What's the Goal of AI? Tai.ai and Bad Decisions

The implicit, if not explicit goal of artificial intelligence (AI) has been to create "human-like" intelligence.  The recent debacle of Tay.ai is the first time something has seemed to become strangely close.

That is to say, the aim of the project was to simulate someone in their late teens.  People in their late teens tend to make poor decisions, especially to go along with what people around them believe.  (I'm no exception and had quite a long "hippie phase" including being Vegan for 3 years.)

Vegan super-powers from Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

Do we really want to make an AI like us, with all of our foibles and cognitive distortions or are we going to pull the plug as soon as one adopts unconventional, minority or fringe views?  Will we use the phrase "it's just going through a phase"?

People do dumb stuff and usually learn from it and course correct... sometimes they make the same mistakes for decades on end until the very end.

I would think that if we are doing it right we will have a crop of AIs just as diverse as ourselves, including the bad stuff.

PS

I was in the hospital so missed a week or two of Tuesday posts.  It happens.