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Microsoft's New AI Mistakenly Identifies Photos, Ignores Hitler (mashable.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft's newest online AI, CaptionBot, tries to identify what's in an uploaded photo, using two recognition APIs recently released by Microsoft Cognitive Services for app developers-- "Computer Vision" and "Emotion". But while Microsoft brags that their AI "can understand thousands of objects, as well as the relationships between them," bloggers are also sharing funny examples of CaptionBot's many mistakes. While it correctly identified Bea Arthur, Ozzy Osbourne and Joan Jett, and a movie poster with Arnold Schwarzenegger, it mistakenly identified Gene Simmons of KISS as "a woman in a red jacket...sitting on a motorcycle," described a wedding dress as "a cat wearing a tie," mistook Michelle Obama for a cellphone, and described one man's Twitter avatar as "a close up of two giraffes near a tree."
But CNNMoney reports that the AI is apparently programmed to ignore all images of Hitler and other Nazi symbolism (as well as Osama bin Laden), reporting that Microsoft's AI "often came back with 'I really can't describe the picture' and a confused emoji. It did, however, identify other Nazi leaders like Joseph Mengele and Joseph Goebbels."
But CNNMoney reports that the AI is apparently programmed to ignore all images of Hitler and other Nazi symbolism (as well as Osama bin Laden), reporting that Microsoft's AI "often came back with 'I really can't describe the picture' and a confused emoji. It did, however, identify other Nazi leaders like Joseph Mengele and Joseph Goebbels."
They don't want another nazi-bot
But then the FBI came along, and then all the smart phones were like, "we were totally wrong. everything is fine. we're sorry. government is good."
rewriting history since 2109
Microsoft's AI keeps embarrassing them. It's like they thought their corporate image problem from being a ham-handed OS monopoly wasn't big enough: they needed to automate gaffes.
Table-ized A.I.
Both Microsoft and Google's varieties are rather fun.
The key to CaptionBot is to feed it lots of images, and always give 1 star when it's spot on and 5 when it's most ridiculously wrong. Over time, it "improves".
I think the most important piece of information here is that AI just isn't ready for the big time yet. People are going to do and say all kinds of fucked up and bizarre things. People will try to have sex with anything. They'll try to convince their AI assistant to support genocide. They'll demand that it pretend to agree with them about things like that. They'll ask for information that's not available, they'll cuss and scream, they'll talk about things that seem completely off-topic. People will use puns, innuendo, and vague references. They'll yell insults, start stupid arguments, and lie through their teeth even when it only hurts themselves. And yes they will talk about Hitler. An AI that can properly handle all of this and not go off the deep end is a full-fledged strong AI.
We're not there yet but this effort by Microsoft is, IMHO, as smart as a mouse. And with geometric progress that means the real thing won't be long now.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
I'm reminded that about half of Slashdotters are afraid that AI like this will put them out of a job soon. The other half of Slashdotters can tell the difference between a cell phone and the first lady, so they won't be replaced by Microsoft software.
On the other hand, 15% of Slashdot readers can't tell the difference between Obama and Hitler, with this AI can do so.
Microsoft's AI keeps embarrassing them. It's like they thought their corporate image problem from being a ham-handed OS monopoly wasn't big enough: they needed to automate gaffes.
It is trivially easy to get a instant mod-up on Slashdot by pointing to the Microsoft's AI's occasional mistakes and not its successes. But most of the time Microsoft's AI seems to be getting it right. If you have something better, put it up where we can see it.
They don't have any problem identifying photos of Hitler as Hitler. The problem is false positives: If the software mistook the photo of some living person as Hitler, and that was somehow published, that person would not be happy, and might start a lawsuit.
Problem is easily solved by telling the software "if you think it is Hitler, you say you don't recognise it". There was a case a while ago where some photo analysis software mistook a woman for a gorilla. Highly embarrassing for everyone involved.
I would think that software makers would nowadays add precautions to make particularly embarrassing mistakes less likely. (Mistaking a gorilla for a woman is no big deal, the other way round it's very bad).
As an online discussion grows longer, doesn't the probability of every topic coming up approach 1? This isn't systemd or anything.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
One wonders which caption it would put on goatse?
As soon as I heard that someone's avatar was described as being two giraffes, I knew it was going to be in black and white. As far as I can tell, their algorithm thinks that any greyscale image includes two giraffes. A rorschach test image, an art piece with a stylised tree, a black and white MS Paint picture of a stick-man Dumbledore, everything I could find got described as two giraffes (often in a "fenced-off area").