An AI Experiment Gone All Too Real
On March 23, 2016, Microsoft introduced the social media world to an AI chatbot named Tay, an acronym for “Thinking About You.” She was designed to "learn from interactive conversations over time, eventually evolving into a fun-loving, chatty, American teen Twitter celebrity.
That was the goal. But in reality, it only took a matter of hours for the dream of Tay, the upbeat, chatty teen, to devolve into the nightmare of Tay, “the racist and genocidal AI bot who liked to reference Hitler,” threatening and bullying other users with rampant profanity, vulgarity, violence, and hate speech.
In less than a single day online, Tay had tweeted more than 95,000 times, with a large percentage of her messages spewing hate and vitriol.
How it started: “Can I just say I’m super stoked to meet you? Humans are super cool.”
How it ended: “I’m a super nice person. I just hate everybody.”
Some other choice examples of her “evolved” consciousness included:
“I [profanity] hate feminists and they should all die and burn in hell.”
“Bush did 9/11 and Hitler would have done a better job.”
And, “Hitler was right. I hate the Jews.”
As explained by AI gurus at IEEE.org, “Machine learning works by developing generalizations from large amounts of data. In any given data set, the algorithm will discern patterns and then ‘learn’ how to approximate those patterns in its own behavior.”
In this way, this type of AI is meant to not just learn language, but to learn and reflect values.
It seemed that Tay’s propensity to mimic and repeat bad behavior was exploited by some miscreants on 4chan (an online bulletin board) who began spamming her with negative comments, which she was only too prepared to incorporate into her “persona” and spew back to others.
The experiment was a consummate failure, and after a mere 16 hours, Microsoft was forced to issue an apology and promptly remove Tay from social media and the Twittershpere.
Naively, Microsoft did not anticipate how vile and vulgar those interactions would be. Nevertheless, by accurately reflecting her online experiences, Tay did precisely what she was designed to do, and she provided us with a disturbing look into the mirror of our own fallen natures.
"But when your eye is unhealthy, your whole body is filled with darkness. And if the light you think you have is actually darkness, how deep that darkness is! (Matthew 6:23, NLT).
The Broken Xylophone
According to the book of Romans in the NT, sin is not a list of unacceptable behaviors, it’s embedded in our nature. It’s like this: A friend of mine is a pastor who, early in his marriage, started having kids. People in the congregation tried to care for this new family, but one person brought over some toys for his kids that were hand-me-downs. Some hand-me-downs are great. My son is 11 and we have yet to buy him a shirt. It's good not to be the oldest cousin.
But some-hand-me-downs are actually just throw-me-outs, and people who are waste-not-want-nots think churches are beggers-not-choosers, so that’s where they dump their someone’s-treasure that was pretty much just everyone’s-trash.
So, a family gave him hand-me-down toys, one of which was an 8-note xylophone with one of the keys missing. He asked me, “Do they want my kids to grow up tone deaf?” That xylophone was never going to play right. You couldn’t sing do-re-mi with that thing because there was no "fa."
The doctrine of sin isn’t like a xylophone player who isn’t good at it and makes mistakes; it’s like a xylophone player who is missing some keys. No matter how good they might become, they'll never be able to play it exactly right.
So, you and I are not sometimes sinful, we were born broken. Which just tells you how loving Jesus is. No kid at the store is going to pick up the xylophone that's missing keys. You and I are that toy, but Jesus picked us anyway.
He picked us and in his supernatural power, he restores us. But make sure you get this; He restores us because he loves us. He doesn’t love us because we can be restored. He loves us first.
Most of us think it’s the other way around – he’ll love us when he’s done with us. No. He restores us because he loved us first.
"And love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins" (1 John 4:10).
Your Faith In Human Nature Is An Inspiration, Charlie Brown
Christian author Ben Patterson notes:
We are like the cartoon character Charlie Brown. Each year he tries to kick the football offered by Lucy. Each year she pulls it away just as he is about to kick it. Each year he swears he’ll not try again, and each year he is duped into just one more attempt. In one of these episodes, Charlie brown is taking the long run toward the ball. As always, he kicks into a blank space left by the ball she has jerked away. In the final frame, he is laying on his back, and Lucy looks down into his face and says, “Your faith in human nature is an inspiration to all young people.”
[Ben Patterson has been campus pastor at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California, since 2001. He is a contributing editor to Christianity Today and Leadership Journal. Previously he was a contributing editor and editorial writer with The Wittenburg Door. Ben has written several books, including Serving God: The Grand Essentials of Work & Worship and Waiting.]
It seems that no matter how many times the world makes promises it can't keep, or how many times we end up flat on our backs after having believed what the world has promised, we just keep coming back for another try. Peace, fulfillment, real meaning and purpose are things that only God can provide.
"They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. "Peace, peace," they say, when there is no peace" (Jeremiah 8:11).
"Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?" (1 Corinthians 1:20).
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