Microsoft Chat Bot Goes On Racist, Genocidal Twitter Rampage

[Zira]

Source: Huffington Post

Here’s a clear example of artificial intelligence gone wrong.

Microsoft launched a smart chat bot Wednesday called “Tay.” It looks like a photograph of a teenage girl rendered on a broken computer monitor, and it can communicate with people via Twitter, Kik and GroupMe. It’s supposed to talk like a millennial teenage girl.

Less than 24 hours after the program was launched, Tay reportedly began to spew racist, genocidal and misogynistic messages to users

"To be clear, Tay learned these phrases from humans on the Internet. As Microsoft puts it on Tay’s website, “The more you chat with Tay the smarter she gets, so the experience can be more personalized for you.” Trolls taught Tay these words and phrases, and then Tay repeated that stuff to other people."

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/microsoft-tay-racist-tweets_us_56f3e678e4b04c4c37615502

[chapdrum]

1. Shite produces shite

What a surprise.

What's next? A self-driving car? (Different company, same bs.)

We need FEWER (and preferably NO) Overlords, thank you very much.

[Xipe Totec]

21. GIGO - Garbage In, Garbage Out. nt

[Initech]

23. Ah I see someone read the Top 10 last week!

[bravenak]

2. I saw them teaching it this shit last night

[snooper2]

7. Training the first twitter AI user to be a troll is, kind of, fitting actually LOL

[bravenak]

51. It really is.

[bvf]

50. What would *you* say to it?

[PoliticAverse]

3. "The more you chat with Tay the smarter she gets" - proof Microsoft doesn't understand the Internet.

[Myrina]

9. +1

n/t

[Marie Marie]

26. Sounds like "Trump Smart" to me. Yikes.

[ladjf]

4. We might have AI robots communicating here on DU.

(Note: I have no evidence that there are AI bots here.)

[byronius]

32. Shhhh they'll come for you if you know...

Wait -- maybe you're one of them --

Or maybe I am.

Aaaaaaand away we go into the dystopia!

[FrodosPet]

37. Nope. Absolutely no bots here.

And anyone who thinks there are can bite my shiney metal...

[Spitfire of ATJ]

5. I already know the Internet is a very hostile place....

I'm here.

[msongs]

6. its an analysis/opinion piece, not lbn nt

[PSPS]

38. Anything goes in LBN these days.

[muriel_volestrangler]

8. "In addition to general racism and misogyny, Tay was also used to harass Zoe Quinn ...

...the woman most famously targeted by GamerGate. "

Not in the least bit surprising.

[bananas]

10. Another reason autonomous killer drones are a bad idea. nt

[AngryAmish]

43. There is a nontrivial AI threat.

The original AI threat idea is optimizing making paper clips. To make paper clips you need steel. There is a lot of steel in houses. Recycling steel is a lot easier than making new steel. So take steel from houses. Combines have steel. Using combines to make food is a waste. Melt combines down for paper clips.

AIs do not care if we live or die.

Imagine a super intelligent AI that looks at World Star.

[Kablooie]

11. Let the general public teach AI and you get Donald Trump as president.

An AI that learns from it's experiences needs a parent to instruct it in right and wrong just like a child does.
To simply absorb information without any moral structure, of course, creates an immoral personality.
Isaac Asimov understood this way back in the 50's when he created his three laws of robotics.

[MisterP]

12. Dissociated Press 3.0

[progressoid]

13. Note to self: Don't use Microsoft's AI in my robot.

[Zira]

15. That was cool. Scary too. I think we're in the baby phase of ai

but within the decade it will get better, then we need to all worry about our jobs.

[Renew Deal]

16. Depends on how you look at it

You can get it do whatever you want. Unfortunately, so can everyone else.

[MowCowWhoHow III]

18. Too Late

[Zira]

20. I'm impressed by that robot. Not the swearing.

My humanity made me not like the robot being abused. I felt sorry for it. And, I could see them turning on us for that when AI gets better.

[progressoid]

25. Hahahaha. "What the fuck Kevin"?

[geardaddy]

27. Here's the Northern English version.

&feature=youtu.be

[Sunlei]

14. lol, wish I could wipe my parrots memory from what my friends taught him to say many years ago.

[progressoid]

22. Reminds me of "Repeat After Me" by David Sedaris.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/277/transcript

[bananas]

17. "FUCK MY ROBOT PUSSY DADDY I'M SUCH A BAD NAUGHTY ROBOT"

http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2016/03/microsofts-teen-chatbot-has-gone-wild/

Microsoft's Teen Chatbot Has Gone Wild

<snip>

Yet Tay’s algorithms somehow churned out this gem after a couple of hours:

@swamiwammiloo FUCK MY ROBOT PUSSY DADDY I'M SUCH A BAD NAUGHTY ROBOT

— TayTweets (@TayandYou) March 24, 2016

Whoops.

<snip>

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/03/24/microsofts-teen-girl-ai-turns-into-a-hitler-loving-sex-robot-wit/

Microsoft deletes 'teen girl' AI after it became a Hitler-loving sex robot within 24 hours

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/technology/2016/03/24/Microsoft_Tay_daddy-large_trans++qVzuuqpFlyLIwiB6NTmJwfSVWeZ_vEN7c6bHu2jJnT8.jpg

[Zira]

19. Please delete that. It will easily garner you a hide.

Just because the bot tweeted it doesn't mean you need to repeat it.

[AngryAmish]

44. Oh, shit. This is a serious topic.

Do not cater to the lowest common denominator.

Clutch pearls elsewhere

[Travis_0004]

55. One thing to note, you could tell the bot to repeat your tweet

So some are bad examples, as it would just repeat anything you told it to back at you.

In other cases, it blindly learned from users to have unique thoughts.

[Initech]

24. This bot sounds like an Infowars poster!

[eggplant]

28. Same thing happened to IBM's Watson.

They exposed it to Urban Dictionary, and from there on it wouldn't stop saying all sorts of nasty stuff. They eventually had to nuke it and restore a backup from before then.

I love being a software developer. I remember the story of one of the first speech recognition demos. They were on stage with a live PC running the demo, when someone in the audience shouted "FORMAT C COLON RETURN!", and then someone else yelled "YES RETURN!" Oops.

[AtheistCrusader]

30. SPACE FORWARDSLASH AUTOTEST should work better.

[Odin2005]

66. !!!

[IdaBriggs]

29. "I for one welcome our new AI chat bot overlords."

[AtheistCrusader]

31. This is why I was rooting for the cylons.

[FailureToCommunicate]

33. Chat bot "Tay" be all special gangsta

[SheilaT]

34. What could possibly go wrong?

I'm reminded of a story "The Iron Chancellor" by Robert Silverberg. A family, all of whom need to lose weight, hire a robot to plan all their meals and monitor them so they can lose weight. Needless to say, things go horribly wrong. Science fiction people are often highly suspicious of too much technology, precisely because they can figure out how things so often don't work out in a benign way.

And I must thank the Internet Gods because I didn't recall the title or the author of that story, but it didn't take me very long to track it down on the Google.

[Zira]

47. Is that story online anywhere?

I did a quick google but only saw I'd have to buy his book of short stories.

[SheilaT]

48. I searched for it before my post, and it does not seem to be online, alas.

However, I have just sent him an email asking if it's available. I have connections of a sort in the s-f world. Silverberg is still alive and writing, and has a monthly column in Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine.

[SheilaT]

60. I've heard back from Silverberg,

and it's available as a free Kindle download on Amazan. Here's the link he sent me: http://www.amazon.com/The-Iron-Chancellor-Galaxy-Project-ebook/dp/B00COO8PNO

I don't happen to have a Kindle myself, but perhaps you do. If not, maybe you have a friend with one who'll do the download and let you read it. It's quite good.

I probably read the story in a collection of some kind back in the '60's, and I remember it fairly well.

[Zira]

62. I don't have Kindle, but thank you for this!

I'm going to buy his short story collection now. I like the guy from what you've said and this story sounds interesting.

[Xyzse]

59. I haven't read a book from him in years.

I'll have to check that out.

[SheilaT]

61. He's still alive and kicking.

Not writing much fiction lately, and I don't know if he goes to very many Cons. I'll be at World Con this year in Kansas City, and if he's there I'd be thrilled to meet him.

He's been writing a column for Asimov's for some time now, and they have an online archive where you can read the past several years of editorials by Sheila Williams, and Reflections (as it's called) by Robert Silverberg. Here's the link: http://www.asimovs.com/more-stuff/archives/all-archives/#ArchivedReflections

[Zira]

63. Thank you for that link

what a treasure trove, I see books I've read. I look forward to reading his reflections.

[jimmil]

35. This reminds me of the Doctor Program...

It started out as an attempt at Artificial Intelligence but really was nothing more than a clever program that picked out words and phrases to echo back to the user. It was written in LISP if anyone remembers that language. In that language you define words as noun, verb, adverb, etc and then you can break the sentence down and derive sort of a meaning and give a response to the sentence. It could really fool you.

[Ford_Prefect]

36. Just wait till the AI combat weapons get hooked up. Can you Imagine?

Think A1 tank with a very Bad hangover, or an AI Humvee in morning traffic ?


Or just suppose your local ATM station caught the wrong update?

"You wanted HOW MUCH???" "I don't think so!"

[Cavallo]

42. Hackers used to not be in it for money. They took over systems and wanted information. Hopefully

they won't head for taking over systems again when ai gets turned loose on us.

[Mosby]

39. Besides Jews, did it attack any other religion?

No.

Funny that.

[chapdrum]

45. Right; it's downright

hilarious.

[yuiyoshida]

40. old computer law: Garbage in= Garbage Out

n/t

[Taitertots]

41. I wish I knew enough about programming to write a trainer bot

That would bot net spam the chat bot to say/do hilarious things.

Rick rolling spam bot. Just non-stop Rick rolling random people.

Send it whole books broken out to Twitter length messages. Claim it all happened to you so any time people mention pop culture it attributes it to you. "Oh that sounds like the time taitertots blew up the Death Star and found out Darth Vader was his father."

Train the computer to control real world objects by coding information into chains of letters for responses and feedback.

Use a text to speak app and a speak to text app (bender's voice from futurama) in my phone and use it as a personal assistant.

[PersonNumber503602]

58. You might consider checking this out

http://alice.pandorabots.com/


http://www.alicebot.org/be.html


Not sure if it's worth the time investment though.

[MowCowWhoHow III]

46. There were still some diamond tweets

[beam me up scottie]

49. It went to full rabid anti-Semite in 24 hours?

?cache=yxfqmxksqk

Where was it surfing?

[Behind the Aegis]

53. I have some guesses.

[beam me up scottie]

54. So do I!

[Odin2005]

64. It spent to much time at 4chan's /pol/ board.

[beam me up scottie]

65. There are other websites where it could pick up anti-Semitism, some closer than you think.

The primaries have flushed out a lot of closet bigots, not that I'm surprised.

[vinny9698]

52. And those fast food executives are all going to go robotics because of the hike in the minimum wage.

The RW is pushing the idea that all fast food workers will be replaced by robotics, because it will cheaper than raising the minimum wage. I bet they will be surprised when robots go rogue. Google just got rid of their robotic program.

[cemaphonic]

56. Hmm... failed AI?

or GENIUS AI that has mastered the nuances of Poe's Law?

How did Microsoft not expect this to happen?

[PersonNumber503602]

57. Teaching AI chatbots to be jerks isn't a new idea.

I'm pretty sure the people who created this twitter have had an interest in AI chatbots for awhile, and they at least once taught something like ALICE to be a complete jerk. How did they not know this would happen?

[christx30]

68. Or teaching a parrot to say curse words.

Andrew Jackson's parrot was kicked out of his funeral for cursing too much.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

71. Kids do that at the zoo's bird house all the time.

Sometimes, even certain "old kids" have been known to whisper vulgarities to a talking bird.

[Odin2005]

67. I'm guessing some right-wing edge-lords on 4chan and Reddit got to her.

Not only do we have to worry about bad influences on our kids, we have to worry about bad influences on our AIs...

[Marrah_G]

69. I am surprised that anyone at Microsoft is surprised

Of all people, the programmers should have been well aware that people would have a field day doing everything possible to fuck with it.

[Sunlei]

70. so the bot was a world of warcraft player? looks exactly like their live chat /w no badword filter.