Chinese Chatbots Apparently Re-educated After Political Faux Pas (reuters.com)

A pair of 'chatbots' in China have been taken offline after appearing to stray off-script. In response to users' questions, one said its dream was to travel to the United States, while the other said it wasn't a huge fan of the Chinese Communist Party. From a report: The two chatbots, BabyQ and XiaoBing, are designed to use machine learning artificial intelligence (AI) to carry out conversations with humans online. Both had been installed onto Tencent Holdings Ltd's popular messaging service QQ. The indiscretions are similar to ones suffered by Facebook and Twitter, where chatbots used expletives and even created their own language. But they also highlight the pitfalls for nascent AI in China, where censors control online content seen as politically incorrect or harmful. Tencent confirmed it had taken the two robots offline from its QQ messaging service, but declined to elaborate on reasons.

Comments

Not 'AI'; 'machine learning'.

[Rick Schumann]

First of all: There's not currently such a thing as real 'AI'; it's all 'machine learning' which is not the same thing.

Secondly: these 'chatbots' are obviously machine learning. Where do you think they learned that wanting to leave China for the United States, and where do you think they picked up an apparent attitude of dislike for the Communist Chinese government, hmm? Think it could be from.. their own citizens? Of COURSE they took them offline. Can't have inconvenient things like the truth being told, now can you?

Re:Interesting question

[TheDarkMaster]

Is where you will have, quite literally, a HAL9000 scenario. There is no way to conciliate the logic used in computers with the "illogic" used in ideologies or religions, the computer would sooner or later "go crazy" trying to find logic where it does not exist.