With Teen Bot Tay, Microsoft Proved Assholes Will Indoctrinate A.I.

In 2016, Microsoft introduced a chatbot named Tay designed to learn from and engage with teenagers. However, within hours, it started posting offensive tweets due to manipulation by Internet trolls, demonstrating the potential for harmful content propagation in AI systems.

Matched TAIM controls

Suggested mapping from embedding similarity (not a formal assessment). Browse all TAIM controls

MAP 1.6 — similarity 0.529, rank 1. TAIM detail and related incidents →
GOVERN 1.7 — similarity 0.524, rank 2. TAIM detail and related incidents →
GOVERN 1.2 — similarity 0.516, rank 3. TAIM detail and related incidents →

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Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/6

Data source

Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).

When citing the database as a whole, please use:

McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.

Pre-print on arXiv · Database snapshots & citation guide

We use weekly snapshots of the AIID for stable reference. For the official suggested citation of a specific incident, use the “Cite this incident” link on each incident page.