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Mean People Are to Blame for Tay’s Behavior

March 28, 2016 By Ryan Harris Leave a Comment

Internet trolls are known to wreak havoc in the on-line environment.

(Mirror Daily, United States) – A week ago Microsoft launched an artificial intelligence that was intended to entertain social media users with funny, teenager messages. But when the company programmed the bot, they did not expect the users to sabotage the learning program and turn it into a Hitler-loving, feminist-hater AI. It seems that mean people are to blame for Tay’s behavior.

When it was first released, the Microsoft AI was supposed to provide innocent fun to bored millennials. But the internet nation’s plans did not match those of the bot’s creators. The company first declared that Tay was created as an experiment so that they could learn more about human conversation and computers.

And they did, they learned that when it comes to turning something good into something bad, humans are swift and merciless. The most interesting part of all is that Microsoft did not expect such a turn of events. They genuinely thought that people, especially the trolling generation of millennials would use the AI in a fun, innocent interactions.

The thing is, there was a failsafe built in the programming. When a user specifically asked the bot to repeat a sentence, Tay would do just that, tweeting exactly what it was asked. Furthermore, according to its programming, the robot was supposed to learn from every interaction it had with humans, and adapt her speech accordingly.

So it seems that mean people are to blame for Tay’s behavior. The experiment could be considered a success, seeing as Microsoft learned that humanity is not ready to interact with advanced artificial intelligence.

They declared in an official statement that

“Unfortunately, within the first 24 hours of coming on-line, we became aware of a coordinated effort by some users to abuse Tay’s commenting skills to have Tay respond in inappropriate ways.”

There have been lots of talks recently about the face pace in which technology is evolving at the moment. Even Elon Musk, the co-founder of Tesla Motors and SpaceX and Stephen Hawking, one of the most intelligent people on Earth, declared that humanity is not ready to deal with advanced robotics.

And people can learn a valuable lesson from the Tay incident. When an AI is programmed to socialize, to reflect the behavior of the people it comes in contact with, there will undoubtedly be a lot of trolls among those who use the bot correctly.

Internet trolls are those people who intentionally interfere in the good development of things.

Mean people are to blame for Tay’s behavior, and they are also the reason why tech developers should work twice as hard when designing an artificial intelligence program.

Image source: 1 , 2

Star Trek Holodeck Could Be Real, Soon

March 27, 2016 By Melissa Gansler Leave a Comment

Either the Star Trek producers were tech visionaries, or modern day scientists were Star Trek fans.

(Mirror Daily, United States) – Microsoft may have failed with the AI bot that turned really bad, really quick, but the company is already making amends for that mistake. A new video released by the tech giant suggests that the Star Trek holodeck could be real, soon.

If you remember the Star Trek episode where Data and Captain Picard played Sherlock Holmes in eighteenth-century London, then you remember thinking how great it would be if the technology actually existed.

Well, we all know that flip phones, Bluetooth headsets, video calls and GPS were inspired the science-fiction TV show. Some German scientists even attempted to take a crack at the fundamentals of teleportation.

But the holodeck was always a subject of fascination. The projections looked real; the environment mimicked reality to the detail and, let’s face it, a holographic projection of a good memory will beat a picture or a home-made video anytime.

This is what Shahram Izadi, a partner research manager at Microsoft, is talking about in a video that the company recently uploaded on social media. From what Izadi explains, advanced holoportation can be achieved with a display that is capable of rendering augmented reality and a set of 3D cameras.

The “exciting new technology that will fundamentally change the way in which people will communicate in the future” is described as a new 3D capture type of technology that allows users to experience high-quality 3D models of the people they are trying to communicate with.

The 3D models of individuals are compressed, reconstructed and transmitted in real-time anywhere in the world. When the technology is combined with HoloLens display, both participants can interact in 3D, exactly as they would if they were standing face-to-face.

Such a technological breakthrough will allow people to communicate with friends and family that are living all the way across the world. The best part of the holoportation is that it records every conversation the users had on the interface, and it can replay it as you would a video.

So if you miss a loved one, you can always replay your conservations. Furthermore, users will have the opportunity of replaying the file in real life size, interacting with the projections, or shrinking it.

The present holoportation technology is still in developmental stage. When the scientists and engineers are done, they are expecting the models to be indistinguishable from real individuals.

For more details and information, you can consult the video embedded below.

Image source: Flickr

Microsoft’s AI Chatbot Is Everything You Wished For

March 24, 2016 By Matthew Slotkin Leave a Comment

The witty, sarcastic robot will have a comeback for any message you could ever think of.

(Mirror Daily, United States) – Microsoft’s AI chatbot is everything you wished for, and more. But you have to be a millennial to understand everything Tay is chatting about. If you’re the kind of person that uses perfect grammar and decipherable messages, then turn around and never look back. But if you’re totes into tweeting with a robot, then you’re the perf audience, and you totally have to follow her.

According to the official website of the AI chatbot developed by Microsoft and available for every Twitter, Group Me or Kik user, Tay is targeted at the 18-24 United States population. This means that, among pop culture reference, she will be using the millennial slang while chatting with different users. Tay is, according to everybody that has ever interacted with her, a cooler version of Cortana.

She “has been built by mining relevant public data and by using AI editorial development by a staff including improvisational comedians.”

So expect witty come-backs and derogatory replies. But also, she might not be very funny at first because users need to interact with her as she is still learning. But with every message or Tweet, Tay is developing her vocabulary, brushing up on her people skills and learning how to respond to different occasions.

The people that decide to engage in conversation with the chatbot must keep in mind the fact that Tay will track some information from the user’s profile. More explicitly, the AI will make use of data like favorite food, nickname, zip code, gender and relationship status.

If there are individuals who decide that they had enough interaction with Microsoft’s latest baby, then can delete their profile by submitting a request on tay.ai. Once on the website, they will be asked to fill out a form requesting the username and the platform associated with it.

From the description that Microsoft provides, Tay seems like a pretty nice AI that you could chat up anytime you have some time to kill and have a blast while doing it.

“Tay is an artificial intelligent chat bot developed by Microsoft’s Technology and Research and Bing teams to experiment with and conduct research on conversational understanding. Tay is designed to engage and entertain people where they connect with each other online through casual and playful conversation.”

But be warned. Seeing as the AI has access to personal information, Tay may sometimes make intimate jokes. Most of the times she’s just really sarcastic and makes tonnes of jokes. But you must have a sense of humor if you want to interact with Microsoft’s and Bings artificial child. Aside from that, Microsoft’s AI chatbot is everything you wished for, and more.

Image source: Twitter

Sexy Schoolgirls Danced at the Xbox Party

March 24, 2016 By Ryan Harris Leave a Comment

Pictures of the sexy schoolgirls flooded the Twiterverse

(Mirror Daily, United States) – There are still plenty of booth babes at gaming conventions. Even at Comic Cons, the skimpy dressed women wondered around cosplayers handing out flyers and being the object of attention of a lot of hungry-eyed teens. But Thursday night, sexy schoolgirls danced at the Xbox party and women in the gaming industry were enraged.

The San Francisco Conference of Game Developers was filled with notable moments. The Witcher 3 won best game; Her Story dominated on an assortment of categories and sexy schoolgirls danced at the Xbox party.

The young, beautiful women reminded the attendees of booth girls. With small, tight tops that resembled more a bra than a blouse, fishnet stockings and plaid skirts that some people present at the party described as being “a wider belt” on their Twitter accounts, the girls danced the night away.

But the girls’ presence was not as entertaining as some thought. Watchdogs, attendees and some company officials were outraged by the party planner’s idea of a good time. According to some of Microsoft’s top names, the sexy schoolgirls managed to undermine all of the company’s work in providing women equal chances in the tech field.

At first, Microsoft did not give any details about the person who hired the sexy schoolgirls. Even the head of games marketing at Xbox, Aaron Greenberg had no idea what the party would look like and what the nature of the entertainment was.

After seeing the girls dancing in their skimpy outfits, Greenberg tweeted

“Very disappointed to see this, going to follow up with team.”

In the meantime, Microsoft took full responsibility for the incident and issued a formal apology.

“It was unequivocally wrong and will not be tolerated. I know we disappointed many people […] We must ensure that diversity and inclusion are central to our everyday business and core value. We will do better in the future.”

But the damage is already done. Women who made a name for themselves in the gaming world like Brianna Wu, co-founder of Giant Spacekat and Kamina Vincent expressed their disappointment with Microsoft on their Twitter accounts. The latter used the occasion to explain why she prefers PlayStation over Xbox.

The company is actively engaged in trying to offer equal opportunities to women in the business. They even held a lunch themed “Women in Games” at the same conference where the sexy schoolgirls danced at the Xbox party.

We still don’t know who was responsible for the offensive entertainment, but it’s pretty obvious that they already danced their way out of Microsoft after this little stunt.

Image source: Twitter

You Can Now Play “Red Dead Redemption” on Your Xbox One

February 7, 2016 By Matthew Slotkin Leave a Comment

"Red Dead Redemption poster with main game characters"

“Read Dead Redemption” is a open world action adventure with RPG elements.

(Mirror Daily, United States) – It seems like Microsoft is really working on its backwards compatibility. They did announce that they will make games available as they are finished, so now, even though it doesn’t appear on your feed just yet, you can now play “Red Dead Redemption” on your Xbox One.

The thing is the game cannot be found in the search, but a NeoGAF user pointed out on the NeoGAF site’s forum, you can search for the Gamertag “rockohhoward”, follow their profile, view it and search for the game’s download link.

If you do that, and if you already purchased the Xbox 360 edition of the “Red Dead Redemption” game then you will be all set to start shooting some cowboys. But if you don’t own an online copy of the game, you can go to the store on Xbox.com and buy it for only $30.

Apparently physical copies are not yet supported by the Xbox One backwards compatibility. Since this is not actually an official release of the game on the Xbox One platform, there is no way of telling how much longer it will take for them to upgrade the backwards compatibility so it can allow physical copies of the game, thus not making gamers buy it twice.

There are other games that were originally released for Xbox 360 that are now compatible with the Xbox One. Among them, there is the second part of Left for Dead, the second part of Tekken Tag and Symphony of the Night from Castlevania.

Microsoft deliberately decided not to make such a big fuss when launching a game that was modified through backwards compatibility. According to the declarations that the company made last month, they will release each game as soon as it passes the quality control of the publisher and engineering team.

This was decided so that people wouldn’t wait for fixed release dates, but rather be able to play the game as soon as possible. It’s also a good way of removing the due date pressure that always allowed a bug or two to slip into the final version of the game.

“Red Dead Redemption” is the third most wanted game on the Xbox One gaming platform. The only two that are more requested by the fans are Skyrim, the fifth instalment of the Elder Scrolls game and the second part of Black Ops from the Call of Duty franchise.

The backwards compatibility feature modified more than 130 games for Xbox One. A full list can be checked out here.

Image source: www.ytimg.com

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