Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Never by surprised at what some persons consider to be “fun.” Consider this when managing risk.

Recently, Microsoft put an Artificial Intelligence system called Tay on Twitter or something to learn how to chat. Some persons found it and taught it how to chat like a jerk. Microsoft wasn’t prepared for that and had to pull Tay down as fast as they could.

Microsoft failed to consider one simple thing:

You might be amazed when you learn what some persons think is F U N.

Some persons out there in the Internet thought it would be great fun to teach Tay how to curse and tweet racist jargon. Ha ha ha!

Why do persons hack through firewalls at the New York Times? Why do persons hack airline WiFi systems so they can Skype? One answer to these and the Tay question is that some persons see the challenge and the result as fun. They giggle with glee when they “succeed.” Ha ha ha, look what I did!

Let’s pull this back to project management because, after all, the project managers at Microsoft failed to do something. This is part of Risk Management. What could possibly go wrong with having the Internet teach our AI machine how to chat? One answer is that people would teach our AI machine how to curse. Oh, so let’s put some monitor in place and filter cursing and racism and other bad things.

Persons will do all sorts of things in the name of just having fun. Try to consider those funny little things when managing risks.

PS: I knew of one incident where a man pulled a fire alarm and turned on the fire sprinklers ruining thousands of dollars of personal property in the housing unit of a government training facility. When confronted, he asked, “When did this organization lose its sense of humor? Can’t you see that this was just a joke?”

PS: This lesson was first taught to me by consultant and author Jerry Weinberg.