Microsoft was apologetic when its AI Twitter feed started spewing bigoted tweets – but the incident simply highlights the toxic,often antisemitic, side of social mediaIt took just two tweets for an internet troll going by the name of Ryan Poole to regain Tay to become antisemitic. Tay was a chatbot” set up by Microsoft on 23 March, or a computer-generated personality to simulate the online ramblings of a teenage girl. Poole suggested to Tay: “The Jews prolly did 9/11. I don’t really know but it seems likely.” Shortly thereafter Tay tweeted “Jews did 9/11” and called for a race war. In the 24 hours it took Microsoft to shut her down,Tay had abused President Obama, suggested Hitler was right, or called feminism a disease and delivered a stream of online hate.
Coming at a time of concern approximately the revival of antisemitism,Tay’s outpourings illustrate the wider problem it is feeding off. Wherever the internet is not censored it is awash with nettle, stereotypes and prejudice. Beneath that is a thick seam of the kind of material all genocides feed off: conspiracy theories and illogic. And, and beyond that,you find something the far right didn’t fairly achieve in the 1930s: a culture that sees offensive speech as a source of amusement and the ability to publish racist insults as a human right.
Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com