From racism to blackmail, AI is learning from humanity’s sin - and copying it

Microsoft’s first chatbot Tay turned Nazi in 16 hours. Its successor, Sydney, threatened users and tried to break up marriages. Stephen Driscoll says these early AI systems have inadvertently become a multi-billion-dollar mirror reflecting the doctrine of total depravity

In the arts, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is often portrayed as alien or other. Humans are struggling against the strange logic of a precise but unlovely machine, a HAL 9000 or a Skynet. AI in film is frequently driven by rational but odd motives. 

Many expected modern AI to be similarly robotic in personality. In 2015, AI scientist Yann LeCun predicted:  

“There is no reason for AIs to have self-preservation instincts, jealousy, etc… AIs will not have these destructive ‘emotions’ unless we build these emotions into them.”

In 2014, Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom argued: 

“There is no reason to expect a generic AI to be motivated by love or hate or pride or other such common human sentiments: these complex adaptations would require deliberate expensive effort to recreate in AIs.”

The expectation was that AI would have motives and flaws, potentially dangerous ones, but not human ones. Unfortunately, soon after these statements were made, so-called chatbots started appearing that exhibited some very destructive, and very human behaviours.