IBM’s Watson Gets A ‘Swear Filter’ After Learning The Urban Dictionary.

What could’ve been another landmark for Watson — being able to participate and enjoy in a full conversation using natural, informal human language — turned out to be a step in the wrong direction.

Watson may have learned the Urban Dictionary, but it never learned the all-important axiom, “There’s a time and a place for everything.” Watson simply couldn’t distinguish polite discourse from profanity.

Watson unfortunately learned all of the Urban Dictionary’s bad habits, including throwing in overly -crass language at random points in its responses; in answering one question, Watson even reportedly used the word “bullsh*t” within an answer to one researcher’s question. Brown told Forbes that Watson picked up similarly bad habits from reading Wikipedia.

In the end, Brown and his team were forced to remove the Urban Dictionary from Watson’s vocabulary, and additionally developed a smart filter to keep Watson from swearing in the future.

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