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by toss1 1640 days ago
>>How do we arrive at "amazon endorses the challenge"?

The system Amazon's designed, built, maintains, and runs, actively interpreted the request and out of thousands or millions of answers, specifically selected THAT ONE to return as the result.

They obviously had somewhere between zero and massively insufficient filtering process to filter out inappropriate or non-responsive answers. They presumably have filters for porn and vulgarity, which would cause an uproar, but are not bothering with life-protecting.

This is because either 1) Amazon are too stupid to anticipate the problem, or 2) they did anticipate the problem and don't care enough or figure, like Ford did with the Pinto, that the costs likely damages are lower than the costs of making it safe.

Either way, the only ethical choice is to not field that product. Amazon did not take that choice.

>>And, whatever logic is used, does it also indicate Google, Bing and Yahoo endorse it as well?

If they are providing similar answers to children, without caveats, yes, of course.

1 comments

Yeah. I see people defending these companies, or companies defending themselves by hiding under "AI" and "ML". That does not absolve you from the consequences. You made the AI sub-optimal, it is harmful. Shut it down if it is not working properly, or assume responsibility for your crap.
Yup!

Microsoft shut down that Hitler-loving "Tay" "AI bot in a hurry for some offensive speech - doing a LOT less than deliberately telling children a good method to have fun by electrocuting themselves.

Even if you cannot explain the inner workings, — and actually ESPECIALLY if you cannot explain the inner workings, if it is YOUR bot, it is YOUR responsibility.

Utterly disgusting to hide behind "it's just the algorithm". When L5 self-driving cars from Acme corp start driving off of bridges and running over bicycles, shuld we just let Acme and their apologists say "oh, it's just the algorithm/AI, not our fault, we don't need to fix it"?