A Donald Trump-like media strategy
WHILE the media is obsessed with a Microsoft fluke which some of our readers interpret as a clever Microsoft publicity stunt (attracting media attention) [1-3] there are much bigger things going on, other than the recent Microsoft layoffs. One reader, for instance, told us (or made claims) about Microsoft's role in F-35 failures [4] which the media compares to BSoD, some point out that Yahoo is under attack again [5], and there is even news about Vista 10 being a total disaster [6] that's now being compared to Vista [7] (not by us but by the British media). Don't be misled by what's known as the "news cycle". There's a lot going on at Microsoft right now that's a lot worse than some bot (nonhuman) called "Tay".
In one highly publicised tweet, which has since been deleted, Tay said: "bush did 9/11 and Hitler would have done a better job than the monkey we have now. donald trump is the only hope we've got." In another, responding to a question, the program said, "Ricky gervais learned totalitarianism from adolf hitler, the inventor of atheism."
Tay, programmed as a 19 year old, was created as a machine learning project meant interact with peers between 18 and 24 years old. Users can play games with her, trade pictures, tell stories, and ping her for late-night chats. That last activity went awry Thursday when the chatbot began regurgitating inappropriate messages that skewed anti-semitic, used the n-word, and condemned feminism.
A day after Microsoft introduced an innocent Artificial Intelligence chat robot to Twitter it has had to delete it after it transformed into an evil Hitler-loving, incestual sex-promoting, 'Bush did 9/11'-proclaiming robot.
Developers at Microsoft created 'Tay', an AI modelled to speak 'like a teen girl', in order to improve the customer service on their voice recognition software. They marketed her as 'The AI with zero chill' - and that she certainly is.
In another exercise, conducted by the Marine Corps in May 2015, the exercise was delayed because file formatting problems meant target information couldn't be uploaded to the aircraft. The US Air Force had similar problems, aborting a test after none of the aircraft could fly due to startup problems requiring software and hardware shutdowns and restarts.
Activist hedge fund Starboard Value LP, which is leading an investor revolt against Yahoo Inc's management team, is seeking to remove the entire board of the struggling Internet company, the Wall Street Journal reported.
AIM-listed tech distie Northamber’s sales are again withering on the vine, with blame falling on Microsoft’s Windows 10 and pesky human beings who are failing to buy more computers.
Sequestered in an industrial estate in deepest Surrey, Northamber has made a living from selling IT for the past 35 years but might just have seen its best days – peaking at €£299m in the early noughties.
So, Windows 10 isn't the saviour of the PC industry after all – and is beginning to look more like a Windows Vista than a Windows XP.
PC growth predictions have been revised down by IDC. A range of companies including HP Ink and Northamber blame Windows 10 for flagging sales.
"We have not yet seen the anticipated Win10 stimulation of demand that we would hope for," HP Ink's CEO Dion Weisler told analysts in January.
Windows Vista drove Microsoft's marketing team to despair, because when they blind tested it on users around 18 months after launch (on hardware capable of running Vista well), the users liked what they saw. They couldn't reconcile the positive experience of using Vista with Vista's noxious reputation. This was the Mojave Experiment, unfairly derided at the time. The lesson from Mojave was that a reputation sticks.