Spotting And Culling Terrorist Groups On Social Media: Pipe Dream, or Possibility? (nytimes.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Can Twitter Spot Terrorists and Put Them In Jail? Hany Farid, the chairman of the Computer Science department at Dartmouth University, thinks so. He told the New York Times that there's "no fundamental technology or engineering limitation" to spotting terrorists on the Intertubes. In other words, he's figured out how to tell the difference between bragging terrorists and kids who are just joking about being "da bomb." Can artificial intelligence make these distinctions? Or will it generate a ton of false positives? Or is Prof. Farid just trolling for more grant money to make Dartmouth the premier department for spying on social media?

Comments

So, Donald Trump had a good idea?

[Nikkos]

The article below this one is full of 'Trump is an idiot' (and he is), but here in the next article we talk about using AI to cull posts.

'Closing up the internet in some way' would be akin to spotting and censoring a group of people's comments, yes? Effectively limiting their internet use, yes?

Potatoes, Potatos.

Re:Anonymous Has Already Done This

[Rei]

Unfortunately "violations for terms of service" is just as vulnerable to false positives. The other day I went to check out a video on Youtube and found out that it had been pulled for violation of the terms of service. Someone clearly glanced at it and saw screenshots all too familiar: a row of Daesh (ISIS) thugs in all black, their prisoners in orange jump suits before them forced to kneel, guns pointed to their head for an execution. Youtube has taken up a policy of banning such videos.

Except, that's not what the video was. The video was not from Daesh but Levant Front, an anti-Daesh coalition. The people in black were Levant Front members and the people in the orange jumpsuits Daesh solders that they had captured. And rather than execute them, they all holstered their guns, took off their face masks, and walked away, while an imam showed up and gave a sermon to the Daesh prisoners about forgiveness and being fair and just in life. In short, it was precisely the opposite of the Daesh videos that Youtube is supposed to ban.

False positives are a real thing.