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What if instead of being deviously calculating, robots just turned out to be blazingly insensitive? You know, not end the world – just make it intolerable.
UK newspaper The Guardian submitted a complaint to Microsoft on Tuesday after the Microsoft Start aggregated news service featured a grotesquely inappropriate AI-generated poll next to a Guardian article about a suspected murder. Among other things, it seems the bots weren’t trained on ad placement.
Error in Judgment (Day)
While the full effects of generative AI on the news business are still rippling their way through the industry, The Guardian’s complaint against Microsoft gives a clue to the current state of play. For all its technological advances, AI is still devoid of editorial judgment, human decency, or plain common sense.
That didn’t stop Microsoft from adding a feature to Microsoft Start that uses AI to generate little polls. They pop up next to news articles, providing readers with a little extra content alongside the journalism it’s pulled in. The poll in question asked readers to vote on exactly what they thought led to the death of 21-year-old Lilie James, who was found dead with severe head wounds at a school in Australia. Anna Bateson, CEO of The Guardian’s parent company Guardian Media Group, wrote in a letter to Microsoft President Brad Smith that the AI-generated poll significantly harmed The Guardian’s reputation:
