Slashdot Mirror
Facebook Rolls Out AI To Detect Suicidal Posts Before They're Reported (techcrunch.com)
Facebook is rolling out "proactive detection" artificial intelligence technology that will scan all posts on the site for patterns of suicidal thoughts, and when necessary send mental health resources to the user at risk or their friends, or contact local first-responders. The goal is to use AI to decrease how long it takes to send help to those in need. TechCrunch reports: Facebook previously tested using AI to detect troubling posts and more prominently surface suicide reporting options to friends in the U.S. Now Facebook is will scour all types of content around the world with this AI, except in the European Union, where General Data Protection Regulation privacy laws on profiling users based on sensitive information complicate the use of this tech. Facebook also will use AI to prioritize particularly risky or urgent user reports so they're more quickly addressed by moderators, and tools to instantly surface local language resources and first-responder contact info. It's also dedicating more moderators to suicide prevention, training them to deal with the cases 24/7, and now has 80 local partners like Save.org, National Suicide Prevention Lifeline and Forefront from which to provide resources to at-risk users and their networks.
How long before this is trolled into oblivion?
How long before people sue Facebook for false positives and violating their privacy?
There are going to be some serious privacy issues and a lot of false positives. If all goes according to plan, expect the cops to send a SWAT team to bust down someone's door and "accidentally" pump two dozen bullets into them...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
They're just attempting to get ahead of things because they know damn well at some point someone is going to do some research and show how many suicides Facebook actually CAUSES. Legally, they can say they are taking all the reasonable measures possible to prevent it.
I wonder if they have ever considered that some people may be suicidal precisely because of this impersonal, constantly surveilled machine the modern internet has thrust upon everyone which gives the illusion of caring ("getting suicidal people the help they need, faster than ever before!") without actually giving a shit.
Maybe what we need isn't even more ways to present the illusion of being connected without really being so. Maybe what we need is actual deeper, meaningful human interaction.
Frankly, the world these people seem to want: algorithms constantly analysing and monetizing everything everyone ever does - is enough to drive many people into depression.
Seriously, get the fuck off of ANY non-face-to-face human interaction every once in a while.
It improves mood as much as having NO artificial light source improves sleep and alertness.
Or how eating only meat that you grilled on your fire and vegetables from your harden improves the energy that you have throughout the day, your health and our well-being.
Technology is not the devil. But also not the savior. We need to use it much more carefully and wisely.
Can I sue Facebook for bunchteen million dollars if they report a false positive?
Say someone's FB account gets hacked and a suicidal message is posted. Cops arrive at their door to take them away to the loony-bin for a psych hold. Fun times! Also, will there be a human in the loop for posts like "I'll jump under a freakin' train if the Patriots lose the Superbowl"?
will Facebook call the police on me? This sucks. Someone already did that to me on reddit, and they located where I live from a picture I took of a pot shop out my bedroom window. It took me hours to talk my way out of being taken into custody.
I don't have a FB account and suspect this will make me suicidal. Should I be worried? Should I not lay in the kitchen with my shotgun pointed at the door for the FB police to do a no knock warrant cuz I'm "not normal". Curious minds want to know, how long do I have to lay on my kitchen floor? When can I feed the cat? When can I safely watch TV? I do aerobics 3x a week, should I ignore the concealed carry laws in California (hint, you ain't gonna get one here) and carry to my aerobics class?
I turn 60 in 6 months, can I count on making it to my next birthday due to not ever making a FB account?
Can't wait to login to my friends Facebook and update the status for some lolz welcome to the new "swatting"
I was under the impression that people who are actually suicidal don't often post about it on Facebook. If you really want to kill yourself, bringing more attention to yourself isn't a good way to accomplish this. Don't get me wrong, the petty narcissists that try to get attention by acting suicidal clearly need help as well, but I don't think this will do much to deter those who are actually suicidal.
If Facebook really cared about the mental health and wellbeing of their users, they'd kick people off after more than fifteen minutes of daily use or just outright pull the plug on the whole works.
I'll just leave this here.
This is their best attempt at making a palatable pre-crime detection system. If it works, the system will be expanded to other crimes (suicide being a criminal act in many jurisdictions).
Precognition!
predicting that Kurt Cobain was suicidal (after the fact) by analyzing emails? I probably read it on /. many years ago.
Now a person can't even feel safe when going through a tough time without automated software "that knows better" interfering with that person's life and sending "help" that will destroy that person's life.
Why use Facebook at all?
Hello, this is Raj, I am understanding that you have feelings of suicide? Could you please confirm your email address and I will give you the numbers of a counselor who can make you feel better. Please hold the line.
That wasn't what was going on. Targeted demographics for the advertisements were race-based, whereas the fair housing law prohibits the kind of activity you are describing. So it's something that Facebook should probably have blocked for moral reasons, not something that was necessarily illegal on the part of the advertisers.
... that this wasn't active during the meltdown that was the 2016 Presidential election.
I sincerely hope that the synopsis is incorrect, because it would be a massive violation of privacy if facebook just starts notifying random people in your social network that you've authoried a suicidal post - especially if, as it sounds like, they are looking at the content of posts that haven't even been submitted yet. Most depressed folks I know have enough suicidal episodes to have experienced writing a suicide note or three but end up using the writing of the note to work through the issue at hand and come back down enough to get over the worst of it or seek help on their own. I'd be enormously upset to discover that working my way through an episode like that resulted in some public announcement of my mental state by facebook. Granted, I'd never write such a thing in a text box on a live website, simply to avoid accidentally submitting or reloading, never mind snooping on unposting content by the site's owner, but others might be careless enough to get caught out.
Facebook's employees understand literally nothing about human beings. I think millennial tech is going to disappear altogether at some point in the future due to its fallacious nature and ultimate uselessness. Whatever, Zuck.
Since when has "AI" = "an algorithm"?
Fucking buzzwords
Add it to the list of cloud = internet, etc.
Every individual has the right to determine his own life. Not only do many of these people really want to commit suicide, they actually need to commit suicide, and must be encouraged in their journey to the great beyond.
It looks like you are trying to kill yourself.
Would like help?
Help! help!, the termites are eating my DRAM!!!
My nephew committed suicide today. Several hours before, he posted a link on FB to the music video for "Logic - 1-800-273-8255."
I don't have any wisdom to share, just the sadness.
Expectation:
Guy1: I've lost my job and my family in an accident on the same day. There's no hope anymore.
FB: Looks like you need some help! Go visit Save.org today!
Guy1: Thanks FB. It really helped.
Reality:
Guy2: Omg, this guy on the internet is so stupid. I am literally banging my head so hard that it's killing me.
FB: Looks like you need some help! Go visit Save.org today!
Guy2: Is this the part where I continue to bang my head?
FB: Looks like you need some help! Go visit Save.org today!
Guy2: Damn it. Stop spamming me. You're killing me.
FB: Looks like you need some help! Go visit Save.org today!
Person2: Arrrrrrugh!!! Do you want me dead or something?
FB: We booked you a schedule on Suicide Prevention Lifeline. Thank you for using FB newest AI chatbot technology. This chatbot is sponsored by Nice-Long-Rope, the best $1.99 rope to hang things from the ceiling.
...10 min later...Welcome to the suicide watch....and in case you dont responds let me email all your friends you sad fuck...
yours truly
Facebook
It would be more useful if Facebook could develop an algorithm that could detect the next Steve Stephens or Devin Patrick Kelly before they go out kill innocent people.
My AI auto detects terrorist activity and SWATS their house. That's what you get for making me hear "terrorists win" on CS.
This should be up to friends and family to correct this kind of behavior, not some Facebook algorithm
"Man commits suicide after becoming depressed that Facebook flagged his regular posts as suicidal."
True, but most people who are suicdal do not genuinely want to die as much as they would rather want their living circumstances just to be different from whatever they are
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park
Personally I've found that there is a correlation between extreme financial stress and consideration of life as worth living. These things sound obvious when you say them out loud, but oddly not present in many rationales regarding suicide.
And Pump Up The Volume is a classic movie, and completely on topic. Of course Facebook lacks all the goodness of a pirate communications channel.
Sieze the day kids. Steal the air.
What, exactly, are they going to do with this information? What will the false-positive rate be? Intuitively, I expect it to be very high: 90% or more of the reported cases will be false positives.
So: The suicide prevention lines will suddenly be overloaded with incorrect reports? And random individuals will have the police knocking on their doors as 3am, saving them from...nothing?
Prediction: This is yet another feel-good idea that will have predominantly negative effects. Why do SJWs insist on sticking their noses in other people's lives?
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
wou are about to cost more money to the system than you are producing. We will send jou some help.
Nothing good ever came from facebook. Nothing.
It's not illegal to discriminate against who your ads are shown to, outlawing that would set a precedent that would obliterate the ad industry overnight. If I put up job postings in a white neighborhood and a black guy comes in looking for a job, I only break the law if I deny him on basis of his race. That can be difficult to prove, but the demographics of my postings can be used as evidence despite being perfectly legal.
that's MY choice... No one else should decide whether i NEED to live or not ... It's the most individual of individual choices we can make .... We don't even get to decide if we're born or not ... A society that prevents people to decide on their own life ending, is the ultimate form of slavery
https://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21731693-could-they-hold-culprit-their-hands-teenagers-are-growing-more-anxious-and
Oh, you mean "reported" as in notifying the authorities? Ah, gotcha...
Suicidal people donâ(TM)t want that information getting out because they know that their feelings can hurt others which only makes matters worse.
Leave them alone.
It's so FB can sell your friends targeted advertising from funeral directors and florists
I somehow get the feeling that this will probably go just as well as youtube's automatic flagging and de-monetization of videos that has completely baffled independent content creators (traditional media ones like CNN and the BBC are excluded from this system) with the way it's arbitrarily de-monetized massive amounts of completely benign content.
However what worries me even more is if they try their hand using the same flagging scripts for flagging other things. I probably ought to remove the post I made yesterday about the seemingly extremely quick delivery of something I ordered online where I joked about it probably being the fastest delivery since that German guy* tried to get the British Post Office to start delivering "V2 style" using rockets. Because if I don't I get the feeling they may put me on a list of "known neo-nazis" or something.
*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerhard_Zucker
"Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it."
If I put up job postings in a white neighborhood and a black guy comes in looking for a job, I only break the law if I deny him on basis of his race. That can be difficult to prove, but the demographics of my postings can be used as evidence despite being perfectly legal.
If you only hang fliers in a white neighborhood, black people can still come into that neighborhood and see them, at least in this era. If you explicitly select not to show your ad to anyone but white people, on the other hand, that's substantially different and clearly an attempt at discrimination. It's difficult to prove you were only trying to rent to whites if you post flyers in a white neighborhood, because you can reasonably claim that you were attracted by the economic status of the neighborhood. It's difficult to prove you were only trying to rent to whites if you post an ad on a website frequented mostly by white people, too. But it's trivial to prove that you were trying to exclude non-whites if you actually selected "show this ad only to white people".
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
basically the way this is supposed to work: Facebook detects the billable mental disorder and reports you to authorities for forcibly psychiatric lock up. The hospital/doctors then bill your insurance against your will, prescribing drugs that disable your brain and create mental illness for reals, permanently making you disabled. Doctors/hospital/investors in the pharma company/congressman walk away with a mint at the victims expense.
Psychiatry isn't treatment it's a business model.
https://www.trumpsweapon.com/
They start with suicide; Next it will be helping people that are depressed or have PTSD. Then it will be people who are unahappy. So where do you draw the line as to when to stop?
On the one side they do not allow Russians to advertise for whatever party they want to. On the other hand, I am sure they will take money from companies to influence the peoples behavior of what they buy.
Some quotes from THX 1138 that could be relevant:
Thou art a subject of the divine, created in the image of man, by the masses, for the masses.
Female voice (medicine cabinet): If you feel you are not properly sedated, call 348-844 immediately. Failure to do so may result in prosecution for criminal drug evasion.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Sounds like naïve emotionalistic public relations propaganda to me. “We detect & report pre-crime!”
If it were really that simple to detect suicidal tendencies, wouldn't FB also announce efforts to detect/prevent:
* terrorist attacks
* domestic abuse
* human trafficking
* illegal drug trade
* illegal border crossings
* tax evasion
* racism
* blasphemy
* insults against the State
* thoughtcrime
* impure thoughts
* sarcasm
Etc. What a bunch o' hooey!
They might well intend this as a “cover our arses” defense against suicide liability suits, but it opens the door to a plethora of other suits if they don't also address a host of other comparable issues. The unintended consequences could be epically Orwellian.
All in all: this appears to be a bad idea poorly implemented, a.k.a. activist government policy pandering.
Error: NSE - No Signature Error
I'm from Facebook and I'm here to help.
Note personal anecdote, YMMV
A couple of years ago i deleted facebook due to not having any use for it, recently that changed. I became involved in a few social groups that predominantly use facebook to organize and so i went to create a profile. I used the same name and email as my previous profile and so far when i have tried to login it has informed me that it has detected suspicious activity and i must upload a picture with a clear view of my face, which they will delete (yeah right). I dont know if this is caused because i use no-script, ublock origin and i refuse to save my browser. the problem is that given all of facebook's policies are actually making it more of a pain to use than it used to be. That ease of use is what made it so popular and stories like this are just fodder that can be used against it. In the end one of the groups has switched to an email list and no one seems to have a problem with using it to organize events and outings.
Facebook was all fine and dandy when the user had control, but ever since they felt that they had the right to take away the user choice they have been in decline. I don't care if they want to do a/b testing or put the most popular things at the top of the feed, just give users the choice to opt out and actually respect their choice. Unfortunately it is too late for facebook to gain the public's trust back as the word of mouth campaign against facebook is mature and strong and has lots of evidence.
Markets are built on consumer confidence and facebook has lost the confidence of consumers.
All I want is a Pepsi and she wouldn't give it to me
All I wanted was a Pepsi, just one Pepsi
And she wouldn't give it to me, just a Pepsi
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
drama queens
The sort of people that emacs psychiatrist would just say, "kys".
Have gnu, will travel.
All I wanted was a Pepsi, just one Pepsi
love is just extroverted narcissism
I would expect the AI to become suicidal having been forced to wade through umpteen million posts about "what I'm currently eating," regurgitated cute-cat videos, and various flavors of tween- and teen-drama.
..."
AI: "Oh god, not ANOTHER bathroom selfie
After they roll this out under the guise of preventing suicide, how much tweaking would the algorithm, I'm sorry the "AI" need to start identifying people who are angry or unstable enough to become potentially violent? The real fun starts when people start losing their constitutionally protected rights stemming from a speculative diagnoses provided by a social media "AI". I'm not saying that Facebook will be directly putting people on no-fly or no-buy lists, but this could be reshaped to be the first step of that process by reporting people to the authorities.
this will surely be welcomed by those whose despair and depression is caused by the stress of living in the panopticon of an ever-increasing surveillance state that makes Orwell seem like a naive optimist.