KFC’s German branch has apologized for seeming to encourage its customers to mark the anniversary of Kristallnacht — the notorious Nazi pogrom against Jews — by eating chicken, saying that a promotional message was sent in error as a result of an automated push notification.
Say what? A promotional message was "sent in error"? I'm sure it was, but how did the message ever get created in the first place?
KFC Germany apologized again in a statement to news outlets, saying that its “obviously wrong, insensitive and unacceptable” message about Kristallnacht resulted from an automated push notification that had been sent by accident. The statement added that the company has a “semi-automated content creation process linked to calendars that include national observances.”
OK, so the idea is that it's always a good idea to eat chicken, which KFC's marketing computer interpreted as "especially on important dates marked on the calendar." But what calendar would include Kristallnacht in the first place? I looked around and obviously didn't find it on any calendar that marked holidays, but I did find it on a long calendar of 119 "Holidays and Observances":
So I assume that KFC in Germany fed in a calendar like this, flipped a switch, and special messages were automatically pushed out for a third of the days in the year. If that's the case, I have some advice for our German Hühnerliebhaber: this is coming up in a few weeks.
This observance would also be a bad justification for promoting chicken—though it's certainly fine if you just happen to want some chicken on that day. I mean, it's not in bad taste, as far as I know.
And while you're at it, you might want to do a quick scan of your whole calendar and maybe make a few other deletions. Just a thought.
I've been working for startup internet services since the early 90s. Everyone does something stupid like this - it seems like everyone has to learn automation doesn't like exceptions, and there's an exception to almost everything. This may be changing for certain specifics, but as of now, humans are the only automations we have that understand what is acceptable to humans with any acceptable error rate.
I'm surprised that an outfit big enough to rate KcKinsey consultants missed something this obvious.
but it begins with a K....
I'm surprised no news article has mentioned one more little ironic feature of the debacle: that KFC was advertising food that's forbidden by the Torah. Mixing chicken with cheese (meat with a dairy product) is absolutely non-kosher.
You know what else is non-kosher?
Kristallnacht.
No day is a good day to eat KFC.
Hangover day is.
Kevin does not want to say it but I will: So much for AI!
So often we are promised AI, and instead recieve AS (artificial stupidity).
You have to achieve AS before you can achieve AI. Just remember not to stop after getting to AS.
Nov 9 also marks the fall of the Berlin Wall in Germany, so the day is complicated.
Get two buckets of chicken and celebrate both.
Yet another proof that, should we give the machines control over us, we'll all be wiped out. See RUR, Battlestar Galactica, Metropolis, War Games, Colossus: the Forbin Project, ...
Reminds me of a shopping circular some years ago from a local supermarket "Wishing all our Jewish customers a Happy and Joyous Yom Kippur!"
Good one! Last month's Consumer Reports has a back page feature of ads gone wrong, and one showed "Delicious for Chanukah! Boneless smoked ham".
Heh, similarly I remember a "Passover Sale" circular from a supermarket with a rather prominent leg of ham in the picture. (I mean this stuff is just cluelessness, not really anti-semitism though)
We've always had chicken in my house for Kristallnacht. My father was real traditional with all the holidays.
Chickens are really treated horribly in today's factory farms, as are the workers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9wHzt6gBgI&ab_channel=LastWeekTonight
I have always felt I would choose being a French foie gras goose over being a Tyson chicken.
I don't know.
Remember cow and chicken dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, so who knows; maybe they also caused Kristallnacht?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whale_Whores
There are a dozen AI-driven platforms that now compose stories/articles driven by keyword selection. Without human controls, AI + bots = accidental start of WWIII.
Slightly OT: Are you ready to revisit your dismissal of the blue checkmark issue?
I think Veterans Day is a terrible holiday. Why celebrate war criminals? Ick. Send them all to Ukraine to fight for something real. Cowards.
Go buy a mattress. They are on sale this weekend! Extra discount if you killed a muslim in Iraq or Afghanistan.
says the man who never sacrifices anything for anyone.
It's actually "Armistice Day." Celebrating the end of a profoundly stupid and wasteful war.
The rest of your spew doesn't merit even addressing.
Fail.
Wonder what fine-people-on-both-sides Trump and there-isn't-enough-free-speech Musk really think about this.