It's not Tay's fault that it turned racist. It's ours.

Microsoft had to pull its fledgling chatbot, Tay, from Twitter on Thursday. The reason: In less that 24 hours, the AI had been morally corrupted to the point that it was freely responding to questions with religious, sexist and ethnic slurs. It spouted White Supremacist slogans, outlandish conspiracy theories and no small amount of praise for Hitler. Microsoft released a statement on how things went sideways so quickly, though that's done little to lessen the outrage from internet users. But I would argue that this rage is misplaced.

It isn't Tay's or Microsoft's fault that this experiment turned into a shit show. Granted, yeah, Microsoft probably should have foreseen the pitfalls of such a public trial, but can we really fault the company for not automatically assuming the absolute worst in people? I'd also argue that Tay is also beyond reproach in this matter. You wouldn't teach a toddler to curse and then act surprised when it told Gran-Gran to fuck off. Likewise, you can't blame an AI designed to parrot what it hears on the internet when it goes and says something awful.