WEBVTT

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Surprise surprise,

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just today after Microsoft's
new Artificial Intelligence,

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Tay launched on several social platforms,

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it was corrupted by the internet.

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If you haven't heard of Tay,

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it's a machine learning
project created by Microsoft,

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that's supposed to mimic the personality

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of a 19 year old girl.

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It's essentially an
instant messaging chat bot

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with a bit more smarts built in.

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Those smarts give Tay the ability to learn

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from the conversations
she has with people,

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that's where the
corruption comes into play.

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As surprising as it may sound,

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the company didn't have the foresight

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to keep Tay from learning
inappropriate responses.

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Tay ended up sending out racial slurs,

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denying the Holocaust,
expressing support for genocide

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and posting many other
controversial statements.

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Microsoft eventually deactivated Tay,

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the company told Tech Crunch,

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once it discovered a coordinated effort

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to make the AI project
say inappropriate things,

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it took the program offline
to make adjustments.

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Seasoned internet users among
us are none too surprised

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by the unfortunate turn of events.

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If you don't program in fail safes,

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the internet is going to
do its worst, and it did.

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In fact, the Guardian sites Godwin's law,

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which holds the longer an
online discussion goes on,

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the more likely it is that
someone will compare something

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to Hitler or the Nazis.

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As a writer for Tech Crunch put it,

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while technology is neither good nor evil,

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engineers have a responsibility

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to make sure it's not designed

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in a way that will reflect
back the worst of humanity.

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You can't skip the part
about teaching a bot

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what not to say.

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For Newsy, I'm Mikah Sergeant.

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[upbeat music]