Microsoft recently made an experiment in the world of artificial intelligence by releasing a robot named "Tay" that could learn conversation through Twitter. People could tweet "Tay" and it would slowly start responding and tweeting what it had learned in response to others on Twitter.
Unfortunately, within less than 24 hours Microsoft had to shut down the program because it started advocating white supremacy, genocide, anti-Semitism, and using racial slurs. As one user, @unburntwitch, put it "It's 2016. If you're not asking yourself 'how could this be used to hurt someone' in your design/engineering process, you've failed."
This brought me to a question, "Is this just immature Internet trolling, or what people actually think?" This question I sadly had answered one day.
Most college students live in a new place where they are attending college. It can be easy to find yourself separated from the community off campus. I am a college junior and I felt as though I knew the community I lived in, but that all changed while I was scrolling through Facebook one day. You see, the city I go to college in has become a site for refugees seeking asylum. Here, we have taken in 400 Karen refugees from Myanmar (Burma), and the city's newspaper decided to ask on its Facebook page the public's opinion on the city becoming a destination city for Syrian refugees. This, I knew, would be a touchy subject among a few people, with the ever-increasing attacks in Europe from ISIS and their infiltration of migrant refugees. I decided to click on the comment section to see where this heated debate would go and what I found will be forever imprinted on my mind.
Anyone entering the comment section online in this day and age, should expect people trolling for an angry response, the occasional irrelevant argument, and a few ignorant comments on race or gender. What I found in my community's opinion section was well beyond and above that. There were a few people making ignorant jokes but the racism and comments shocked me beyond belief. Now, these are the people who are quick to assume they are not being racist but logical. I assure you the comments made were far from logical. I understand the fear of terrorist attacks; I understand the ignorance of what Muslims believe; and I understand that sometimes racism is so ingrained in the beliefs of certain people that it is hard to reason with them. What I read though went above and beyond all of that, it was a disgusting and hideous look at the true soul of humanity.
A lot of them begin with "We must take care of our own before we take care of others," a very valid argument; however, everyday I see people drive by the homeless people in our community without stopping to offer help. Our own needed help before the refugee crises, and they will need help long after. Stopping people from seeking asylum will not fix the problem, because no solution has been suggested. Some comment attesting to this very argument, and then the real reason emerges why they don't want the refugees. "I guess you don't care if your head gets cut off, do not come crying to me when these animals are running around raping and praising the satanic Muhammed," one man said, and then I see a similar response, "I will never let ISIS into my community."
Now I could go on, but surprisingly I decided to scan the entire comment section and found the a majority of response were "no" in favor of not letting them in, and racial ignorance in the same favor. Very few stood up, and they did their best, but this majority was too hard to talk to. They did not want to listen to a different opinion often listing "you will learn when Trump is president." I must be clear at this point, I expected to see a little of this, but the amount I found was beyond my belief. I kept reading in amazement of what was being written until I came across one person that brought me to tears. What this person said pushed me beyond belief that someone could actually believe.
He said, "... these animals rape women, children, and murder people and believe in satanic Islam, they should go back to samlia [sic] and but wiped off this Earth. All Muslims should die!" I stopped reading at that point, I was overcome with emotion not for just the poor people who don't know what is being said about them, but for the city in which I live. Never in my wildest dreams could I imagine that somebody actually believed this, I clicked on his profile to see if this was just some kind of sick trolling of a comment section and was disheartened to find more of this rhetoric on his page, and somewhere around 15 to 20 people who consistently like his comments like this. You may be wondering if I spelled something wrong, but no I left that unedited on the page, he believed that Syrian refugees came from Somalia, and spelled the country's name wrong. He also advocated for a complete elimination of Muslim people. With tears streaming down my face, I began to think "What can I do about this?" Sadly, not much. My community has spoken and this is their overwhelming opinion.
More and more of this rhetoric is emerging in my community of about 26,000 people. It leaves me asking what happened to humanity? The world seemed to be a much better place, or maybe that was all a fake façade. According to a Poll by YouGov, 55 percent of Americans are unfavorable towards Islam, and a Pew Research Center Study estimates that the population of Muslims in America will raise from 0.9 percent to 2.1 percent by 2050. The problem of people fearing what they do not know is only growing, and I am afraid we will no longer live in a society that has "help" or "understanding" in its vocabulary. The problem I found in the comment section was there was so much hatred, not enough understanding, and perhaps these individuals won't try and understand.
"What can I do? I only live in this city until I am out of college, so why should it matter?" This is what I often hear when I ask classmates what they think. I refuse to think this way, I refuse to stand down and let this rhetoric continue. Martin Luther King Jr. didn't just accept the fact that people did not want to listen to the truth about racism. Susan B. Anthony didn't just accept the fact that women weren't allowed a voice, and you don't have to just accept this sensationalism as it slowly brews into violence. I urge college students to stand up for what they believe is right. Silence is no longer an option. If we allow this to continue, it only influences and changes the community around us.
"Tay" the Twitter robot may be just a product of the immature Internet, but maybe it is a closer look into what is really happening here in this country. Be active, contact your local social service in charge of refugee placement and assistance, be vocal, speak up when people are uninformed, but most importantly, don't give up, because our choices today impact tomorrow. I am not ready to give up on humanity, but, being blinded by my own optimism, I let it shield me from positive action.
“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.” -Nelson Mandela
