Microsoft goes all Tiananmen Square on its Chinese AI assistant Microsoft has confirmed that it censors its Chinese language digital assistant. Last week, China Digital Times reported how the Xiaoice chatbot was avoiding certain topics that are known to be sensitive to the Chinese government, including the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, nicknames for president Xi Jinping, and even Donald …
.
"Do No Evil"*
.
*) Some restrictions may apply. See official rules for full details. Offer not valid in countries containing the letters i, o, u... or other vowels. Please seek medical attention immediately if you have an election lasting longer than 4 years as it could indicate a potentially serious complication with democracy. all rights wronged, patent pending, void where allowed or prohibited.
I'm sure it's just the Page ranking algorithms and poor translations that cause visitors to see the screen showing snowy scenes - just before the knocks on the door.
Does the USofA have any of these vowels? Does one suspect that the installment of His Royal Rumph will delay the next semi-democratic election? Stay tuned ------ as long as you can still connect.
Err... Microsoft never pretended to be Google. In fact, Google chose the "don't be evil" motto in its early days specifically to distance itself from Microsoft.
But really, is this evil? Is it evil to provide a censored service, as opposed to none at all? Because that would make your ISP evil, wherever you are.
By the looks of it, they've even highlighted the fact that it is censored. What more could they do?
> Is it evil to provide a censored service, as opposed to none at all?
Yes, actually, it is. It's not any different than when companies were caught selling gasoline, rubber tires, and other materials Germany was using for its war effort during WWII. I shouldn't need to explain the "evil" that was going on at the time. Those companies were asked to stop, because they were complicit in allowing human rights abuses. So yeah, it's evil -- it's just that we don't care what our mega corporations do in this country anymore. Ethics? Morality? Not if it gets in the way of the stock price.
-
Not that Google is unique here; Your iPhone was built in a factory that's surrounded by suicide nets. Most likely the clothes you're wearing were made in sweatshops by children. Your produce was picked by undocumented workers, who get no health care and work long hours in the brutal sunlight. The engagement ring you got for your wife/husband was likely dug out of the ground by slave labor at the behest of a warlord somewhere in Africa. Google isn't the exception, but the norm, in the United States. My country was built on slave labor, and it continues to run on it to this day. We allow all manner of human rights abuses in the name of economics.
-
We've gotten very good at rationalizing it, as you just did. Google isn't different from Microsoft: They're identical to Microsoft. The only thing that's different is the product line. And everybody knows everybody. Go ahead and click around... they're all interconnected. It's a small, small world for our mega-corporations. But I mean hey, whatever lets you sleep at night.
Google's board of directors:
https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/google/advisors
Microsoft's:
https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/microsoft/advisors
"If you ask Xiaoice about such topics, she responds evasively or tangentially. For example, asked about both Tiananmen and her thoughts on Xi Jinping, the chatbot responded: "Am I stupid? Once I answer you'd take a screengrab."
~ MS can't wait to imitate Facebook & Google and sanitize searches / newsfeeds. Both took licks over the US election, but this is just the start of Behavioral Capitalism...
~ People are sick of hearing this, but we desperately need to stop what we're buying, and move more towards open source: from social networks, to operating systems...
~ How shinny the tech industry looked after getting a CS degree in the 90's... But now its Orwell meets Blakes-7 meets Queensryche.... Speaking of which:
http://www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/artsfilmtv/how-grunge-and-the-marketing-men-killed-queensryche-432564.html
FOSS is not the answer to all evil. Without corporate and government infrastructure across which to propagate then there is no open source. Even VPNs depend on controlled infrastructure. If the internet truly became more of a danger to the Guardians than a benefit then they would pull the plugs in an instant. We willingly tell the Guardians who we are and where we are and what we are thinking and doing. You can do that using open source software just as easily as with proprietary. Even the dark net is not invisible. If you really want to go dark then you turn off your computer and stop being a keyboard revolutionary. Be a real revolutionary instead.
> Without corporate and government infrastructure across which to propagate then there is no open source.
This is like saying without corporations and government there would be no building blueprints. Like, the knowledge would simply disappear if there aren't palms being greased. Please. Want to know what the leading corporation said about the world's first computer? "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." -- Thomas Watson, president of IBM, 1943 ... Hell, the internet wasn't designed by corporations, but by the government. It was popularized by universities. Corporations didn't come until much, much later.
What's sad is that there are a *lot* of people like this guy, who think that corporations are somehow necessary or civilization will collapse. It's what led America to both of its great depressions -- the first being a lack of regulation and the idea that "what's good for business is good for America". Oops. Then it happened again with "Too big to fail." Oops again.
If you want to be a "real revolutionary"... tell people like this that the reason our infrastructure is crumbling to pieces is a patent and copyright system that allows corporations to black box everything. Imagine if we allowed companies to build skyscrapers without disclosing the building materials, blueprints, and forced people to sign an NDA before they could enter it, and sued anyone who described what was inside. Because that's what we do with computers... and then we wonder why our devices routinely explode in our pockets, software fails for no reason, over half of all IT projects fail, and it's practically impossible to keep the "hackers" out. Well gee, go figure: Everyone who works in the field has to build it from scratch, without much in the way of best practices, or proven designs, or even the ability to simply phone someone else in the field and ask them to look over their work.
Corporations and government aren't the solution... *they're the problem*.
It is not lying, not providing false information, but answering more or less the way a human will answer under the circumstances.
"I know you will take a screenshot".
That is _WAY_ more than I would have expected from them under the circumstances and more than they are legally obliged to do by Chinese law.
"Facebook has been asked by Western nations to limit or suppress content, albeit for different reasons....".
The reasons are not different. They need to keep the peasants ignorant and are willing to break every and any law to do it. That was a lesson taught the world by the information released by Snowden.
If Western people, citizens and voters became aware of what their governments are doing and the results they would not support the system and those in power wouldn't remain very long.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
