Artificial Stupidity

In addition to Muse, Microsoft had the bright idea of adding another Artificial Intelligence bot to its Windows Live Messenger service. So last week, Santa Claus made his appearance. Unfortunately, it appears as though this particular Santa Claus is rather a loose cannon, and not particularly child-friendly. The Register has the details.

 

One thing though, I see that the Register was alerted to this by someone whose 11 and 13 year old nieces "do not still fully believe in Santa Claus". This I find bizarre – it implies that the older one gets, the more fully one believes in the man in the red suit. Even if the whistleblower meant it in the reverse sense, I’m still somewhat surprised – I twigged that Santa was my parents at a much earlier age, and we lived in much more innocent times then…