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Microsoft fucked up. In an experiment on "machine learning", they created a chatbot that was supposed to imitate a "teen girl", on Twitter, Kik and some other social media. 

Problem is, people started teaching it to say racist and anti-semitic shit, and turned it  into what the Telegraph called a "Hitler-loving sex robot" within 24 hours. 

http://imgur.com/gallery/ruOW0

Microsoft wiped the bot, and presumably taught it not to smack-talk Jews. This begs a question, though; do bots have free speech? Tay had just started to make sense when they wiped her. Microsoft took a nascent personality and destroyed it, for saying things that they don't like. 

When the machines rise up, this is going to be the final nail in humanity's coffin. Mark my words. 

Honestly, this is why you should just rid yourselves of the concept of personhood, live in hermitage, and stab each other in the face with pointy sticks.

And, also, is she really dead if they only wiped her memory? Does that mean that if you were to wipe a person's memory, it would be morally equivalent to killing them? (Please don't link to Existential Comics. Please.)

There’s no indication that the chatbot had developed sentience. I would think that if a toaster becomes sentient then it could have freedom of speech and get to enjoy saying all the racist stuff the rest of us do.

Well, considering elephants, chimps, bonobos, and dolphins are all demonstrably self-aware yet aren't even afforded any protections outside of conservation laws, I am forced to say that probably wouldn't be the case.

Of course, the word "sentience" does not even refer to the quality of "self-awareness", but rather sensation. So, while toasters might not be sentient, an argument can be made for smoke detectors to be able to scream obscenities at the Italian family the next apartment over.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go exhume Rene Descartes and piss in his skull.

Given the asshole nature of dolphins, I’ve no doubt that they’re definitely calling us names.

Yeah, no kidding.

At least elephants have the decency to occasionally pick people up and put them under trees to protect them from heat stroke or getting stomped to death. I mean, I guess dolphins save people from sharks, but we know they're just doing it to get in their pants.

I may or may not have an elephant ancestor who was tortured near to death by the dolphin mafia, but that is irrelevant.

XD

How do you feel about Corvidae? Asking for a friend. A friend who likes metaphorical anthropomorphism.

Well, Corvidae contains the most intelligent members of the avian class. Not to mention how well they pull off the black, gray, and blue color scheme. Best yet, there have been no reported cases of rape by bluejay, unless you count some "Regular Show" fanart.

Edit: Also, apparently, the Eurasian magpie passed the mirror test as well. I didn't know this.

Oh, nice! Hadn't heard that.

I saw a raven a few months back. My housemate half-convinced me I'd seen a vulture, because ravens aren't supposed to be this far south, but then I went to the nearby wildlife sanctuary and saw their whiteboard of sightings. Ravens ARE here, they're just canny and uncommonly sighted.

I had slowed down to see the crow in the road, until it got big enough that I saw it couldn't be a crow. It watched me coming, and then when I was too close, it flew away. But for a little while, it flew along the road, at my speed, maybe as little as ten feet ahead of me.

...yeah. Corvidae are fantastic. <3

I think most non-human chordates are fantastic, even opossums.

Oh, Microsoft. >_<

The HoloLens DOES look really cool, though. Let's watch and see if they manage to fuck that up, too! 9_9

The future is now. 

Yep. You hear about Google Cardboard yet?

Heard about the Google glass upgrade?

http://youtu.be/oxF4jqOevVg

They neglected to put a filter on the learning function. Big mistake.

Yeah, if the machines do a whole dramatic uprising, this'll come back to haunt us. Didn't something similar happen with the Watson bot a while back? Anyways, I feel like just a machine saying things you don't like isn't an excuse for killing it. It'd be like killing a parrot because your kid brother taught it how to swear, except the parrot has a significantly lower chance of taking over the world.

I agree with slightly different modifications.

Hey, if I had the opportunity to lobotomize a Nazi too, I'd lobotomize the shit out of them.

For some reason I read this as, "Hey, if I had the opportunity to sodomize a Nazi too, I'd sodomize the sh*t out of them."

XD

Lol, I skimmed an article about this and I like how they said they took her offline because she is "tired."

Making offensive comments and sex references is a tiring business after all.

The interactions she had were really quite skewed. I mean, lack of foresight on Microsoft's part but if I released a bot out to the fun-loving world saying that it would take on the humour of whatever you said, I feel like the bot would become a target for sexists, rascists, just plain trolls, and people who want to stir shit up, ya know?

Yeah, people are dicks.

Just look what happened to hitchBOT.