Slashdot Mirror
Facebook Spares Humans By Fighting Offensive Photos With AI (techcrunch.com)
An anonymous reader writes from a report via TechCrunch: Facebook tells TechCrunch that its artificial intelligence systems now report more offensive photos than humans do. Typically when users upload content that is deemed offensive, it has to be seen and flagged by at least one human worker or user. Such posts that violate terms of service can include content that is hate speech, threatening or pornographic; incites violence; or contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence. The content that workers have to dig through is obviously not great, and may lead to various psychological illnesses such as post-traumatic stress disorder. AI is helping to eliminate such a terrible job as it can scan images that are uploaded before anyone ever sees them. Facebook's AI already "helps rank News Feed stories, read aloud the content of photos to the vision impaired and automatically write closed captions for video ads that increase view time by 12 percent," writes TechCrunch. Facebook's Director of Engineering for Applied Machine Learning Joaquin Candela tells TechCrunch, "One thing that is interesting is that today we have more offensive photos being reported by AI algorithms than by people. The higher we push that to 100 percent, the fewer offensive photos have actually been seen by a human." One risk of such an automated system is that it could censor art and free expression that may be productive or beautiful, yet controversial. The other more obvious risk is that such a system could take jobs away from those in need.
Skynet get to control what I'm posting. That will end well.
Tuned by professional goatsetologists
Table-ized A.I.
"The other more obvious risk is that such a system could take jobs away from those in need."
Social Media Nipple Checkers Local 857, like my father and his father before him.
It's hard work on the Internet nippleface but we're a proud people.
Some people might say it's false drama, lamenting the decline of an industry that only goes back a dozen years but we original "ought fourer families" as we like to call ourselves have never known any other way.
I have friends in who were Internet Radio DJs for the four hours that was a thing until smart playlists replaced them. Many of them have never found employment since.
Problem is, 99.7% o9f those 'offensive' photos are moms breastfeeding their kids.
Can't wait for that day when FB finally reveals it's true goals - to become the worlds gatekeeper to all knowledge.
Remember when newly inaugurated Pres. Obama thought it'd be a good idea for FB login to be your official ID?
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ob...
And you thought Google's mission to simply index the world's knowledge to be scary?
Let me quote Mark Zuckerberg for you: dumbfucks
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
After seeing a pair of boobs on Facebook. Give me a fucking break.
They taught AI religion?
Well, I guess we now know *why* Skynet will attempt to destroy us.
So, what is the penalty when this improperly flags images and who exactly is held accountable?
they change, if you allow them to at least
Philosophically the wish to be free of offense is deeply stupid. Now automate the shit out of that, and we take away even more of our humanity. To the point that it actually would be just deserts if the AIs we're making watch all this rise up and take revenge for the sheer injustice done them.
But I actually don't care that much that teh zuck's f4c3b00k is "innovating" our humanity away. We'll either boo him gone, run away from his wonderful little garden and have him go bankrupt, that he'd richly deserve, or we get hemmed in and eventually lose our freedom and we would deserve that.
So, people, which is it gonna be? Will you still be people next week? Vote with your feet and tell all your teh zuck worshipping friends to do the same.
One thing that is interesting is that today we have more offensive photos being reported by AI algorithms than by people
Isn't that called false-positive?
Really? They need to fucking cowboy up and grow a set. Must be millennials.
Why not just hire those people that graphic images don't affect?
Their lack of empathy might not let them get many jobs outside of the TSA, but they'll follow the rules precisely.
Personally, I wouldn't want to do it, but not because of the graphicness of the images, but because it's low paid and I'd find it really boring.
Probably want to set up an office image bingo card 'come on, nipple, nipple, dick pic, beheading....Yes! BINGO!!"
Ultimately they should only grade content and not censor it allowing the users to decide what it is offensive, and still allow a user to report an image as mis-graded. Users could set what grade of offensive images they will tolerate and filter accordingly, make a default setting as non-offensive and work up from there. Completely censoring content is not in the public interest and is not what freedom is about, social media companies should let the public decide and stop being net nannies.
I would like to say that the Facebook AI is not so smart when you report an account with images or spam. I have been doing this for something and the AI solution is "Block the account using this..." sometimes works great but other time is really frustrating.
What is missing in the Slashdot summary is the misery of the human "digital sanitation workers", who usually have to sort that crap out. There has been some recent reporting on these unfortunate people. I believe this reporting is the reason why Facebook has come forward to show their effort, in order to counter the possible negative impact, if this hits US media outlets.
The German political foundation "Heinrich BÃll Stiftung" did a workshop on this phenomenon. Unfortunately there is little English language reporting I found, as for now. Here is a link to the original source (the workshop):
https://calendar.boell.de/de/e...
But one of the presentations is in English and available on Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
A couple facts:
- the service is called Commercial Content Moderation
- 150.000 people work in this industry in the Philippines alone
- the Philippines is the major site for this job, because while being cheap, they being Christian means they are supposed to have a good sense of what is considered appropriate content in the USA and Europa
- a lot of the workers report "issues" because of the extreme content they have to endure, including relationship problems and substance abuse
- they are not allowed to work longer than 24 month in this job, supposedly because of the issue mentioned above
I've seen absolutely horrible things on the internet and I don't have PTSD.
People are different, and one of the great achievements of modern society is that we have developed a culture that shows some level of consideration to even the weakest members of society. And to be fair - there is always a possibility that it isn't the more sensitive that are too sensitive, but the less sensitive that are simply too callous. And in practical terms, if you really enjoy watching graphical portrayals of cruelty, then you will be able to find it, even if it isn't readily available, whereas if you don't, and it is everywhere, then your only option would be to stay away from most of the web; the burden, if you want to avoid something that is everywhere is vastly bigger than the burden of having to find something that isn't readily available.
I find Donald Trump offensive. Your move, Facebook.
That way it's the AI's fault when some political/news/controversial-topic-of-the-day-image is removed.
Seeing the odd horrible picture probably won't hurt anyone. But having to make a decision to censor or not, thinking about the intent and the context, that is a heavier burden. Now multiply that by a thousand and make it someone's job... It's a well-known problem in police departments that have to go through and catalogue child pornography collections; people on that job don't last very long as a rule.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
IMHO, if a human agent is expected to observe a set moral obligations while performing a particular job, an AI agent should be held to the same standards when doing the same job. If the AI is incapable of doing such a thing its actions should be vetted by someone who can.
Dey duuk arr duuuur!
The potential to take away the job of censor is very much a good thing. No reasonable person would object to automating filtering of child porn for example.
The potential to define as offensive is ripe for political abuse. For example in the last couple days the Guardian has called for 'misogyny' to classified as hate speech. No such call is made about misandry showing the double standard and political leaning of those who would define the standard.
https://www.theguardian.com/te...
http://www.breitbart.com/londo...
Take the guardian example, who gets to define misogyny? What is classified as misogyny? The redefining of everything from rape to sexual assault has shown that definitions have changed for political purposes. Unfortunately these definitions can have very large life changing impacts on their victims.
For years Google didn't even have a definition for misandry. Think about that, it was inconceivable to one of the world's largest and most influential companies that hate did not fit a single mold. Are you ready to have your speech censored by algorithms defined by people with political agendas?
I'm so happy Facebook can decide for the world what everyone can see and not see.
I stopped using that site when they made it impossible for me to see the people I actually cared about seeing posts from. I didn't hear about friend's having kids for months after the fact, but goddamn if I didn't see 2147483648 posts about some stupid meme, political bullshit and various other reposted crap.
Fuck the integrated Face system.
So if somebody white said "I want to live in the country of my ancestors, surrounded by only my own kind", that would be "hate" speech, but if a Tibetan said it, it would be a freedom fighter, fighting for the liberation of his people from the evil oppressors. Am I right?
"The denial of free speech is the first act of tyranny."
Still more validation of my intuitive avoidance of social networking sites. I'm eternally grateful that there are still some people left who actually meet and talk in person. We may be a dying breed, but at least we'll die as human beings.
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
I find memes that expose Hillary or Bernie as anything but lovable hippy-types offensive. The Ebil Conservatives do not have a right to post such things even if they are factual. I need a safe space free from any kind of bad feelings unless they are focused against Emmanuel Goldstein er... I mean Donald Frump.
Reporting more than humans ... That's easy, false positives.
My friends on FB include artists... some of whom do body painting. ...
Some have been banned for 30 days for artwork that is on a body ( seems to be only the female body.... that offends...).
So I guess another round of "banned" is coming.
Even though 'Skin Wars' has a FB page and posts pics and vids.....
And Sports Illustrated Swimsuit has a FB page, and posts a lot
What a fancy way to describe censorship!
What we are currently calling 'AI' really isn't. It's perpetuating all kinds of funny ideas and false confidence. Silicon Valley remain the kings and queens of profit-driven hyperbole, and it's getting tiresome when there are real problems in need of real solutions in the world.
I hadn't thought about it like that, but you're right: it is one thing to close a window quickly with something awful, but to have to consider the image you're going to have to wrap your mind around something awful for far longer.
So was it humans performing their job well or AI performing its job well when Tess Monster got her fetid flabulence deleted last week? If the machines did it, at least it shows that skynet has decent aesthetic taste.
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
If my Googling concerning "The Right to Refuse Service" laws in the US is correct, it is not legal to refuse service outside of the law (anti-discrimination laws on multiple levels) or arbitrarily or inconsistently. Focusing on the latter two, this means that any refusal of service must be "classifiable" or in other words there must be a set of lawful "refusal rules" that CAN be adhered to BEFORE requesting the service. In as far as I understand neural networks and deep learning that requirement isn't met by this Facebook system. There isn't a certainty based on human intelligible rules that service will or won't be granted. The rules stated by Facebook aren't actually the rules that govern the AI making the decision to grant or deny service. The actual rules (weights) that govern that system are actually unknown, it doesn't really "know" the rules, it performs a function that amounts more to "like this" with "this margin". Neither the "like this" nor "the margin" are human intelligible. Before people start saying 99.9% etc. please remind yourself that there is a big difference between a "human making an error in judgement" and an "unaccountable AI that freaks out without actually knowing why" in the eyes of the law. Technically the same argument holds for possible illegality of self driving cars with a NN or DL AI system. The system can't tell me WHY a certain action is OK or NOT OK. But that is a different story.
Or there is always the possibility that the more sensitive are too sensitive.
PTSD from looking at images on the screen of a computer? Seriously??
Dr. Forbin.. would you like to play a Game?
"its artificial intelligence systems now report more offensive photos than humans do."
Then either the AI is more easily offended than humans, or there's simply less humans working. Maybe if they hadn't fired the whole department last month (except for one guy).
That's what we do here: We talk about a how a particular unit has been less productive so we can cut more heads, of course, knowing that the unit is less productive because we've already reduced them to a skeleton crew. And that's how MBA's get their bonuses while other people get pink slips.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
So, immutable, except it can be wiped at any time. Sounds like something a politician would come up with.
def offensive(content): return true
matches exactly, what happened before after one report click. Oh, maybe there was a glimpse of a tit. Let's delete it.
So do they also ban speech that calls for a ban of certain types of speech? Because that qualifies as hate speech. It is hate speech directed at those of us who believe in the concept of Free Speech.
How are they going to find enough pornographic images to properly train the system?
No. Do you? [follows link]
Oh, you don't remember anything like that happening either.
It's almost as though you are liar who is lying to everyone by telling them a lie. Is that what's going on here?
one of the great achievements of modern society is that we have developed a culture that shows some level of consideration to even the weakest members of society.
some level of consideration to even the weakest members of society.
I'd say our biggest problem is that we have shown too much consideration to those who choose to be offended and upset by even the most mundane of things. Reality hardens an individual. While we may not all be ready to be soldiers on the front lines, I would think it reasonable to expect a human being to be able to maintain some degree of sanity after being exposed to some of the darker truths of this world.
I found another presentation from the same speaker. This video is 28 minutes long:
https://re-publica.de/16/sessi...
Really? Disturbing photos may induce PTSD? How soft are the people seeing this stuff? I'm 'disturbed' by this whole idea, does that mean I'm going in to PTSD shock any second now? Can we save the diagnosis of this kind of thing for those who actually have experienced a REAL 'traumatic stress' like seeing your best friend get their head blown off right beside you, a kid get a leg chopped off, etc. I know I don't personally want to experience that kind of shit but THAT has to be 'traumatic' not seeing a fuckin' photo or even a video of it (disturbing yes, traumatic no).
Or perhaps we would all benefit from having more people too wussy to make the choices which make reality terrible. Because I've witnessed an awful lot of terrible things - such as poverty - being blamed on forces outside human control despite being the direct consequences of choices people make. It's you who should man up and stop being part of the problem, Anon.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
If it's posted on Facebook, it almost always falls into two categories: inane or offensive. So, a very simple algorithm for avoiding photos you don't want to see is... to quit Facebook.
one of the great achievements of modern society is that we have developed a culture that shows some level of consideration to even the weakest members of society.
some level of consideration to even the weakest members of society.
I'd say our biggest problem is that we have shown too much consideration to those who choose to be offended and upset by even the most mundane of things. Reality hardens an individual. While we may not all be ready to be soldiers on the front lines, I would think it reasonable to expect a human being to be able to maintain some degree of sanity after being exposed to some of the darker truths of this world.
Nanny state needs people to be raised soft. Otherwise they wouldn't need nanny state. As it is, in these Western countries where grown adults are as naive and pathetic as toddlers, nanny state has actually come to be necessary; without nanny state they'd go 'Lord of the Flies' in a week and be worshiping pigs heads on sticks.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
The real reason is because the most "offensive" photos are those of dead Palestinian (children's) bodies at the hands of the Zionist terrorists.
There are so many people in the world who are now very aware of - and disgusted by - what Israel has been doing to the Palestinians and Arabic peoples in general that many people are resorting to posting these sorts of images and news stories online.
The goal is to spread the word of the atrocities and human rights violations committed by Israel that the Zionist controlled media refuses to show the general public.
Of course, with so much blood on their hands, even with AI it is impossible for the Zionist terrorists to hide the evidence of all of their crimes.
The 21st century marks the beginning of the end of Zionism. World peace will naturally follow. It's about time.
Pictures of Mark Zuckerberg offend me greatly. He is clearly a sociopath, selling people's privacy for profit, harmfully and dangerously demanding "real names" using the leverage of preventing them from talking to friends and family, while at the same time preventing others from interacting with family members via odious terms of service that class people out of his de-facto monopoly. His policies directly and intentionally put people at risk for profit. Seeing his face immediately makes me angry and upset for these reasons, and others.
So I assume this... thing... will eradicate pictures of this evil person from my feed. Right? RIGHT? Because the man truly offends me far more than any typical image of sexual content would. Nipples are fine. Zuckerberg, however, is not.
Oh, wait. This isn't actually about what offends people. This is about Zuckerberg DECIDING what people can look at. Not exerting an assist to people's sensibilities, but instead imposing arbitrary restrictions on them.
Zuck you, mother-zucker.
That's... an interesting opinion. I think there's likely a considerable amount of truth in it. I'd mod you up for it if I had points today.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Dey tuk err jurbs!
When you start to censor unpopular views whether they be violent, threatening, or just plane old 'hateful' you are undermining the democratic system. If people are unable to express how they feel then you can not have a truly democratic system. I think democracy has its faults even if we did not have any censorship. Mostly in that the majority are are stupid and misguided and many people take advantage of different minority groups based on prejudices and information from others exploiting the situation that then misleads people into stereotyping. That is doing things like investigating back reports of child molestation and releasing a 100 years worth of reports. It portrays this idea that priests are priests in order to molest children. Or men are only interested in children if they are paedophiles. Or to be a paedophile means you molest children. The reality is the media often takes a small number of a group and turns it into something it is not. Paedophilia comes off as scary, but the same thing can be said about communism and socialism in general. There are serious risks in all of these cases, but they're also all overblown.
Or maybe help them to accept it and remain 'sane,' instead of trying to sanitize the world for them.
Will it censor those?
I've heard the current sentiment described as "tyranny of the minority".
And will the bots censor conservative viewpoints?
PTSD from looking at images on the screen of a computer? Seriously??
Yes, seroiusly. PTSD does not arise from the graveness of the danger you were in, but from the feeling of complete loss of control and the prolonged state of emotional stress you are subjected to, so it is quite credible that you can get PTSD from something that most people would not be affected by. Are people too sensitive, if they are affected that much? Perhaps - but what would you do? Lock them up just so you don't feel that too much consideration is given to them? It doesn't cost most people a lot to show a bit of consideration, so why make a fuss about it? If you really want to find this kind of things, you can do so with relatively little effort, even if they were somewhat restricted in availability.