Not the first time something like that happened.
en.wikipedia.org
Thank You. This is
not an AI issue. Quoting from the source:
Madhumita Murgia of The Telegraph called Tay "a public relations disaster", and suggested that Microsoft's strategy would be "to label the debacle a well-meaning experiment gone wrong, and ignite a debate about the hatefulness of Twitter users."
Reading this is depressing - why are people allowed to write into newspapers when they have no clue about the subject matter and their conclusion then simply is:
this is something we do not like, and therefore it must be the result of evil-doers.
They neither understand why it happens, nor (which would be more important) why they don't like it. Zero reflection.
(In order to understand the former, you would need to first understand
what actually happens, and in order to understand the latter, you would need to unravel your own brainwashing.)
Let's try to do better and do some rootcause-hunting.
What is the nature of a taboo?
Sigmund Freud wrote a lot about it, but I found that not so very helpful. What I recommend is Ivan Illich, 'Genus'. He investigates into taboos, spefically into gender-related taboos, and he finds that such taboos exist in every culture, but from culture to culture they vary greatly and can even be contradictory!
This is interesting, because then the actual content of the taboo does apparently not provide an evolutionary advantage, and the necessity lies somehow in the sheer existence of the taboo as such.
Let's check that out:
Historically (until the student revolts of the 60s), the most common stance in upbringing was authoritarian. That didn't work so well, and for a variety of reasons people didn't like it anymore, and so they came up with anti-authoritarian upbringing.
But that didn't work either.
So people figured that some kind of rules (or taboos) are necessary. But they frequently didn't ask why. ---
C.G.Jung describes a phenomenon he calls 'individuation'. That means basically the shaping of a personality, and it is something only humans do (animals don't).
In order to shape something, you need to apply some force onto it, you need some kind of energy. The personality needs to obtain such energy in order to develop.
Now as long as you do what you should and behave as you are told, actually nothing happens, and no energy comes into play. But if you question or break a taboo, then certainly reactions will happen, and psychological energy comes into play.
And that is the purpose of taboos. They do not exist to be adhered to, they exist to be questioned and tried, and thereby offer the ability to shape your own position.
So, after hippies had found the delicate stuff, like the assassins creed (nothing is true, everything is permitted) and the law of thelema (do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law. love is the law. love under will), people came to the conclusion that such doesn't work. Actually it does work. It does work excellently, only it requires grown-up people who already know who they are and what they want.
But instead of understanding this, people started to create new taboos, because they deemed them necessary - and they are just as pointless as the ones that were before, and just as fanatically pursued. (There is no technical difference between "kill the nazis" and "kill the witches".)
Finally now our nemesis appears in the shape of the AI. An AI has no notion of psychological energy, it cannot sense it by any means.
racism, sexism, antisemitism are useful for survival?
Did you misspoke, was this meant ironic, or what I miss?
So here is the explanation. Racism, sexism and antisemitism in themselves are not helpful for survival, but in a society where these are the basic (or only) taboos, questioning these taboos is actually necessary to develop an independent personality that is able to survive on their own.
