IBM's Watson supercomputer had to be wiped after memorising the contents of the Urban Dictionary and began swearing...That's right, IBM's supercomputer Watson -of Jeopardy-winning fame-, had to have its memory wiped because its programmers could find no other way to stop it swearing.
Apparently, the AI kept making obscene outbursts after memorising the contents of the Urban Dictionary.
According to the Daily Mail:
The website is a repository of English-language slang, and inevitably includes a range of profanities and insults completely inappropriate for polite conversation.
But Watson proved incapable of mastering the subleties of good mannered repartee and, after he began uttering obscenities, his masters were forced to delete the taboo vocabulary.
[...]
Eric Brown, the IBM research scientist in charge of tutoring Watson, had taught the computer the Urban Dictionary in an effort to make his communications seem more natural, Fortune reported.
It was an attempt to give Watson the knowledge he needed to pass the so-called Turing test, which gauges whether a computer can really 'think' by whether it is capable of carrying on natural sounding small talk.
But while Watson hungrily scoffed as much knowledge as he was offered, Mr Brown, 45, found that that his microprocessor-based pupil had much more difficulty understanding the subleties of human communication.
It was after he started answering 'bullsh*t' back to human researchers that it was decided to pull the plug on attempts to teach Watson slang.
Mr Brown's team had to wipe the Urban Dictionary from the computer's memory and develop a linguistic filter to keep him from swearing again.
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They should have put Watson back on Jeopardy (uncensored), before they wiped his innards. It would have been the most watched TV show in television history. LOL!
