Meta’s new chatbot prototype has told the BBC that Mark Zuckerberg is exploiting his users for money.
According to Meta, the chatbot uses artificial intelligence and can chat about “almost any topic.”
When asked what the chatbot thought of the company’s CEO and founder, he replied, “Our country is divided and he hasn’t helped it at all.”
Meta said the chatbot is a prototype and could provide rude or offensive responses.
The chatbot, dubbed BlenderBot 3, was released to the public on Friday.
The program “learns” from large amounts of publicly available language data.
When asked about Mark Zuckerberg, the BBC’s chatbot said: “He did a terrible job testifying before Congress. It worries me for our country.”
Mr. Zuckerberg has been questioned by US politicians on a number of occasions, most notably in 2018.
“Our country is divided and he didn’t help at all,” the chatbot continued.
“His company exploits people for money and he doesn’t care. It has to stop!” it said.
Meta has been criticized for not doing enough to prevent the spread of disinformation and hate speech on its platforms. Last year, a former employee, Frances Haugen, accused the company of putting profits ahead of online safety.
The company owns some of the largest social media companies and messaging apps in the world, including Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp.
BlenderBot 3’s algorithm searches the internet for answers. It’s likely that his views on Mr. Zuckerberg were “learned” from other people’s opinions that the algorithm analyzed.
The Wall Street Journal has reported BlenderBot 3 told one of its journalists that Donald Trump was and always will be the US President.
A Business Insider journalist said the chatbot called Mr Zuckerberg “creepy”.
Meta made the BlenderBot 3 public and risked bad publicity for good reason. It needs data.
“Allowing an AI system to interact with humans in the real world leads to longer, more diverse conversations, as well as more diverse feedback,” Meta said in a blog post.
Chatbots that learn from human interactions can learn from their good and bad behavior.
In 2016, Microsoft apologized after Twitter users taught its chatbot to be racist.
Meta accepts that BlenderBot 3 can say the wrong thing – and imitate language that could be “unsafe, biased, or offensive”. The company said it installed security measures, but the chatbot could still be rude.
When I asked the BlenderBot 3 what it thought of me, it said it had never heard of me.
“He must not be so popular,” it said.
Harsh.
James Clayton is the BBC’s North American technology reporter based in San Francisco. Follow him on Twitter @jamesclayton5.
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