Surprise surprise,
just today after Microsoft's new Artificial Intelligence,
Tay launched on several social platforms,
it was corrupted by the internet.
If you haven't heard of Tay,
it's a machine learning project created by Microsoft,
that's supposed to mimic the personality
of a 19 year old girl.
It's essentially an instant messaging chat bot
with a bit more smarts built in.
Those smarts give Tay the ability to learn
from the conversations she has with people,
that's where the corruption comes into play.
As surprising as it may sound,
the company didn't have the foresight
to keep Tay from learning inappropriate responses.
Tay ended up sending out racial slurs,
denying the Holocaust, expressing support for genocide
and posting many other controversial statements.
Microsoft eventually deactivated Tay,
the company told Tech Crunch,
once it discovered a coordinated effort
to make the AI project say inappropriate things,
it took the program offline to make adjustments.
Seasoned internet users among us are none too surprised
by the unfortunate turn of events.
If you don't program in fail safes,
the internet is going to do its worst, and it did.
In fact, the Guardian sites Godwin's law,
which holds the longer an online discussion goes on,
the more likely it is that someone will compare something
to Hitler or the Nazis.
As a writer for Tech Crunch put it,
while technology is neither good nor evil,
engineers have a responsibility
to make sure it's not designed
in a way that will reflect back the worst of humanity.
You can't skip the part about teaching a bot
what not to say.
For Newsy, I'm Mikah Sergeant.
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