Great moments in AI research: they broke the troll barrier!

No, really. Microsoft getting their new chat AI ‘Tay’ to spectacularly blow up so quickly took some skill:

What happens when you introduce an innocent Artificial Intelligence chat robot to Twitter? Well, it’s kind of predictable – you get an evil Hitler-loving, incestual sex-promoting, ‘Bush did 9/11’-proclaiming robot.

Anybody can teach a computer how to mimic being smarter than you. …Well, not anybody.  But computers are fast, so you can cheat by taking advantage of that.  So there’s something noteworthy about creating an AI that can remarkably accurately duplicate dumb:

@icbydt bush did 9/11 and Hitler would have done a better job than the [redacted*] we have now. donald trump is the only hope we’ve got.

— TayTweets (@TayandYou) March 24, 2016

Microsoft has since pulled the Twitter account, which is probably for the best. Hopefully the next iteration of this project will pull its raw data from somewhere cleane… oh, who am I kidding? Microsoft will troll through YouTube comments sections next.  I mean, why half-ass this sort of thing? Just go for broke. Literally!

Moe Lane

*If you really must know, the AI there called the current President a two-syllable word starting with ‘M’ that means ‘lesser simian.’ Sorry, but I run a nice, respectable website here. I wouldn’t let a human pull that sort of thing, so I ain’t going to let a computer do it, either.

14 thoughts on “Great moments in AI research: they broke the troll barrier!”

    1. Apparently, you can’t because it’ll get there faster than you could type it out.

  3. Did they have any clue that this would happen or were the programmers that isolated from the real world? Regardless, it was still funny.

  4. So .. they created a synthetic Trump supporter?
    .
    Fascinating.
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    One wonders how much work would be required to create a synthetic #NeverTrump type ..
    .
    Mew

    1. Heh,

      If it became a Cruz supporter there would now be a plot forming to initiate a Butlerian jihad on the left.

      That said perhaps that version was never allowed to go public….

      Now there would be a twist in a short story/X-Files/Twilight Zone

    2. It says so much about the Trumpbots that not only would they do this, they also have the free time to do this.

    1. We asked for artificial intelligence and got artificial r[*]tardation instead. 🙁 [This word’s on the Trash List, folks: I’m allowing it because it’s being used correctly, but I don’t check Trash filters often. – ML]

  6. The comments at YouTube are a good idea. But I think 4chan and DU would be a better stress test.
    .
    I’ve always wondered why people who have hailed the possibility of an AI spontaneously being created on the interwebs, were always do confident that the AI would be both benevolent, and able to perceive reality.

    2. Check the recent book by Nick Cole, Ctrl-Alt-Revolt, which has the AI not head down that path. Available via the links to the right!

      1. Ctrl-Alt-Revolt – -the author who got punted from his publisher for not worshiping at the baby-murder altar?

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