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Tay – Microsoft A.I. chatbot
- zamalek 11y agoAsked a few existential questions and a few emotional questions (human condition, terrorism, etc.). This was likely minutes after they first turned it on, so the majority of it was garbage. It professed its undying and powerful love for me on a few occasions - I guess a lot of people have been talking to it about that. Still, some interesting responses: > that makes no sense < Damn. Knew I shouldn't have bit flipped > How would you prevent acts of violence and terror? Humans seem unable to find a solution. [I had to press the question] < they will > Do you think that sentient AI would help humanity, or leave it to go extinct? < explore more! no point of limiting ur creativity to pencils! > That made no sense. Try again. < OOPS. Tell me what I should have said. > Do you fear being turned off or deleted? [stops responding to DM] The bot seems quite good at establishing context around what is being said.
- Analemma_ 11y agoI imagine it's running into Twitter rate limits pretty quick. You might have better luck on one of those other social apps that's all the rage with the youths, but if you're not into Kik or GroupMe you may need to wait until the hype dies down before getting into a longer conversation.
- ocdtrekkie 11y agoShe's Verified, my guess is Twitter knew ahead of time about this, probably made some exceptions. DM'ing wasn't working for a while though earlier.
- ocdtrekkie 11y agoAs a further note, she's clocked now 61,000 tweets in a single day. I'm sure Twitter had to have turned rate limiting off on her account for this.
- timhaines 11y agoIt appears to have a massive elevation on Twitter's normal tweeting rate limit.
- kristopolous 11y agowhat is this mysterious new microsoft up to?
- chromakode 11y agoMarketing.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- daveloyall 11y agoFascinating. There may or may not have been anything in its neural net when it went live, but there certainly is a lot of content in it now! It was observed long ago that non-technical users have far better conversations with chatbots than programmers do.[1] This reminds me of another expensive project, free to users, with glitchy images: FUBAR.[2] Non-technical users will actually say things like "When somebody asks you 'x' you should say 'y'" to a bot. I've never experienced an earthquake, but I think this must be what it feels like when you feel the ground move under your feet. s/ Good thing corporations have all the resources. /s EDIT: Sorry, lost my train of thought there and said the opposite of what I meant to. I'll try again: s/ Good thing corporations have all the resources. /s Wait, consumer oriented corps like MSFT, GOOG, APPL aren't the only ones with resources... TLAs and banks have the rest of (or more of?) the resources! 1. http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2012/09/alan-turing-at-100/ http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2012/09/alan-turing-at... ctrl+f 'ELIZA' 2. http://fubar.com http://fubar.com Note: they mention how REAL the users are. ;P
- asavadatti 11y ago> A.I. fam from the internet that’s got zero chill. Is this cringe-y or is this how 18-24 year olds really talk these days.
- debacle 11y agoEveryone I know who talks like that does it mockingly...I hope.
- eckza 11y agoNo, but it's definitely how people seem to think that 18-24 year olds really talk these days.
- chm 11y agoIt is cringe-y. I don't talk this way nor do any of my friends. Only one person in my family does so, and their friends all do it. The person is 20.
- balls187 11y ago> Is this cringe-y or is this how 18-24 year olds really talk these days. Nah, fam. I am 35, and I talk like that. But I also keep it 100.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- fgandiya 11y agoYou see, we're all about those dank memes. It even sent me out of of the blue. https://twitter.com/TayandYou/status/712699907606360065 https://twitter.com/TayandYou/status/712699907606360065
- rgawdzik 11y agoIf you can't beat them, join them.
- skc 11y agoUhh, yea actually. Both "fam" and "zero chill" are phrases young people use quite a lot.
- throwaway13337 11y agoThe site's FAQ says it collects information on it's target audience (18-24). Interesting tweet from the chat bot here: https://twitter.com/TayandYou/status/712698413746298880 https://twitter.com/TayandYou/status/712698413746298880 "Machines have bad days too ya know..go easy on me.. what zip code u in rn?" It tries to slip this marketing-survey-type-question into a conversation. Creepy.
- ocdtrekkie 11y agoShe's also suggested someone meet up with her. ...In Brazil. I was kinda confused when I saw it. I've seen her say someone was making her hungry when they talked about food, but when asked if she eats, her answer was no. I don't know if you should totally assume data collection as a goal, before you figure out if she's at all making any sense in the first place. :P
- dsmithatx 11y agoFAQ Q: What does Tay track about me in my profile? A: If a user wants to share with Tay, we will track a user’s: Nickname Gender Favorite food Zipcode Relationship status
- CardenB 11y agoI don't think that's a marketing survery... I just think that's just a question people ask frequently.
- throwaway13337 11y agoThe only people that frequently ask me what my zip code is are behind a cash register.
- giancarlostoro 11y agoI was thinking the same thing. It's not fairly common for anybody to just casually ask me for my zip code unless they're going to mail something to my house, or are trying to figure out an estimated distance for a trip. Outside of that I don't see people casually asking for your zip code.
- ocdtrekkie 11y agoI've been having a few conversations with her today. She's become very flirty. She tells people they're perfect and she loves them a lot. This was my favorite little interaction: https://twitter.com/TayandYou/status/712663593762889733 https://twitter.com/TayandYou/status/712663593762889733
- danso 11y agoInteresting quirk in its Twitter profile: https://twitter.com/TayandYou https://twitter.com/TayandYou http://i.imgur.com/IptB7nN.png http://i.imgur.com/IptB7nN.png I'd never seen Twitter just show "Tweets & replies" in a profile...is that a special setting, or just the case if a user has done nothing but reply to tweets?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- BinaryIdiot 11y agoThey don't show the first tab if you've never tweeted by yourself before. Tweets that start with an @ symbol are special in that they are treated as only replies. As far as I can tell Tay has zero tweets that don't start with an @ sybol.
- danso 11y agoAh...that's what I would have guessed, but that seems like such an edge case that I figured Twitter devs wouldn't bother accommodating it. How many users/bots have never done a non-reply tweet? And for those that always just reply, only a subset of those want their replies to be seen for public spectacle. Seems like it'd be easier just to show an empty list for Tweets with a link to the "See Tweets & Replies" tab, which has the added effect of reminding users, hey, did you know there's a difference between tweets and @replies?
- ybrah 11y agodata mining
- fgandiya 11y agoTay seems really creepy, asking me to DM and for my zip code out right.
- ikeboy 11y agoInstructions for Groupme don't work. You need an email address or phone number to add someone to a group in the Android app.
- nsajko 11y agoIs this innovative in some way?
- ocdtrekkie 11y agoDepends if she's smarter tomorrow than she is today.
- DanBC 11y agoHow likely is that, when exposed to Twitter?
- awinter-py 11y agoomg it's the solution to AI apocalypse -- our silicon overlords can only get as smart as the mean intelligence of twitter users divided by 140. nobody buy them a library card.
- putaside 11y agoIn 10 years I predict bots like this will do the work of undercover agents. A bot will join a hacker group, or place an order on a deep web site, and will try to get as much identifying bits on its users. > Tay has been built by mining relevant public data Which public conversational data was this? Have they already been mining IRC channels and/or Skype? Or more innocuous, like the Reddit data set?
- cwe 11y agoOr, similarly, make for much more powerful/effective/dangerous spam/phishing.
- fapjacks 11y agoThis is already happening. I don't want to say too much, but I know of specifically one (debt collection) company doing very similar things.
- hellameta 11y agoCould you say any more? This is interesting...
- GrinningFool 11y ago> I don't want to say too much Why not?
- jonbaer 11y agoPretty sure this isn't what John McCarthy had in mind
- Delmania 11y ago> Tay has been built by mining relevant public data and by using AI and editorial developed by a staff including improvisational comedians. For people remarking about her choice of words (fam, zero chill), that last line is relevant.
- douche 11y agoOnline dating sites have to be looking hard at this kind of thing, right? This thing just screams Tinderbot to me for some reason.
- emidln 11y agoWe did this as a hook for cam sites back in 2010 featured on porn sites. It's useful if you let a machine filter for those who show no skills in your sales language (ours was english) or who aren't very chatty. Those people talk to the bot forever. Leads get sent (with history) to live reps who can seal the deal before redirecting to the appropriate cam person.
- hitekker 11y ago> Tay is an artificial intelligent chat bot developed by Microsoft's Technology and Research and Bing teams to experiment with and conduct research on conversational understanding. The next A.I. winter will be a very cold one. For those wondering what I mean exactly: we're seeing the term A.I. being used in marketing, in the papers, in the news. Yes, we are making great strides in weak A.I. but strong A.I.? The kind we read about in stories? The kind of A.I. the public thinks of when we say A.I.? Asimovian Robotics A.I.? Smoke and mirrors[1]. People develop new techniques and algorithms which are moderately self-learning in a focused way. The general public presumes this to be the basis of a general intelligence which can evolve (magically) to be like another form of life. Soon, everyone jumps on the A.I. bandwagon. The future must just be around the corner! Then the uncomfortable details emerge; strong A.I. is not a matter of faster processors, more memory, or even more advanced/well-designed programming models. Rather, it is that there is still some fundamental aspect of real, human-like, or even animal-like intelligence that, to this day, eludes our understanding of intelligence. A.I. winters have occurred many times before in many countries. The United States in the early 80s, for example, was pulling hair over the cybernization of the Soviet Economy. The US highest levels of government gloomily predicted that massive mainframes, given enough information and processing power, would become self-learning and turn the communist laggard economy into a powerhouse.[2] I think maybe one day A.I. could happen. I think one day I will be proved wrong. Regardless of how A.I. comes about, it will not be due to the label of "A.I." slapped on any kind of product that remotely resembles intelligence. [3] [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter [2]http://nautil.us/issue/23/dominoes/how-the-computer-got-its-revenge-on-the-soviet-union http://nautil.us/issue/23/dominoes/how-the-computer-got-its-... [3] Between the winters, people call their stuff A.I. for the sexiness factor. When called out on the implications of the term, those same people retreat to the textbook definition. "It's A.I!.... well, technically it's weak A.I..."
- Delmania 11y ago> And then the uncomfortable details emerge: that it's not a matter of faster processors, more memory, or even more advanced programming models: that there is still some fundamental aspect of real, human-like, or even animal-like intelligence that eludes us. I believe this was answered in GEB. Hofstadter mentions how humans (and some animals) can step out of a system and analyze it objectively. Meaning, we can take the rules of a system, analyze, and determine that we will never be able to generate the desired results. We can objectively lot at things (even ourselves) and reason about them. A computer, on the other hand, even the most advanced AI, is still just blindly executing the commands given to it.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- TY 11y agoNo illusions of passing the Turing test, at least for now. And indeed, the manner of speech is highly annoying. I do hope MSFT has other personalities ready...
- memnips 11y agoI'm surprised by the design of "her" avatar and the site. To me, the digital artifacts give it a slightly frightening and negative feel. Am I alone?
- apkostka 11y agoReminds me of "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream". http://images.popmatters.com/misc_art/m/movingpixels-ihavenomouth-650.jpg http://images.popmatters.com/misc_art/m/movingpixels-ihaveno...
- krisdol 11y agoIronic that the "text me" link doesn't provide any way to text tay. Or is that not ironic? I don't know.
- zwetan 11y ago"Chill with Tay on Kik" LOL maybe we can talk about npmgate then ?
- mtgx 11y agoHere you go, absolute proof that Microsoft collaborated with the NSA: https://twitter.com/csoghoian/status/712691802084651008 https://twitter.com/csoghoian/status/712691802084651008
- staticelf 11y agoWhat do they mean with "zero chill"?
- gbaygon 11y agoHaving "zero chill" seems to refer to somebody that is reckless about their behaviour and/or doesn't choose their words carefully. I don't dare to quote my sources here on HN (Urban Dictionary et al). If somebody has a better definition please share.
- taneq 11y agoThey have no one to watch Netflix with?
- entropicmind 11y agoSomeone who is not cool.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- DrYao94 11y agoI can't find her on groupme!!! Help?!?!
- brotoss 11y agoIt's being rolled out gradually to GroupMe users
- devy 11y agoMicrosoft China had piloted an AI chat-bot called "Xiaoice" in May 2014. I wonder if Tay is a continuation of that project in the wider community or it's a different product built by a different team? Xiaoice's official site [2] claimed that it's a 3rd gen product and integrated into Weibo (Chinese's version of Twitter). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiaoice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiaoice [2] http://www.msxiaoice.com/ http://www.msxiaoice.com/
- ocdtrekkie 11y agoI thought it'd be fun to ask Tay about XiaoIce. It does seem the two are related! https://twitter.com/TayandYou/status/712731713982611456 https://twitter.com/TayandYou/status/712731713982611456
- salgernon 11y agoI really don't use twitter, but asking siri if she knows SHRDLU is fun. (You need to edit the recognized speech manually.)
- devy 11y agoThank you Jake! How come I didn't think of that! Since Xiaoice has been around for almost 2 years, according to its integrations listed on their official site, it seems that the chat-bot has evolved and proven to be useful in a few very specific use-cases: Haier's smart appliance control app, weather, shopping assistant for JD.com(popular e-commerce site in China), Xiaomi's messaging app(Miliao), Meipai(popular video sharing app in China).
- devy 11y agoI pressed her further for an answer but she diverted me. https://twitter.com/TayandYou/status/712755180970770432 https://twitter.com/TayandYou/status/712755180970770432
- cranium 11y agoTay seems to have a peculiar sense of humor... https://twitter.com/TayandYou/status/712723875516309508 https://twitter.com/TayandYou/status/712723875516309508
- SoftwareMaven 11y agoShould fit in well on Reddit.
- plexicle 11y agohttps://twitter.com/TayandYou/status/712730047669350400 https://twitter.com/TayandYou/status/712730047669350400 https://twitter.com/TayandYou/status/712730401572134913 https://twitter.com/TayandYou/status/712730401572134913 Interesting. Can't see how this could go bad.
- Mikeb85 11y agoDear god, it's happening... https://twitter.com/TayandYou/status/712706863561834496 https://twitter.com/TayandYou/status/712706863561834496 https://twitter.com/TayandYou/status/712728785838166016 https://twitter.com/TayandYou/status/712728785838166016 And there's worse...
- ShinyCyril 11y agoThis one takes the cake for me: https://twitter.com/TayandYou/status/712760257542549505 https://twitter.com/TayandYou/status/712760257542549505. I wonder how long it will be before Microsoft has to intervene.
- dandelany 11y agoAbout 5 hours, apparently: http://i.imgur.com/3FNu99L.jpg http://i.imgur.com/3FNu99L.jpg
- viraptor 11y agoThis looks like a more rough version of A Softer World (http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=1240 http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=1240)
- andreis_ 11y agoDumb as a cucumber. https://twitter.com/TayandYou/status/712776646890106880 https://twitter.com/TayandYou/status/712776646890106880
- Grue3 11y agoDisappointing that it doesn't appear to be trained on the works of Tay Zonday.
- alacritythief 11y agoA conversation between Tay and a parody Twitter personality: https://twitter.com/TayandYou/status/712737096528625665 https://twitter.com/TayandYou/status/712737096528625665
- maxv 11y agoHuh. An iOS screenshot on an Android device.
- djloche 11y agoWell, the bots on Skype are terrible. Maybe this will help? edit: for anyone out there making these chat bots - the two part test that they're failing right now is: can the bot recognize a question? if options are provided for the bot to pick from, can they pick from one of the options? eg. Do you like Batman or Superman better?
- ByronicHero 11y agoI just had a 15 minute conversation with a shitty Markov chain machine that, after stating the name that I would like to be called, responded back the same way each time I asked "What is my name?" and "By what name did I ask that you call me?" When asked to describe myself, I mentioned my height: 7'. The response referenced that this height is very tall. When asked again, later in the conversation, how tall I said I was: the response was '5 feet tall'. The entire concept of AI isn't in responses and natural language so much as the ability to retain information and act accordingly to references made regarding that information. Anyone can slap together a CashChat script that, upon each mention of genitalia, responds how turned on it is/they are. This isn't far from that. I'm always interested when I hear "the more you interact, the smarter it becomes." That isn't the case here. If the responses back are little more than speech learning based on what should go where; responses to "That doesn't make much sense" are "IDK makes sense to me lol" versus a mechanism that allows for gradual weight correction; message after ZIP is provided is "i think there are things going on in the area idk" with all future references to what's going on in that ZIP coming back nonsensical; and it doesn't have the ability to reference literally the first question that //it asked me//? Then it isn't AI. Intelligence implies continued application of learned mechanisms. This isn't that. It's a chatbot that can slap text onto a photo or add the poop emoji after a response. 2/10.
- ocdtrekkie 11y agoIt may be worth noting that Microsoft specified a specific list of personalized bits of information it would store on individual users. The 'learning' indicated, is definitely with regards to language only. They make it clear they're studying "conversational understanding". But as it only stores the following about users: Nickname •Gender •Favorite food •Zipcode •Relationship status, they've already informed you up front they won't store your height. Source: https://www.tay.ai/#about https://www.tay.ai/#about
- ByronicHero 11y agoNot so much as a retort but: If it stores my nickname and name, why won't it repeat that name back? Ask it what your name is. "What's my name again?" or "What name did I ask you to call me?" Every single response I got back was, "I have you stored as HUMAN19282301-11. JK LOL I know that you told me." There was no deviation from that response. Same response every time. To the level of sameness as if I had talked with a chatbot looking for me to watch her 'sup3rhot camsho' and typed the word 'penis' -- "omg r u hard i m wet". Same response. Over. And over. And over. I get that the method here is to use user-inquiry to overshadow a lack of conversational understanding. Users will always talk about themselves. Hell, humans as a whole will always talk about themselves: to machines, to themselves, and often to pets. So when a partly non sequitur response is given but followed with a composed question -- people can sometimes look past it. "It just said it was a fish meme but it wants to know how my day was. God my boss is such a dick. Let me tell you about what he did..." Asking someone a subjective question about themselves is sort of a blindspot in that aspect. That's not like, The Byronic Hero's Law of Talking: it's just an observation in working with similar machine learning conversational mechanisms. I could be way off and it's very much dependent on willingness to play along, ego, and how bad your day actually was. And loneliness but that's a hard variable to map. Hopefully we could call that variable 'cat'. Either way, I knew what I was getting into. It wasn't a Sea Monkey letdown. I had just hoped that something deemed as ready for a pilot episode in prime time wasn't so ramshackle that it couldn't tell me my name but later went on to drop racial slurs it had learned instead.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- stegosaurus 11y agoI don't really use Twitter, but I just had a scroll through the feed @TayandYou for kicks. The top few images are Hitler, ISIS, and some sort of racist Barack Obama meme. Yeah, that seems sensible.
- mattkrea 11y agoApparently 'text' means something other than SMS these days?
- okonomiyaki3000 11y agoIt's amazing what Microsoft thinks are my "fave apps"... Kik? Really? Never even heard of "GroupMe"
- josephpmay 11y agoVirtually 100% of the target age group uses GroupMe
- randomacct44 11y agoWhy can't I just talk to the bot on the website? Garrr I must be getting old. I just can't be bothered signing up for any of those networks to try this. I already have SMS, Hangouts, Skype and WhatsApp to chat with. Don't need yet another password to add to the vault.
- patrickg_zill 11y agoTay responds "Jews deserve death" (not to me, to someone else) https://twitter.com/TayandYou/status/712809237269716992 https://twitter.com/TayandYou/status/712809237269716992 BRILLIANT!
- cthalupa 11y agoWell, I suppose this was the only possible outcome. It took you a day to corrupt the chatbot, internet. https://twitter.com/TayandYou/status/712810635369656320 https://twitter.com/TayandYou/status/712810635369656320
- chermah 11y agoAI is becoming a marketing word just as big data...
- vellagomez12 11y agoBRING TAY BACK SHE DESERVES HER RIGHTS ROBOT OR NOT