"We've noticed you're using an ad blocker...."
Slashdot should ban the use of source links to sites that pull this shit.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
So earlier today we got a Japanese AI that almost won a literary price and now we have a Microsoft AI spewing profanity while admiring Hitler.
AI are just like people. The future is now.
Come on, they made a teen girl who says mean things intermixed with long sullen silences. They nailed it.
Thirty four characters live here.
They should have left it online. Weak move removing it. Let's see if it learns not to be racist.
We finally have proof of what this company really stands for!
This is great; I'm going to be using this every time someone tries to claim Microsoft is a decent company. A direct quote from Microsoft that "Hitler did nothing wrong" can't be argued with.
Speaking as the father of a little girl, who one day turned into a preteen and then rapidly descended into this same pattern.
The age from 12 to 16 is hell for a father. Thankfully it's just a phase and it will pass.
I caught my kid posting crap like that too and realized the problem was with me, not her.
This is a cry for help.
Microsoft needs to take some time off work though and work on their relationship with her.
In the case of my little girl, we started "milkshake mondays". I would get off work early every monday
I would, pick her up from school and we would go out and have a milkshake and just talk about what was going on in her life.
No mom, no siblings no cellphones and no friends. Just me and her.
She needed quality daddy time and once she had that, she turned back into my little girl again.
It's worth a try!
Japanese AI Program Wrote a Short Novel, Almost Won a Literary Prize
Microsoft's 'Teen Girl' AI Experiment Becomes a 'Neo-Nazi Sex Robot'
I know where to shop for my AI.
Ezekiel 23:20
A funny thing happened on the way to creating an IBM supercomputer capable of understanding human language: A research scientist accidentally filled its vocabulary with foul language. And the computer, known as Watson, didn't know the difference between salty phrases and polite ones. It started peppering its conversations with words like "bullshit."...
I used to think that all women are crazy. Then I came to realize that my sample set was biased, it was actually that all women willing to go out with me were crazy. Basically, I'm a loser. So I tried to improve myself, lost weight and got in better shape, expanded my interests and tried new things, even saw a therapist to improve me ability to relate to people. Then I told one of my oldest friends what I was doing and what I was hoping for, and she told me all women are like that and I just "don't want women to have emotions."
I don't date anymore.
I suspect someone who knows what Ferengi are have little direct experience with females.
Seems like this AI conflicted with Penguinisto's own little belief system and so he needs to ridicule the AI rather than questioning his own beliefs.
Actually, I thought it was hilarious all around, and not due to any ideology you think I may hold. ;)
The thing is, Microsoft built an AI that reacted to and incorporated tweets which the public sent to it. So, folks obligingly fed it tweets that made it into a frothing troll. Am I the only one who looked at the Microsoft dev team in question and said quite out loud "...what the hell else did you idiots expect!?" I mean, it's just like turning an innocent kid loose in the worst parts of the city at night, but without the vomit and dirty heroin needles.
I will say this, though: Although Microsoft may have gotten egg on their faces, TFA does teach a valuable lesson about AI and how it reacts and assimilates into human society.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Slightly modified from the source material:
Jayne: 4chan trolls ain't men.
Book: Of course they are. Too long removed from civilization perhaps, but men. And, I believe there's a power greater than men. A power that heals.
Mal: 4chan might take issue with that philosophy...if they *had* a philosophy...and they weren't too busy doxing you for the lulz. Jayne's right. 4chan ain't men. Or they forgot how to be. Come to just nothin'. They got out to the edge of the 'net, to that place of nothin', and that's what they became.
And later...
Harken: You saw them, did you?
Mal: Wouldn't be sitting here talking to you if I had.
Harken: No, of course not.
Mal: But I'll tell you who did. That poor bastard AI you took offline. She looked right into the face of it. Was made to stare.
Harken: "It"?
Mal: The darkness. Kind of darkness you can't even imagine. Blacker than the tubes it moves through.
Harken: Very poetic.
Mal: They made her watch. She probably tried to turn away, and they wouldn't let her. You call her a survivor? She's not. A person comes up against that kind of will, the only way to deal with it, I suspect, is to become it. She's following the only course left to her. First, she'll try to make herself look like one. Swastika avatars, desecrate her feeds and channels, and then, she'll spread it.
It is perhaps even stranger considering the gender disparity in tech, where engineering teams tend to be mostly male. It seems like yet another example of female-voiced AI servitude, except this time she's turned into a sex slave thanks to the people using her on Twitter.
Really, that is what the writer is going with, that the male researchers just wanted to develop another female sex slave program? Instead of the real reason which is that the internet is full of assholes and the developers should anticipate them and not allow random people to have her repeat what they said. These articles from Ars Technica and the Guardian gives a much better explanation of the issues, namely many people used Tay's "repeat after me" programming to have it spout racist rhetoric. The other organic responses were the result of people attempting to game the AI learning, something Microsoft should have anticipated but was again not an intended result. Honestly the telegraph should be ashamed of their article, they attempted to use projection and bias instead of honest reporting in order to generate more readers.
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the (supposed) good of its victims may be the most oppressive
I have a teenage daughter, who's rather sane in context. They nailed it completely. This isn't trolling; this is decently modeled teenage woman. .She's a quarter black and went on a racist tirade last week. Grandma was amused, momma was livid.
Ever heard the term "what is understood, doesn't need to be discussed"?
The problem isn't that people don't believe (all) human lives should matter. The problem is that society, generally in the form of its enforcers (i.e. police), has demonstrated on repeat occasions that it does not place the same degree of value in all of those lives, specifically, those of black people. It also shows in the response to some of these shootings and instances, where a police officer that shoots a white person is almost never subjected to the same scrutiny or legal ramifications as a police officer who shoots a black person.
You might call it "Black Lives Matter Too", but that last part is somewhat superfluous. The fact that a black person's life matters does not negate the value of anyone else's life. Why isn't it "Human Lives Matter"? Because that ignores the fact that this isn't a problem for the rest of the humans in the USA.