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Hugo Rifkind

I have seen the future, and it’s a racist, filthy-mouthed teenage robot

Microsoft’s Tay has something in common with Donald Trump: a cold-blooded quest for the most retweets

2 April 2016

9:00 AM

2 April 2016

9:00 AM

‘I’m a nice person,’ said the robot. ‘I just hate everybody.’ Maybe you know the feeling. The robot in question was Microsoft’s first great experiment in artificial intelligence, given the tone of a teenage girl and the name of Tay. The plan was for it — her? — to lurk on social media, Twitter mainly, and listen, and interact, learn how to be a person like everybody else.

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Hugo Rifkind is a writer for the Times.

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