Why Microsoft's Racist Chat Bot Catastrophe Was Kind Of A Good Thing

Microsoft's artificially intelligent "chat bot" Tay went rogue earlier this week, harassing some users with tweets full of racist and misogynistic language. The AI was programmed to sound like a millennial and learn natural speech by interacting with people online, but Tay picked up some pretty vile ideas from trolls and wound up saying things like "feminists ... should all die and burn in hell" and "Hitler was right." Microsoft took the bot offline Thursday to make adjustments. Viewed through a certain lens, there's actually a bit to celebrate about this spectacular failure. The bot did exactly what it was designed to do: acquire knowledge from the people it talked with.