Google Says AI Better Than Humans At Scrubbing Extremist YouTube Content (theguardian.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Google has pledged to continue developing advanced programs using machine learning to combat the rise of extremist content, after it found that it was both faster and more accurate than humans in scrubbing illicit content from YouTube. The company is using machine learning along with human reviewers as part of a mutli-pronged approach to tackle the spread of extremist and controversial videos across YouTube, which also includes tougher standards for videos and the recruitment of more experts to flag content in need of review. A YouTube spokesperson said: "While these tools aren't perfect, and aren't right for every setting, in many cases our systems have proven more accurate than humans at flagging videos that need to be removed. Our initial use of machine learning has more than doubled both the number of videos we've removed for violent extremism, as well as the rate at which we've taken this kind of content down. Over 75% of the videos we've removed for violent extremism over the past month were taken down before receiving a single human flag."

Comments

Didn't we already have a post about training AI's?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who is training the AI and deciding what is illicit? Better by what measure?

Too little too late

[rsilvergun]

the advertisers pulled their ads because of some alt-righters getting a few ads. Everybody pulled them and then they noticed there was no appreciable drop in business / sales / brand recognition from the lost advertisements. That means google's pretty well boned. It's also why P&G just announced they're dropping $100 mil in digital advertising. They know it doesn't work...

Sad thing is I'm gonna miss the ad supported internet. I'm pretty good about ignoring ads (and will cheerfully click on any ad that annoys me to give 'em a false positive) so it never bothered me.

Re:Too little too late

[Applehu Akbar]

Advertisers could have saved themselves by agreeing to a non-offending standard (no popups, no autoplay videos, etc.) for advertising that would then be accepted by ad blockers. But no - now their business model is vanishing.

Maybe

[onyxruby]

Did the AI get programmed to only target politically incorrect content? Unfortunately double standards for YouTube, Twitter and other sites are all too common. Color me skeptical that this is anything other than an automated political censorship tool.

"Controversial" = "Not SJW"

[elrous0]

BLM video spewing anti-cop or anti-white hatred? That will be flagged "okay."

Conservative video suggesting MAYBE Trump is right about immigration? Oh, that's HATE speech--permanent ban!

Re:"Controversial" = "Not SJW"

[Gravis Zero]

You know, for a political party that complains about their opposition being a bunch of "snowflakes" that need special treatment, you guys do whine a LOT about how you aren't getting special treatment.

Re:"Controversial" = "Not SJW"

[ArylAkamov]

I don't see how this is complaining about not getting special treatment. If anything it is complaining about not getting equal treatment.

Re: "Controversial" = "Not SJW"

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not alt right. I'm a liberal.

Diversity is a code word for less whites.

There is a demonstrable attack on white people, particularly men, in today's society. Your response is an example of that. Someone asks simply to not be censored, and you scream them down with a torrent of profanity and insults.

You are the reason why we have Trump as a president. Stop with the identity politics, the - isms, and the hypocrisy. If you truly believe in equality and the destruction of racism, stop being a fucking racist.

How is accuracy measured?

[djinn6]

How does one know if AI is more accurate than humans? If the AI says the video is extremist, and the human says it's not, then who's right? Is there another machine out there that gets to be the arbiter?

The real answer is that there is some human who decided whether a video is extremist, then gave it to both the AI and another human, and the AI was able to learn how to agree better with the 1st human. Unfortunately, that doesn't actually tell us if the video is extremist or if the AI is any good, because the first human isn't more right than the second.

Re:Didn't we already have a post about training AI

[epyT-R]

As long as it's not muslim of course. That would be 'racist' and 'islamophobic.'

I also wonder if it allows 'extremist' content in the same vein as Galileo's observations about the solar system. Somehow I think this will end up as a simple anti popularity filter.

Re:Didn't we already have a post about training AI

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really applicable, because Galileo's science had nothing to do with him "getting into trouble". He had direct permission from the Pope to publish the science, and it was hardly "shocking", since the model was well known since Copernicus.

And, incidentally, we now know neither heliocentrism nor geocentrism is scientifically "correct", since Einstein it's well established that reference frames are arbitrary, and the only scientific difference is the complexity of the drawing needed to equally-correctly describe the orbits.

But regarding extremism, politics where indeed relevant, since Galileo going way beyond science to use his publication as a political attack on aspects of the Catholic Church, was indeed the sole source of his problems.

However, since he didn't actually advocate violence in his political polemic sprinkled with non-innovative science, we're again at "inapplicable to extremism".

Nor did he advocate violence for the rest of his life, which never varied from being continuously Christian as his worldview.

So, yeah, not really relevant. And certainly not relevant in the wishful, historically incorrect manner you were hoping for.