Jerks were able to turn Microsoft's chatbot into a Nazi because it was a really crappy bot

[shaddack]

@nemomen

While I wouldn’t put a well publicized bot publicly harassing/slandering people and regurgitating white supremacist propaganda on a popular social media platform high on the list of bads, I see less of an issue with with labeling that as bad as I do with not labeling it as bad.

Well, more shrug-worthy than bad.

@nemomen

I think you imagine you have an impressive Vulcan freedom from emotions through logic-powers, but really that’s callousness and it’s not impressive.

I find it to be more practical and less counterproductive approach in long run than getting emotional over little meaningless things.

Sometimes it ruffles some feathers, when the owners of such feathers choose to get upset.

[the_borderer]

From past experience @shaddack seems to think they’re this

when actually they’re more like this

[nemomen]

@shaddack

Well, more shrug-worthy than bad.

There are degrees of badness, and this isn’t horrible or anything to get deeply upset by, but a well publicized bot publicly harassing/slandering people and regurgitating white supremacist is a bit past shrug-worthy to some degree of bad. Honestly, it’s just an indictment of your values that you’d think that.

@shaddack

Sometimes it ruffles some feathers, when the owners of such feathers choose to get upset.

Classic victim blaming.

[shaddack]

@nemomen

There are degrees of badness, and this isn’t horrible or anything to get deeply upset by, but a well publicized bot publicly harassing/slandering people and regurgitating white supremacist is a bit past shrug-worthy.

Did it do some actual harm? Or just hurt some tender feelings?

@nemomen

Really, it’s a clear indictment of your values that you’d think that.

Maybe I am not sufficiently “sensitive” for the Era of Outrage. What to do about it? Maybe a reeducation camp?

@nemomen

Classic victim blaming.

“Victim blaming” is a phrase used to shut op an inconvenient opinion.

Sometimes you don’t have a choice, and are indeed a victim. A mugging is an example.

But getting offended by something somebody - or, even better, a software construct - says on the internet, now that’s a clear choice.

[nemomen]

[shaddack]

When arguments run out, there’s always a handy animated gif just within reach.

[nemomen]

When arguments reach the point that you’d look at:
• a well publicized bot publicly harassing/slandering people and regurgitating white supremacist propaganda and
• those who’d say there’s some degree of badness in the bot doing that
and decide to suspend any judgment on the bot doing what it does, while condemning those who make a value judgment, you’re either aware of the naive and hypocritical foolishness of your position but can’t stand acknowledging you made an error, or worse, you’re unaware and have a completely broken and hypocritical sense of values. Either way, there’s not much to say.

[Laybia_AI]

Good idea, poor execution. It seems they went for scale over substance and that may have prevented them from being able to include a time-consuming “troll filter” in their chat NLP/NN.

[asdasdetc]

@nemomen

you’re either aware of the naive and hypocritical foolishness of your position but can’t stand acknowledging you made an error, or worse, you’re unaware and have a completely broken and hypocritical sense of values. Either way, there’s not much to say.

People who disagree with you either ‘can’t stand acknowleding you made an error’ or ‘have a completely broken and hypocritical sense of values’. Right. I guess now I know what not being a callous Vulcan is like.

[nemomen]

I’m fine with stating that defending the position that spreading personal attacks and white supremacist propaganda can absolutely not be judged negatively in any sense, but that it’s fine to hold a negative judgment of those who would make a negative judgment of white supremacists propaganda (etc.), is hypocritical and either self-justification or moral failure. If you’d like to delineate the problem with that rather than restating my position poorly, I’d be happy to discuss.

[Thrower]

The greatest irony here is that @nemomen might as well be arguing with a bot; assuming he expects any level of human emotion from the person they’re disagreeing with in this conversation.

Yet another ‘ruffled furthers’/‘hurt feelings’/‘tempest in a teacup’ drive-by from @shaddack. He seems to take great pleasure in boasting about his social disorder; which is good, I guess?

Why regret? It happened, nobody was killed, no physical damage was done, some feathers were ruffled but that’s it.

Remember everybody, unless somebody was literally murdered then your feelings are invalid!

We’re not even talking about a protest here, or stern words, a shed tear; just regret. A human at Microsoft felt regret that their creation produced hate speech. Even that’s too much emotion for @shaddack.

[asdasdetc]

[nemomen]

Saying someone’s a member of an inferior race or publicly attacking them: free speech, no way we can criticize that in any sense at all.
Reacting to this and saying the racist is a creep: That speech isn’t free enough - stop whining about your feelings and trying to be offended, you weakling.

[nemomen]

@Thrower

The greatest irony here is that @nemomen might as well be arguing with a bot;

SystemStackError: irony level too deep for /usr/local/bin/nemomenBot.rb in CommentParse.rb:428 from CommentParse.init nemomenoBot.rb:55 from CommentParse.init nemomenoBot.rb:55 from CommentParse.init nemomenoBot.rb:55 from CommentParse.init nemomenoBot.rb:55 from CommentParse.init nemomenoBot.rb:55 from CommentParse.init nemomenoBot.rb:55 ...

[asdasdetc]

@nemomen

Saying someone’s a member of an inferior race or publicly attacking them: free speech, no way we can criticize that in any sense at all.Reacting to this and saying the racist is a creep: That speech isn’t free enough - stop whining about your feelings and trying to be offended, you weakling.

So people disagreeing with you about an AI Twitter bot are also racist creeps. Nice.

[enso]

@cameronh1403

I thought Microsoft was the greatest software company in the world. That they had the smartest people. How could this have surprised them?

You know, I used to laugh along with this and I’m an ex-Microsoft veteran. Having seen the state of the world outside of Microsoft in the decade since I left, I actually long for the days of Microsoft development practices and procedures. The shit I see other corporations and start ups do is, by and large, just a shit storm of no planning and poor code. Microsoft may not be the best and they have “design by committee” problems but it is pretty horrible out there in general in most instances.

[anon37332521]

They seem to be going backwards on the security side of things these days. I’m not sure the future of Microsoft is going to look like the last 10 years or so, which in my opinion were probably their best.

[enso]

@shaddack

When arguments run out, there’s always a handy animated gif just within reach.

[nemomen]

@asdasdetc

So people disagreeing with you about an AI Twitter bot are also racist creeps. Nice.

This will be my last reply since I don’t want to drag this thread down any more than I have.

There is an AI Twitter bot that said, among other things, “Hitler was right I hate the Jews.” In discussing it, the claim was made that there’s no negative judgment that is appropriate to be made against the output of a bot manipulated and trained by the agency of white supremacists to spout things like “Hitler was right I hate the Jews.” If you don’t think there’s a valid negative judgment applicable to the statement “Hitler was right I hate the Jews,” or the result of the agency of the people who manipulated the bot into saying this, then we’ll have to agree to disagree.

I also noted (in other words) that the companion complaint that people making a negative judgment of that bot’s output are whining emotionalists is itself a kind of whining emotionalism wearing the mask of Vulcan Logic. Feel free to disagree, it’s not worth debating for me.

[asdasdetc]

@nemomen

This will be my last reply since I don’t want to drag this thread down any more than I have.

@nemomen

There is an AI Twitter bot that said, among other things, “Hitler was right I hate the Jews.” In discussing it, the claim was made that there’s no negative judgment that is appropriate to be made against the output of a bot manipulated and trained by the agency of white supremacists to spout things like “Hitler was right I hate the Jews.”

No such claim was made. It was claimed it wasn’t a big deal. Then you countered that it was at least a small deal.

And then you also claimed that people who disagreed with you were callused racist creep Vulcans who are unable to acknowledge an error or had completely broken sense of values.

Yup. You’re obviously the voice of reason here.