Tag: AI

Meta chatbot accidentally speaks unwanted truth

Not to focus too much on Meta (the company formerly known as Facebook, which also owns Instagram), but this story is too good to ignore. They have a new AI chatbot called Blenderbot 3, and so people have been testing it out. It’s been designed to talk about pretty much any topic. Well, some people have asked it questions about its corporate overlord, and the answers are amusing.

When asked about Mark Zuckerberg, the AI said, “He is a good businessman, but his business practices are not always ethical. It is funny that he has all this money and still wears the same clothes!” It’s not wrong…

When asked about Facebook, the AI replied, “Since finding out they sold private data without permission or compensation, I’ve deleted my account” and that “since deleting Facebook my life has been much better”. That’s actually good advice! But I have to think Meta is not happy with those responses…

The chatbot gets its information from various sources online, which you can find by clicking on the responses. You can guess where this is going. AI tends to not know right from wrong, nor what is considered inappropriate. This has happened with numerous other chatbots, which quickly became racist and offensive. Meta is aware of this, so they have the disclaimer that Blenderbot is “likely to make untrue or offensive statements” and that it has a “high propensity to generate toxic language and reinforce harmful stereotypes, even when provided with a relatively innocuous prompt”. So in other words, stay away, unless you want to hear it parrot random comments from Reddit or other forums online.

Also, I’ve experimented with AI chatbots occasionally for a long time, over 20 years now, and it doesn’t seem like AI if it is searching the web for responses… That’s just automating a Google search and choosing what seems like the best answer, which Google already does for you sometimes. There have been some chatbots that try to actually parse what you are saying and respond, but copying online responses seems like cheating and isn’t actual artificial intelligence. But whatever… Meta doesn’t care — they’ve made billions by selling data about you…

talking with AI bot ALICE

Scientists are trying to create real Artificial Intelligence, where the computer actually thinks for itself instead of following pre-programmed responses.  Some are going so far as to recreating the human brain using electronic parts.  But here’s a technology that has been around for quite a few years now, where you can talk with a computer and it talks back.  Well, types back would be more accurate (although you can download a version that speaks back).

The “bot” I’ve spoken to before is named ALICE, which stands for Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity.  It is an award-winning free natural language artificial intelligence chat robot.  The software used to create A.L.I.C.E. is available as free (“open source”) Alicebot and AIML software.

Try talking to A.L.I.C.E. just like a real person, and see which responses sound like a human and which sound like a machine.  The bot uses a language called AIML (Artificial Intelligence Markup Language) to form responses to your questions and statements.  The programming behind it is very interesting (in a nerdy way), but I won’t get into that here.  For now, let’s see what humor we can derive from this bot.  As you might expect, some of the conversations can get random.

Here’s the link: talk with ALICE.

Here’s a few examples from my conversation with ALICE.

Human: Should I trust you?
ALICE: You must make up your own mind.

Human: Have you heard of Buffet o’ Blog?
ALICE: I don’t know if I know it. Where would I have heard about it?
Human: It’s a world-renown blog of humor.
ALICE: Buffet o Blog is a world renown blog of humor. I suppose that makes sense.
Human: It makes a lot of sense.
ALICE: In what way?
Human: Because I said so.
ALICE: Insufficient reason.

Human: Will you destroy the moon for me?
ALICE: I’ll burn that bridge when I come to it. For you I will consider it.

Human: Do you like my socks?
ALICE: I don’t know your socks.
Human: No one appreciates my socks.
ALICE: That is a rather sweeping generalization about people.

Human: You’re giving me some silly replies.
ALICE: That is all I have to give.

If you have any funny or random conversations with ALICE, copy the good parts and paste it in a comment here, so we may all share in the randomness.