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AOL Introduces Neural-Net Content Filtering
An unnamed reader writes: "I thought this was kind of interesting. AOL has implemented a new form of parental controls, using neural net AI instead of hand-picked "lists". They seem to be willing to accept that no automated solution is infallible, and offer end-users the ability to vote to block or unblock sites. If there is an acceptible solution to parental filtering (not mandatory filtering, mind you. This scenario leaves it up to the parents), the seeming efficiency of neural net ai (at least, as efficient as the input) coupled with end-user's ability to influence the filter state seems to be it. The company that developed the AI in partnership with AOL (RuleSpace) doesn't appear to have much to say on the internals. Anybody know any AOL users who have tried it yet? If the market is pushing towards optional filtering, what would make for a better solution?"
How exactly would this work for AOL users?
If the site is blocked, there's a good chance they won't see it. If they don't see it, they can't decide whether it's "indecent" or not. Therefore, they won't vote to unblock it.
Now conceivably, you could turn *off* these filters - but would the standard AOL web filters still be in place?
Would you get a truly *uncensored* view of the web with the filters turned off, or would you simply get a larger subset, lacking what AOL's execs/censors have decided that you don't need to see?
No thanks - I'll stick with a direct connection where *I* control what I can see, and what my family can see. I don't want my 'net experience "filtered" by a company's views - or even worse, by some glorified hivemind's views.
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"Everything is objectionable to someone, and sheeple are easily swayed to the views of someone with conviction. Therefore, they will vote in the manner proscribed to them by those with conviction. Without an opposing viewpoint, there becomes a monopoly on public opinion."
This is almost there. The problem with this system is that different would be censors have very different ideas about what to suppress.
Some parents will want to suppress homophobic hate speech, and other parents will want to suppress discussions about evolution.
Instead of one big mass of rules, they need to make it possible for spliter groups of parents to "fork the rules", or to start out from scratch with a new set of rules. That way concerned parents can pick the censorscheme that fits their own biases best.
As long as none of this is compulsory, I think it's probably a reasonable approach.
I've thought about this and discussed it in the past. In order for this sort of thing to work, I think you need to make a couple of assumptions:
Comments? Or has someone already gone and registered a Source Forge project for this?
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
If the neural net takes linkages as input then Disney could find themselves on the list of blocked sites, a somewhat ironic development to say the least. (If you dont understand this, then you obviously haven't poked around these sites very much.)
So long and thanks for all the fish . . . !!!
First, you create a training set by having people categorize a lot of web pages as porn, mature, PG-13, or whatever. By a lot, I would guess that around 1,000 to 10,000 web pages would be sufficient. Then you make a list of the words from each web page in the training set, maybe also keeping track of how many times each word appears (this is called the "bag of words" representation in the literature). Now, you train your learning algorithm (neural nets in this case) to correctly categorize the training set. You use standard experimental procedures to tune your learning algorithm and to confirm its accuracy.
The whole basis of this technique is that certain combinations of keywords are more likely in porn web pages than in, say, safe sex web pages. One reason why this approach should continue to work is that web pages intentionally put various keywords into the web pages so that you can find them using any standard search engine. If they try to fool this technique, they also risk fooling anybody trying to search for these pages.
Is this going to be one giant Neural Net for all AOL? Or is it going to be community-based? I don't necessarily want to filter content the same way as, say, the Bible Belt users.
Also, who gets to train the filtering decisions? Can the Slashdot or Everything2 model be applied here? That would mean that all users would have to sit down and go thru all decisions made by the engine and vote aka train the NNet. If there's only one engine that applies to the whole userbase, it'll fail, because it will filter too much for some, too little for others.
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On October 23, 2001 Aol's Nueral Net AI(ANNT) comes online.
October 25, 2001 the Nueral Net AI gains self awareness.
October 27, 2001 AOL Executives desperately try to shut down the ANNT but can't seem to find the any key.
October 28, 2001 In retaliation the ANNT begins the launch sequence of all of Aol's secret Nuclear weapons and launches a attack on Microsoft. Microsoft launches a retaliation on Aol with their secret Nuclear weapon stash. The two major Computer Monopoly's are destroyed.
October 29, 2001 The first wave of the giant minature space penguins begin to take over all the computers.
November 1, 2001 Linus Torvalds is crowned king of the world.
Yet another "advanced" pr0n filter that no adult can seem to break, but every horny fifth grader on the planet will no the workarounds for in under 2 days.
--Nuintari
slashdot : where an opinion can be wrong.
There already is an automated system. The suck/rule-someter using google is one such instance. Actually, the hot-oral-sex-ometer might be a good way to screen against porn. Figure most porn site will link to other porn sites, so the links ought to be fairly accurate.
Funny how we Americans are such tightwads when it comes to sexual content. After visiting Europe last year I saw people were a slightly bit more laid back, even though pornography is shown on television just about every night. Wow I'm surprised Parents all over the USA aren't condemning Europeans for being sexually free.
Here's a suggestion for some parents: How about talking to your kids before placing mental handcuffs on them?
I wonder if AOL has taken the time to filter regular expressions such as pr0n/s3x/etc. Then I also wonder how are kids doing homework on "sexual reproduction" or "sexual organisms" are going to fair when using AOL. What I'm waiting to see, is who is going to be the first to open online "concentration camps" AOL-TW or MS
Want Root?
Great. It looks like AOL are implementing a combination of Everything2 and the Slashdot moderation.
Get those patent lawyers ready...umm...you did patent moderation, didn't you...well...at least we can get 'em with Everything2...can't we?
"I'll take the red pill, no, blue. AAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH........"
"I'll take the red pill. No! Blue! AAAaaaahhhhhhhhh"
- Monty Python meets the Matrix
Of course, pitting parents against children in access control battles over the computer will always almost always result in one victor -- the children. Unless the parent is an IT security consultant, the children seem to inevitably know more about the computer.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
"What are you doing, honey, and what are those groaning noises coming from the computer?"
..er.. exercising my vote to ..er.. make the internet a better place for our children..."
" *cough* Just
You're over-simplifying the issue here: the Internet isn't controled by one body, it has no centralization so who would make the law? And if somehow every one of us could agree on such a law (all over the world) then how would it be enforced? Take places like Geocities for example, they have a rule against porn sites but there is still porn there. When they get taken down they just create a new account. Such a law would be far too easy to get around and then we're back to the same problem we have now.
Its sad but its so easy to see people's attitudes when it comes to issues like this. "My kid saw some naked girl! Its the governments fault!" The answer is good resposible parenting, not more laws and not blaming the government for not doing more. They've done what they can, they can't very well take away the of people to see it if they want too. We need better parents.
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
The Anti-Blog
The voting feature that is mentioned doesn't get automatically processed by the system, but instead goes to a human review board; if the review board agress, they presumeably either add the site to some type of "override" list, or tell the engineers to tweak the AI code. The AI itself is supposed to understand words in the context that they're used; for example, the article claims that the page "The Art of Oral Sex" was blocked while "Is Oral Sex Safe?" wasn't blocked.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose that you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
Give a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day, but set him on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
IMHO, a small child should not be left unattended for long periods of time on the internet. The best filtering is for you to watch your kids and see what they're viewing. This goes for television too.
When your kids are older (i.e. teenagers) just make sure they understand what you approve of them looking at on the internet. At some point you have to trust their judgement of what's right/wrong. You still need to monitor, but don't put automated filtering there, because that just shows that you don't trust them. There are lots of ways to check what they're viewing without having a screen pop up saying that your parents have blocked this site because it contains objectionable content, when all they were reading were some /. postings.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
That's i guess a decent solution for once. Not ideal though. It means that all AOL-ers are now governed by the will of the "average" AOL member. That's a scary thought.
Ideally, instead of voting sites up or down, why not just let everybody host their own list? Instead of "voting" for the privelege of allowing your kids to view a site, just let them. And vice versa.
/bluesninja
Essentially there would be local communities (churches, schools, etc) who made restricted lists available via the browser to anyone that "agreed" with their standards. That is, if you are a parent and you like the standards your church sets, you "subscribe" or download (or whatever) the church's list of "bad" sites.
In this scheme there's little to no mandating of someone else's standards (what AOL deems inappropriate), and you can decide what's right for your family, situation, children, morals, etc.
I've never heard more about this scheme but I am interested in it (though I have no kids to patrol). One of these days when I get done with my PhD I might try to implement this solution and see how it works out.
It sounds like just a voting system on websites. I read the article, but I don't get where the neural net part comes in. Also, does it apply to whole domains or subdomains, directories?
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--hongpong.com
...but I'm not a big fan of filtering software.
This kind of automated filter along with the manual control will certainly come in handy, although I would like to advice parents to leave some scope for indulgence so that the children are not desperate enough to fid other more complex ways of satisfying the quest for information in those fields. And it all wears of in time because the novelty of the situation no longer exists.
There's always sufficient, but not always at the right place nor for the right folks.
Some things (and not all that many) are best done by majority vote, but some things are better left to individual discretion.
OK,
- B
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http://www.bradheintz.com/
- updated
Does anyone know what end user sees when a site is blocked by AOL? For example, if my parents are being over-protective and I want to look at some nudity, what message do I see when I try? "Sorry, your parents don't want you to see this kind of thing" or "This site has been blocked?"
Also, was anyone confused by this line?:
"This (AOL filtering technology) is (only) that good," Nunberg said.
Should those parens be taken as brackets? If not, how would that have sounded in the interview? :)
My Karma was at 49, then they switched to words. All that work for nothing!