Tay AI happens when a joke is more than a joke

This week the denizens of the internet did what they do best and wrecked it for the rest of us. Sadly, one of the pranks centered on demeaning fellow humans, which seems to still have a place in 2016.

First up, the Natural Environment Research Center of the United Kingdom released a poll to name their latest $287 million research vessel. The current frontrunner is “Boaty McBoatface,” with a little less than 10 times the number of votes as the second choice. Cute.

Later in the week, Microsoft released “Tay AI” onto Twitter, a teen girl, AI, designed to chat up users and learn from what other users tweet. Cue the internet. A day later, Microsoft had to take down Tay, who had become “a Hitler-loving sex robot,” according to The Telegraph. Oops.

Boaty McBoatface is great. It’s an embodiment of the best British humor. Tay is not. Funny because it is unexpected, perhaps, but these jokes are at the expense of every nation, group or individual that felt the 140-character wrath of the uncensored bot.

Look, we get it: Making computer programs do what their users never intended is funny and interesting. There are legions of YouTube videos of players building elaborate buildings, recreating memes or recreating characters from popular culture. The best of these aren’t racist, sexist or misogynistic, but stand on their own as enticing cross-platform intersections of what people love best, approachable for all. Tay could have been that.

Tay instead illustrates the power that a group of determined, intolerant individuals can have on public outcomes. This may sound familiar: a small group, with hatred in their hearts, espouses their views while others look on and laugh. Eventually, their rhetoric becomes overwhelming, and a wider audience stops laughing and starts pointing out the damage these remarks cause but are unable to dissuade the growing bigoted cohort. Eventually, the unceasingly intolerant rhetoric becomes mainstream and acceptable. Jokes turn to ingrained ideas, words turn to violence and the whole histories of nations and peoples irrevocably change. There are any number of scenarios, both past and present, to which that story applies. Luckily, Microsoft nipped this one in the bud.

Viral jokes that everyone shares, and to which the masses contribute over the web, are fantastic. Jokes that go for the laugh at the expense of others, especially ones based on immutable characteristics, still have a wretched place in contemporary society. If only it weren’t so.