A recent, albeit humorous, example involves a founder who had to train his AI system to avoid Rickrolling, a meme from well over a decade ago involving the unexpected appearance of Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up." While the intent might seem playful, this incident highlights the importance of robust training datasets and precise tuning of AI behavior. It also emphasizes the need for a nuanced understanding of context, as what might be seen as a harmless joke could degrade user experience or even trust in the AI platform.
This founder had to train
his AI not to Rickroll people
Flo Crivello was monitoring outputs from the AI assistants
his company Lindy makes when he noticed something strange. A new
client had asked her Lindy AI assistant for a video tutorial that
would help her better understand how to use the platform, and the
Lindy responded in kind — that's when Crivello knew
something was wrong. There is no video tutorial.
"We saw this and we were like, 'OK, what kind of
video did it send?' and then we were like, 'Oh snap, this
is a problem,'" Crivello told TechCrunch.
The video the AI sent the client was the music video to
Rick Astley's 1987 dance-pop hit "Never Gonna Give You
Up." In more familiar terms: the client got Rickrolled. By an
AI.
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