By Willie Brown : sfexaminer – excerpt (audio)
San Francisco politics has often been described as a knife fight in a phone booth. Having spent a life inside that phone booth, I can tell you the description is largely accurate.
I have thrown my share of elbows and taken plenty in return. Politics is a tough business — no one who puts their name on the ballot should expect otherwise.
But there are still lines you don’t cross. State Sen. Scott Wiener’s decision to create an artificial-intelligence chatbot impersonating Supervisor Connie Chan, his opponent in the November race for Congress, crossed several.
Wiener’s campaign built a website around an AI version of Chan, put her face on it and invited voters to have a conversation with a machine programmed to mock her. When prompted about Chan’s accent, the chatbot responded that her “accent is so thick I can barely understand myself.” When asked whether she was an American citizen, it dodged the question with a birther swipe, which Wiener shrugged off as a “joke.”
His campaign has since taken the site down for “maintenance” after widespread condemnation, but not before Wiener dug in his heels on the legitimacy of the attack. He has also yet to formally apologize for the offense it caused… (more)
RELATED:
Pelosi slams Wiener chatbot mimicking opponent as sexist, racially problematic
Scott Wiener takes down AI chatbot mimicking Connie Chan after criticism
You said it Willie. There are some lines you do not cross and Wiener has crossed a lot of those lines in his scramble to the top.