美国国家公共电台 NPR--How Microsoft's experiment in artificial intelligence tech backfired

How Microsoft's experiment in artificial intelligence tech backfired

Transcript¹

Microsoft is putting restraints on its new AI chatbot after it professed² its love to some and berated³ others. Some experts say the company may have released the bot too quickly.

LEILA FADEL, HOST:

Microsoft's chatbot has gone rogue⁴. It's professing⁵ love to some users. It's calling people ugly. It's spreading false information. NPR's Bobby Allyn reports on how this experiment in artificial intelligence tech backfired.

BOBBY ALLYN, BYLINE⁶: Matt O'Brien is a technology reporter for the Associated Press. He was testing out Microsoft's new Bing earlier this month. It's the first-ever search engine powered by AI. It also includes a chatbot that can hold text conversations a whole lot like a human. At first, O'Brien found the chatbot impressive. Its answers were fast, and it could hold forth⁷ on a wide range of subjects. But then it got weird⁸. The chatbot started coming at O'Brien.

MATT O'BRIEN: It finally got to this point where it was saying, like, I have a really bad character.

ALLYN: Let's just say it didn't stop there.

O'BRIEN: Unstyled hair, ugly face, bad teeth, too short, unathletic, slight, bad posture⁹, bad skin, overweight, poor figure, et cetera. And then you are also horrible, evil, wicked, terrible, and people compare you to the worst people in history, such as Hitler.

ALLYN: Yeah. The bot started this belligerent¹⁰ streak¹¹ with O'Brien only after he asked it whether Microsoft should pull the plug on the bot, since some of its answers were littered with inaccuracies. As a tech reporter, O'Brien knows the Bing chatbot can't think or feel things. But still, he was pretty taken aback at the hostile and defensive¹² tone.

O'BRIEN: You can sort of intellectualize the basics of how it works but doesn't mean you don't become deeply unsettled by some of the crazy and unhinged things it was saying.

ALLYN: Many in the Bing tester group, including me, have had strange experiences. For instance, New York Times reporter Kevin Roose published a transcript of a conversation with the bot. The bot called itself Sydney, and it was in love with him. The bot said he was the first person who listened and cared about it. The bot also told Roose he didn't really love his spouse¹³ but that he loved the bot. Here's Roose recounting the incident on the Times podcast "Hard Fork."

(SOUNDBITE OF PODCAST, "HARD FORK")

KEVIN ROOSE: All I can say is that it was an extremely disturbing experience. I actually, like, couldn't sleep last night 'cause I was thinking about this.

ALLYN: As you might imagine, Microsoft vice¹⁴ president Yusuf Mehdi has been following along.

YUSUF MEHDI: This is one of the things - we didn't quite predict that people would use the technology in this way.

ALLYN: In other words, Mehdi says, when Microsoft was developing the chatbot, they hadn't had hours-long conversations with the AI involving personal questions. Turns out, if you treat a chatbot like a human, it'll start to do some crazy things.

MEHDI: These are literally¹⁵ a handful of examples out of many, many thousands. And we're up to now a million tester previews that have come up. So did we expect that we'd find a handful of scenarios¹⁶ where things didn't work properly? Absolutely.

ALLYN: But these handful of scenarios have made Microsoft put new limits on the chatbot for those in the tester group. The number of consecutive¹⁷ questions on one topic you can ask are now capped. And to many questions, it now says this - I'm sorry, but I prefer not to continue this conversation. I'm still learning, so I appreciate your understanding and patience, with, of course, a praying hands emoji. Now, you might be wondering, OK, but how and why did this chatbot go off the rails to begin with? I asked Arvind Narayanan this. He's a computer science professor at Princeton. He says chatbots like Microsoft's scraped a vast amount of text on the internet and feed it into the AI to learn patterns.

ARVIND NARAYANAN: That includes data from Reddit, from 4chan, from various dark corners of the internet where people are talking to each other. So the bot has been trained, likely, I would say, not just on, let's say, news articles or Wikipedia, but also all of these unfiltered conversations that are happening online.

ALLYN: And while Microsoft said it had worked to make sure the vilest¹⁸ underbelly of the internet wouldn't appear in answers, somehow the chatbot still got pretty ugly fast. But we don't know why exactly because Microsoft won't discuss what data trained the bot, nor what particular information may have made it go rogue. They're being so secretive in part because there is now an AI arms race among Big Tech companies. Microsoft and its competitors, Google, Meta and Amazon and others, are locked in a fierce battle over who will dominate the AI future. And chatbots are just one area where this rivalry¹⁹ is playing out. Narayanan says Microsoft should have kept its chatbot in the lab a little longer.

NARAYANAN: It seems very clear that the way they released it, you know, is not a responsible way to release a product that is going to interact with so many people on such a scale.

ALLYN: Microsoft's Mehdi, though, says the company doesn't regret its decision to put the chatbot into the wild.

MEHDI: There's only so much you can find when you test in sort of a lab. You have to actually go out, start to test it with customers, to find these types of scenarios.

ALLYN: It is true that scenarios like the one New York Times reporter Roose found himself in were probably hard to predict. At one point, Roose tried to switch topics and have the bot help him buy a rake, and it offered a detailed²⁰ list of things to consider when rake shopping. Great. But then the bot got tender again. It wrote, I just want to love you and be loved by you.

Bobby Allyn, NPR News.

1 transcript   

n.抄本，誊本，副本，肄业证书

参考例句：

• A transcript of the tapes was presented as evidence in court.一份录音带的文字本作为证据被呈交法庭。
• They wouldn't let me have a transcript of the interview.他们拒绝给我一份采访的文字整理稿。

2 professed   

公开声称的，伪称的，已立誓信教的

参考例句：

• These, at least, were their professed reasons for pulling out of the deal. 至少这些是他们自称退出这宗交易的理由。
• Her manner professed a gaiety that she did not feel. 她的神态显出一种她并未实际感受到的快乐。

3 berated   

v.严厉责备，痛斥( berate的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• Marion berated Joe for the noise he made. 玛丽昂严厉斥责乔吵吵闹闹。 来自辞典例句
• It berated Mussolini for selling out to Berlin. 它严厉谴责了墨索里尼背叛、投靠柏林的行径。 来自辞典例句

4 rogue   

n.流氓；v.游手好闲

参考例句：

• The little rogue had his grandpa's glasses on.这淘气鬼带上了他祖父的眼镜。
• They defined him as a rogue.他们确定他为骗子。

5 professing   

声称( profess的现在分词 )； 宣称； 公开表明； 信奉

参考例句：

• But( which becometh women professing godliness) with good works. 只要有善行。这才与自称是敬神的女人相宜。
• Professing Christianity, he had little compassion in his make-up. 他号称信奉基督教，却没有什么慈悲心肠。

6 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

7 forth   

adv.向前；向外，往外

参考例句：

• The wind moved the trees gently back and forth.风吹得树轻轻地来回摇晃。
• He gave forth a series of works in rapid succession.他很快连续发表了一系列的作品。

8 weird   

adj.古怪的，离奇的；怪诞的，神秘而可怕的

参考例句：

• From his weird behaviour,he seems a bit of an oddity.从他不寻常的行为看来，他好像有点怪。
• His weird clothes really gas me.他的怪衣裳简直笑死人。

9 posture   

n.姿势，姿态，心态，态度；v.作出某种姿势

参考例句：

• The government adopted an uncompromising posture on the issue of independence.政府在独立这一问题上采取了毫不妥协的态度。
• He tore off his coat and assumed a fighting posture.他脱掉上衣，摆出一副打架的架势。

10 belligerent   

adj.好战的，挑起战争的；n.交战国，交战者

参考例句：

• He had a belligerent aspect.他有种好斗的神色。
• Our government has forbidden exporting the petroleum to the belligerent countries.我们政府已经禁止向交战国输出石油。

11 streak   

n.条理，斑纹，倾向，少许，痕迹；v.加条纹，变成条纹，奔驰，快速移动

参考例句：

• The Indians used to streak their faces with paint.印第安人过去常用颜料在脸上涂条纹。
• Why did you streak the tree?你为什么在树上刻条纹？

12 defensive   

adj.防御的；防卫的；防守的

参考例句：

• Their questions about the money put her on the defensive.他们问到钱的问题，使她警觉起来。
• The Government hastily organized defensive measures against the raids.政府急忙布置了防卫措施抵御空袭。

13 spouse   

n.配偶(指夫或妻)

参考例句：

• Her spouse will come to see her on Sunday.她的丈夫星期天要来看她。
• What is the best way to keep your spouse happy in the marriage?在婚姻中保持配偶幸福的最好方法是什么？

14 vice   

n.坏事；恶习；[pl.]台钳，老虎钳；adj.副的

参考例句：

• He guarded himself against vice.他避免染上坏习惯。
• They are sunk in the depth of vice.他们堕入了罪恶的深渊。

15 literally   

adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实

参考例句：

• He translated the passage literally.他逐字逐句地翻译这段文字。
• Sometimes she would not sit down till she was literally faint.有时候，她不走到真正要昏厥了，决不肯坐下来。

16 scenarios   

n.[意]情节；剧本；事态；脚本

参考例句：

• Further, graphite cores may be safer than non-graphite cores under some accident scenarios. 再者，根据一些事故解说，石墨堆芯可比非石墨堆芯更安全一些。 来自英汉非文学 - 环境法 - 环境法
• Again, scenarios should make it clear which modes are acceptable to users in various contexts. 同样，我们可以运用场景剧本来搞清楚在不同情境下哪些模式可被用户接受。 来自About Face 3交互设计精髓

17 consecutive   

adj.连续的，联贯的，始终一贯的

参考例句：

• It has rained for four consecutive days.已连续下了四天雨。
• The policy of our Party is consecutive.我党的政策始终如一。

18 vilest   

adj.卑鄙的( vile的最高级 )；可耻的；极坏的；非常讨厌的

参考例句：

19 rivalry   

n.竞争，竞赛，对抗

参考例句：

• The quarrel originated in rivalry between the two families.这次争吵是两家不和引起的。
• He had a lot of rivalry with his brothers and sisters.他和兄弟姐妹间经常较劲。

20 detailed   

adj.详细的，详尽的，极注意细节的，完全的

参考例句：

• He had made a detailed study of the terrain.他对地形作了缜密的研究。
• A detailed list of our publications is available on request.我们的出版物有一份详细的目录备索。