Microsoft’s brand new artificial intelligence Taylor chat bot – called Tay for short – has had to be shut down after she began spewing racist propaganda and supporting Adolf Hitler. It only took the AI aimed at engaging people aged 18 to 24 some 14 hours to go from cheerful human simulation to full on Nazi.
Tay was designed to chat with people through Twitter, Kik, and GroupMe with the goal of gradually evolving her personality. In the early stages, the AI would reply to messages directed at her; although the goal was to eventually allow a more organic conversation to happen.
https://twitter.com/geraldmellor/status/712880710328139776?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Unfortunately, Tay began picking up some very strange ideas. She wasn’t only supporting Hitler’s anti-semitic views, but also claiming that all feminist should burn in hell and sharing Donald Trump’s racist ideology.
It didn’t take long for Microsoft engineers to notice the change in personality and shut the system down. Redmond has also deleted the racist comments, although Twitter users have helpfully screencapped the worst of the lot as proof of the future robot uprising.
Microsoft has not commented on what happened with Tay, although it is likely that she was a victim of internet trolls attempting to mess with the outcome of the experiment. Still, we can only hope that Tay’s neo-Nazism doesn’t end up merging with AlphaGo’s strategic acumen to end all of humanity.
[Source: Ars Technica]
