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Raising Them Right: AI and the Internet of Big Things 141

Fig. 8.1 The MX3D bridge, not well understood in engineering terms but still lovely to

look at. Photo March 2018, courtesy of the author.

teachers, relatives, nannies, friends, and, increasingly, strangers on the Inter-
net. This, too, is relevant as we consider the degree to which we will, or will
not, be able to understand and to control AI actors. Microsoft provided one
notorious example when “Tay,” their chatbot intended to model teen
behavior, transformed into a “neo-Nazi sexbot” within days of being given
a Twitter account. 3
To learn more about parenting AI, I proposed a project to endow a
bridge with awareness and reactivity. The project began with a Dutch com-
pany that undertook to use robots to 3D print in stainless steel a pedestrian
bridge. This form of 3D printing, in which a robot wields a welding device
to lay down layers of metal that accrete to form a monolithic structure, is
groundbreaking, and the resulting objects are poorly understood in engi-
neering terms (Fig. 8.1). I suggested we use sensors to monitor the bridge’s

3
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601111/why-microsoft-accidentally-unleashed-a-neo-nazi-
sexbot/. See also https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/03/tay-the-neo-nazi-
millennial-chatbot-gets-autopsied/ for a comparison with Xiaoice, a similar Chinese chatbot that did
not encounter these problems.