Tay, the racist robot teen

After months of R&D, on March 23 2016 Microsoft unveiled Tay, a conversational Twitter chat bot that was designed to resemble a teen with humor. Tay would improve itself by chatting with humans. At least such was the assumption...

Well Microsoft, beware what you wish for. Online trolls rushed to the scene and on March 24 Tay had turned into a racist monster.

Tay is a great reminder that as humans we are actually quite bad at specifying what we want, and to foresee how certain technologies can be used, reappropriated and evolve.