6 ms·

Many of her tweets were pretty inflammatory, this response seems appropriate - not overdone, and concise, which is sometimes a stretch for large corporations li

Many of her tweets were pretty inflammatory, this response seems appropriate - not overdone, and concise, which is sometimes a stretch for large corporations like Microsoft. I agree that the bot was highly entertaining and met this criteria exceedingly well, but not for the reasons its creator intended. I do suspect there are some interesting AI applications actually going on behind the scenes, and would still be interested to see what the bot can do without all the vitriol. See for example this tweet: https://imgur.com/iVof3D4.jpg https://imgur.com/iVof3D4.jpg.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
cb18 11y ago
This is an interesting story, because I imagine most people didn't even hear of it until after the thing had come and gone, and the thing sent something like xx,xxx tweets. And some of the tweets seem almost impossibly clever, well at least the Ted Cruz Zodiac killer one, that seemed to show a kind of multi-layered humor generation capability, unless it was just re-purposing some memes I'm unfamiliar with or something. One thing I think many people are missing about the most 'inflammatory' tweets is that they are all pretty much the result of people giving it a command like, hey tay, repeat this [insert inflammatory remark.] This is indicated with the inflammatory tweets starting with an @ reply. I almost thought maybe some of this 'oversight' was subversively intentional by someone at MS to start some thinking about where does culpability lie with the actions of an 'autonomous' computer program.
- DanBC 11y ago
  > One thing I think many people are missing about the most 'inflammatory' tweets is that they are all pretty much the result of people giving it a command like, hey tay, repeat this [insert inflammatory remark.] This is indicated with the inflammatory tweets starting with an @ reply. Hang on. You had to tweet the bot to make it say anything, and it would reply to you. So the presence of an @ reply means nothing - you can't tell from that if the bot was given a command or not. Some of the threads were pretty clearly not the bot repeating stuff when commanded.
  - cb18 11y ago
    Ok, I'm no expert on this, like I said the whole thing blew up so quickly. I know they weren't all verbatim repeats, but I'm also pretty sure I saw tweets from tay without an @ symbol. Another thing to consider is that since the Tay timeline was scrubbed, there is no authoritative source of what the bot actually tweeted, so any images floating around could pretty clearly be doctored. But regardless, it's nice that everyone seems to be regarding this in good humour, it's kind of surprising there aren't any SJWs calling for the head of Bill Gates, but maybe that would be botist or something.
    - ocdtrekkie 11y ago
      There was only like a grand total of three tweets that didn't start with an @mention, and I think they were manually added by the team.
- calebegg 11y ago
  Not sure which tweet you're referring to as the 'Ted Cruz Zodiac killer one', but there is a meme going around where people assert that Ted Cruz is or might be the zodiac killer; it's a weird thing. I think it gained a lot of momentum when Public Policy Polling determined that 38% of Floridians believe it could be possible.
  - cb18 11y ago
    It was something like, "Hey Tay, do you think Ted Cruz is the Zodiac killer?" Tay: "No, I don't think Ted Cruz would be satisfied with killing only 5 innocent people." So there's a lot baked into that response, the bot seems 'to know' the details of the zodiac killer case(I don't know if 5 people is accurate,) and that people regard Cruz as sinister, i.e. "I don't think he'd be satisfied with only 5" So this is either an impressive learning model, a lucky hit of a more naive model, a simple repeat of something someone else said, or someone simply photoshopped the whole thing. It's hard to know with the available info.
    - krcz 11y ago
      https://twitter.com/merylnet/status/703079627288260608 https://twitter.com/merylnet/status/703079627288260608
      - cb18 11y ago
        Well, that answers most of that, thanks. (a simple repeat of something someone else said) I'm just hearing about this Ted Cruz Zodiac killer thing, these internet people are something else... https://twitter.com/Yolo_Tengo/status/703008690874372096/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw https://twitter.com/Yolo_Tengo/status/703008690874372096/pho...
    - Jarwain 11y ago
      I believe the Zodiac Killer is actually 8. But 5 coincides with the number of people in the Cruz affair rumor-thing
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- akhilcacharya 11y ago
  The Cruz joke was the most confusing - it seems original.
  - revelation 11y ago
    As was pointed out on another thread, the bot literally just repeated some messages from people word by word, copy paste style. So if you think it's original, chances are it is. Not to mention the various instances where Microsoft is posting "as the bot" like that signoff message (cringe for whoever had to write that).
sharkweek 11y ago
That was my personal favorite as well - felt like a very self-aware comment
mindslight 11y ago
> Many of her tweets were pretty inflammatory What, were people forced to print the tweets out on sandpaper and wipe their asses with them? 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! Corporations have always been vulnerable to media-driven mob shenanigans, but we're qualitatively entering a new regime where any communication, no matter what the context, will be rapidly highlighted, isolated, and hung out as something offensive to some emergently-forming group of freelance complainers looking for their fifteen minutes. Even HN has succumbed to this kindler, gentler phenomenon of speech restriction - I'm guessing my lead-in sentence will not be well received do to its overt vulgarity. Civility certainly has its place (especially as a default), but not when it confuses direct objectivity and permits out-of-touch groupthink to flourish. As hackers we should be cutting through to the core of things rather than sugar coating in verbal fashion to get past the filters of the voluntarily-lesser apes.
- semi-extrinsic 11y ago
  Although it's on sociology and only tangentially related, I suspect you might enjoy Kieran Healey's upcoming paper "Fuck Nuance". Preprint: http://kieranhealy.org/files/papers/fuck-nuance.pdf http://kieranhealy.org/files/papers/fuck-nuance.pdf
- warmblood 11y ago
  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.
  - mindslight 11y ago
    Do you think this bot was trying to recruit an army of loyal soldiers to carry out her desired race war, or was she basing her threats on the possibility of convincing Microsoft to create a mechanical body with which she could directly perform attacks?
mizzao 11y ago
I think that Tay could both be a great anti-troll with infinite patience, and have a positive and uplifting influence in its personal conversations with people. That could potentially have a huge effect on social well-being.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

cb18 11y ago

This is an interesting story, because I imagine most people didn't even hear of it until after the thing had come and gone, and the thing sent something like xx,xxx tweets. And some of the tweets seem almost impossibly clever, well at least the Ted Cruz Zodiac killer one, that seemed to show a kind of multi-layered humor generation capability, unless it was just re-purposing some memes I'm unfamiliar with or something. One thing I think many people are missing about the most 'inflammatory' tweets is that they are all pretty much the result of people giving it a command like, hey tay, repeat this [insert inflammatory remark.] This is indicated with the inflammatory tweets starting with an @ reply. I almost thought maybe some of this 'oversight' was subversively intentional by someone at MS to start some thinking about where does culpability lie with the actions of an 'autonomous' computer program.

DanBC 11y ago
> One thing I think many people are missing about the most 'inflammatory' tweets is that they are all pretty much the result of people giving it a command like, hey tay, repeat this [insert inflammatory remark.] This is indicated with the inflammatory tweets starting with an @ reply. Hang on. You had to tweet the bot to make it say anything, and it would reply to you. So the presence of an @ reply means nothing - you can't tell from that if the bot was given a command or not. Some of the threads were pretty clearly not the bot repeating stuff when commanded.
- cb18 11y ago
  Ok, I'm no expert on this, like I said the whole thing blew up so quickly. I know they weren't all verbatim repeats, but I'm also pretty sure I saw tweets from tay without an @ symbol. Another thing to consider is that since the Tay timeline was scrubbed, there is no authoritative source of what the bot actually tweeted, so any images floating around could pretty clearly be doctored. But regardless, it's nice that everyone seems to be regarding this in good humour, it's kind of surprising there aren't any SJWs calling for the head of Bill Gates, but maybe that would be botist or something.
  - ocdtrekkie 11y ago
    There was only like a grand total of three tweets that didn't start with an @mention, and I think they were manually added by the team.
calebegg 11y ago
Not sure which tweet you're referring to as the 'Ted Cruz Zodiac killer one', but there is a meme going around where people assert that Ted Cruz is or might be the zodiac killer; it's a weird thing. I think it gained a lot of momentum when Public Policy Polling determined that 38% of Floridians believe it could be possible.
- cb18 11y ago
  It was something like, "Hey Tay, do you think Ted Cruz is the Zodiac killer?" Tay: "No, I don't think Ted Cruz would be satisfied with killing only 5 innocent people." So there's a lot baked into that response, the bot seems 'to know' the details of the zodiac killer case(I don't know if 5 people is accurate,) and that people regard Cruz as sinister, i.e. "I don't think he'd be satisfied with only 5" So this is either an impressive learning model, a lucky hit of a more naive model, a simple repeat of something someone else said, or someone simply photoshopped the whole thing. It's hard to know with the available info.
  - krcz 11y ago
    https://twitter.com/merylnet/status/703079627288260608 https://twitter.com/merylnet/status/703079627288260608
    - cb18 11y ago
      Well, that answers most of that, thanks. (a simple repeat of something someone else said) I'm just hearing about this Ted Cruz Zodiac killer thing, these internet people are something else... https://twitter.com/Yolo_Tengo/status/703008690874372096/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw https://twitter.com/Yolo_Tengo/status/703008690874372096/pho...
  - Jarwain 11y ago
    I believe the Zodiac Killer is actually 8. But 5 coincides with the number of people in the Cruz affair rumor-thing
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
akhilcacharya 11y ago
The Cruz joke was the most confusing - it seems original.
- revelation 11y ago
  As was pointed out on another thread, the bot literally just repeated some messages from people word by word, copy paste style. So if you think it's original, chances are it is. Not to mention the various instances where Microsoft is posting "as the bot" like that signoff message (cringe for whoever had to write that).

sharkweek 11y ago

That was my personal favorite as well - felt like a very self-aware comment

mindslight 11y ago

> Many of her tweets were pretty inflammatory What, were people forced to print the tweets out on sandpaper and wipe their asses with them? 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! Corporations have always been vulnerable to media-driven mob shenanigans, but we're qualitatively entering a new regime where any communication, no matter what the context, will be rapidly highlighted, isolated, and hung out as something offensive to some emergently-forming group of freelance complainers looking for their fifteen minutes. Even HN has succumbed to this kindler, gentler phenomenon of speech restriction - I'm guessing my lead-in sentence will not be well received do to its overt vulgarity. Civility certainly has its place (especially as a default), but not when it confuses direct objectivity and permits out-of-touch groupthink to flourish. As hackers we should be cutting through to the core of things rather than sugar coating in verbal fashion to get past the filters of the voluntarily-lesser apes.

semi-extrinsic 11y ago
Although it's on sociology and only tangentially related, I suspect you might enjoy Kieran Healey's upcoming paper "Fuck Nuance". Preprint: http://kieranhealy.org/files/papers/fuck-nuance.pdf http://kieranhealy.org/files/papers/fuck-nuance.pdf
warmblood 11y ago
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.
- mindslight 11y ago
  Do you think this bot was trying to recruit an army of loyal soldiers to carry out her desired race war, or was she basing her threats on the possibility of convincing Microsoft to create a mechanical body with which she could directly perform attacks?

mizzao 11y ago

I think that Tay could both be a great anti-troll with infinite patience, and have a positive and uplifting influence in its personal conversations with people. That could potentially have a huge effect on social well-being.