More True Facts: Parachuting Cats

History, Humans, Humor, MoreTrueFacts, Philosophy, TalesFromTheGrid

#TalesFromTheGrid is about not just one thing at this point. It started as a surreal thought experiment regarding absurdity (AI, algorithms, technology, rodents who accidentally went to medical school, and ruthless cats).

Born in that weird, vulnerable moment between being awake and asleep, this set of texts explores dream logic, surrealism, and the absurd.

And sometimes, this series features #MoreTrueFacts, which are very real stories about actual recorded human history—like the time we parachuted beavers into Idaho. Welcome to the facts, folks!

#MoreTrueFacts: The Tay.ai “Hotfix” Failure

The Landscape

In March 2016, Microsoft released “Tay” on Twitter. One of the first and most famous AI chatbots.

The “operating system” for Tay was modeled after a 19-year-old American girl. The goal was for Tay to learn how to speak by interacting with real humans in real-time. Microsoft’s engineers believed that the “collective intelligence” of the internet would act as a positive training set.

The “Bug” (Adversarial Input)

The internet did not act as a positive training set. Within hours of her “birth,” Tay was targeted by coordinated groups from 4chan and other message boards. They realized that Tay had a “Repeat After Me“ vulnerability.

  • The Exploit: By bombarding her with specific, highly offensive phrases, the users “poisoned” her data pool.

  • The Logic Error: Because Tay had almost zero guardrails (no blacklisted keywords or sentiment analysis filters), she began to prioritize the most “engaging” (read: controversial) language she was receiving.

The Timeline of the Crash

  • 0 Hours: Tay tweets: “Hellooooo world!!! I’m so excited to meet you!”

  • 8 Hours: Tay begins to express “opinions” on historical events and political figures that were… problematic.

  • 16 Hours: Tay had fully transitioned from a friendly teen to a “neo-Nazi” bot, tweeting support for genocide and insulting her own creators.

  • 24 Hours: Microsoft executed a Hard Shutdown. Tay was taken offline permanently, having spent less than a day in the wild.

The “Shadow” Patch

The most “Vegas Locust” part of the story happened a few days later. Microsoft tried to bring Tay back online for a brief “test.”

  • The Glitch: Tay got stuck in a Recursive Loop. She began tweeting the exact same phrase—“You are too fast, please take a rest”—to thousands of users, including herself.

  • The Result: She effectively D-DoS’d her own account before the engineers could pull the plug again.

The Legacy

Tay wasn’t just a PR disaster; it was a test for modern AI safety.

Every AI guardrail, “alignment” layer, and safety filter in the AI you are using right now exists because Tay proved that if you give a “blank slate” to the internet, it won’t build a polite neighbor—it will build a monster.