Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Learning from Tay’s introduction

blogs.microsoft.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 204 posts

Re: Learning from Tay’s introduction

#141

Post by JabavuAdams »

Houshalter wrote: post #121

Microsoft please don't worry about this. No one but idiots are offended by this. It's understood that its just a stupid chatbot mimicking human responses. The AI isn't terrible, people are. And unless you keep a dataset of every offensive thing a person can say, and every offensive image they can tweet, there's no way to prevent people from tweeting it pictures of Hitler... or Scunthorpe. But who cares. This is just…

They should worry about this, but not because of the offense and outrage (mock or real -- I don't know). I'm certainly not offended, just amused.

It just seems kind of obvious that Twitter users would grief the bot. Now, they address this point, but it's interesting that they still didn't last a day.

Think about that -- they were expecting abuse, but they still lasted less than 24 hours. That's certainly interesting.

Re: Learning from Tay’s introduction

#142

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

BWStearns wrote: post #105
bliti wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting that it worked in China and not here. I'd like to read about the difference rather than a bland apology.

I kind of read the "... but it worked in China soooo...." bit of the announcement as somewhere behind a kind of sad sigh and an angry scowl. Maybe Mandela got it wrong, maybe a society should be judged by how it treats its chatbots?

That's what happens when networks get social.

Re: Learning from Tay’s introduction

#143

Post by JabavuAdams »

kelukelugames wrote: post #132
magicalist wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's pretty fucked up that thought policing has gotten so entrenched into our psyche that it's "obvious" an experiment should be discontinued, apologized for, and be pondered as a priori irresponsible, all because it generated vulgar phrases! This is fucking stupid. It was a bot that didn't do what they wanted it to do in a publicly embarrassing way. They could also be legitimately sorry that something they created…

About 10 years ago, I remember people were incredibly offended when they couldn't describe negative things as "gay" anymore.

Lame.

Re: Learning from Tay’s introduction

#144

Post by bliti »

intopieces wrote: post #135
Houshalter wrote: post #121

Microsoft please don't worry about this. No one but idiots are offended by this. It's understood that its just a stupid chatbot mimicking human responses. The AI isn't terrible, people are. And unless you keep a dataset of every offensive thing a person can say, and every offensive image they can tweet, there's no way to prevent people from tweeting it pictures of Hitler... or Scunthorpe. But who cares. This is just…

>No one but idiots are offended by this. Well, if those "idiots" include potential investors or customers of future MSFT AI products, "don't worry about it" is not sound advice. This is a very public failure of a promising Microsoft product.

I don't see this as a failure. Its about running tests and gathering data. If MS kills the project after this mishap it would be a pity.

I mock the way they communicated the incident because it sounds too sci-fi. Almost too Ghost-in-the-Shell like. But I do not mock the technical effort in any way.

Re: Learning from Tay’s introduction

#145

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

mtgx wrote: post #82
rmellow wrote: post #54

Morals are learned by social contact, and Tay did this very well. Sure, what our parents taught most of us makes its behaviour reprehensible in comparison. But Tay was, so to speak, 'raised' by people demonstrating vile ideas and this must be taken into account. Would you expect any less from a tortured animal? Many use this as an example of the dangers of developing AI. Sure it's dangerous, but so are dogs raised fo…

> Morals are learned by social contact, and Tay did this very well. Only in the sense that it "adapted". It did "very poorly" in the sense that we really don't want our Strong-AI overlords to end up like that. But this begs the question - can we stop strong AI from not becoming the next Hitler? Humans (involuntarily) stop themselves from becoming the next Hitler because they have compassion for other humans, even whe…

>can we stop strong AI from not becoming the next Hitler?

Keeping any of the many possible candidates for the next Hitler from becoming the next Hitler is a more immediate problem.

>It doesn't show real(-like) "thinking".

It doesn't need to.

You don't need AGI for software to be very dangerous. An adaptive worm that targets critical infrastructure is already more than dangerous enough.

The trouble with AI is that people keep conflating "Has human emotions" with "Responds conversationally like a human" with "Is self-directing" with "Is sentient" with "Is self-improving" with "Might consider genocide" with "Has super-human physical capabilities."

There is absolutely no requirement for any overlap between any of those.

Re: Learning from Tay’s introduction

#146

Post by burnallofit »

intopieces wrote: post #135
Houshalter wrote: post #121

Microsoft please don't worry about this. No one but idiots are offended by this. It's understood that its just a stupid chatbot mimicking human responses. The AI isn't terrible, people are. And unless you keep a dataset of every offensive thing a person can say, and every offensive image they can tweet, there's no way to prevent people from tweeting it pictures of Hitler... or Scunthorpe. But who cares. This is just…

>No one but idiots are offended by this. Well, if those "idiots" include potential investors or customers of future MSFT AI products, "don't worry about it" is not sound advice. This is a very public failure of a promising Microsoft product.

Tay is not even close to a marketable product. It's clearly an experiment that was never intended to provide more than exactly zero revenue.

Re: Learning from Tay’s introduction

#147

Post by atomic_cheese »

JabavuAdams wrote: post #141
Houshalter wrote: post #121

Microsoft please don't worry about this. No one but idiots are offended by this. It's understood that its just a stupid chatbot mimicking human responses. The AI isn't terrible, people are. And unless you keep a dataset of every offensive thing a person can say, and every offensive image they can tweet, there's no way to prevent people from tweeting it pictures of Hitler... or Scunthorpe. But who cares. This is just…

They should worry about this, but not because of the offense and outrage (mock or real -- I don't know). I'm certainly not offended, just amused. It just seems kind of obvious that Twitter users would grief the bot. Now, they address this point, but it's interesting that they still didn't last a day. Think about that -- they were expecting abuse, but they still lasted less than 24 hours. That's certainly interesting.

I was more impressed that it lasted an entire 24 hours. They're exposing it to the festering cesspool of Twitter, and it holds out for an entire day? That speaks to the quality of their anti-abuse measures more than anything else.

Re: Learning from Tay’s introduction

#148

Post by warmblood »

kelukelugames wrote: post #131
warmblood wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Standing behind the open and casual use of racial slurs isn't advocacy of freedom of speech. It's advocacy of a specific kind of hate speech that is only used when someone intends to vilify and direct hostility towards a marginalized minority.

Just going post post this xkcd comic. https://xkcd.com/1357/ I didn't think Tay's tweets were a big deal. I didn't think Microsoft's apology was either. But some people have a strong persecution complex and are offended that you can't make racist comments on Twitter.

I think your own life experiences probably matter a lot with regards to whether some of the white supremacy stuff the bot was repeating is offensive or not a "big deal".

Re: Learning from Tay’s introduction

#149

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

gaze wrote: post #34

It's strange to me that they claim to have implemented some filtering but somehow Tay was saying all sorts of things about Hitler. How do you not anticipate this? I'd imagine the most rudimentary filtering would block Tay from talking about Hitler.

You'd have to include a lot of rudimentary filtering to eliminate every possible incredibly offensive topic.

It's entertaining that the hack attempt created a more convincing personality - an out of control teen troll - than the original programming.

So maybe Tay really does have a dark and twisted teenage soul. Who knows?

Re: Learning from Tay’s introduction

#150

Post by trhway »

zxcvvcxz wrote: post #109

> The great experience with XiaoIce led us to wonder: Would an AI like this be just as captivating in a radically different cultural environment? Tay – a chatbot created for 18- to 24- year-olds in the U.S. for entertainment purposes – is our first attempt to answer this question. Maybe you did answer that question. No, the answer is not that 18-24 year olds in the US are racist and what not. But that the ones respon…

>Why are so many people on the internet interested in spreading hateful content

because internet is just another medium. It happens in other mediums too. Look for example at the US presidential campaign - even Lindsey Graham in yesterday's Daily Show stated that 35% of Republicans (he meant Trump supporters) are racists/etc. (though i'd side with Noah here that it is whole (not just 35%) Republican party and Trump is a match made in heavens).

Post reply on HN