CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY — A bot exposed to hours of Pens talk via radio broadcasts, podcasts, and audio transcripts of Twitter threads startled researchers this week by learning to utter ‘Matt Murray sucks’ with a distinct slur of a person under the influence of alcohol or choking on their own rage, sources trying to stop it from calling 93.7 the Fan again confirm.
“95% of human participants assumed a recording of the bot’s incendiary comment was actually the voice of a relative or close friend,” said lead researcher Dr. Leslie Yang. “In fact, a staggering 80% still thought so after we let them argue with the bot from another room for five minutes. We ultimately had to disconnect it from the internet because it started hogging up the university’s entire bandwidth to search for Marc-Andre Fleury trade rumors.”
Beyond simple reiteration of common talking points, Dr. Yang also observed several “unexpected nuances” in the test robot’s behavior.
“The bot learned incredibly fast,” she said. “After only an hour, it had already started throwing its hands up and changing the station to DVE if it heard a point contradicting its own. Perhaps most impressive was how the machine randomly generated corruptions of his name mid-tirade, like Mike Murray or Matt Murphy, with absolutely no reservations that it had ever made a mistake.”
The results have raised concerns for philosophers of science like Pitt’s Dr. Kenneth Lingard.
“I have no doubts that their discoveries are marvelous,” he said, tracking notes of how quickly the bot was able to begin referencing falsified hockey stats. “We have to consider the long-term implications for humanity, however. If the machine manages to stand up and shout ‘Shoot!’ within 30 minutes of the video phase they’ve planned for next week, then the public must demand it be shut down. Otherwise, we’re crossing lines of AI realism that I don’t think the world is prepared for.”
As of press time, the research team was reportedly looking for the bot, as it had allegedly left the lab after hearing a broadcast in which the Penguins were trailing by a goal halfway through the third period.
