Transgressive Bot Forensics

Transgressive bot forensics: Thinking About You as is a proposal for a contemporary forensic research creation to reverse engineer the case of the Microsoft TAY bot Twitter scandal. Through collecting data, articles, examples of tweets and other online commentary, the project aims to explore how accountability for the tweets full of hate speech was negotiated in the aftermath of TAY, as well as what were discussions on algorithmic governance and the development of AI like in 2016.  More precisely, it seeks to explore what narratives can be found online regarding who is accountable when hate speech comes from such a bot?

The research is meant as an exploration and preservation of a valuable cultural artifact such as the TAY bot, reflecting on how transgression in relation to algorithmic governance was discussed and perceived in online conversations, in the period prior to the developments of ethical AI principles from Microsoft, among others and what heritage contemporary forms of machine learning practices are built on. The archival format was thought through what can be understood as a collection, a commemoration and an interface. As the collection is recreating TAY as digital culture heritage of error and erasure, many of the digital items stored in the online archive were extracted from the Way Back Machine, the links not existing anymore. The main online anarchive/digital forensics unit/cabinet of curiosities can be found on http://www.transgressivebotforensics.com.