Facebook's New Use of Artificial Intelligence

As we continue to use and develop artificial intelligence, we are seeing massive changes in what it is capable of doing. Through this article, the author is discussing Facebook’s new artificial intelligence system that will be able to understand videos and filter or sort them into specific groups. This is a major step in artificial intelligence because it would be able to process moving images and not just still ones.

I could see how Facebook users may not be very thrilled about this new technology. In the past, Facebook has been known to exploit their consumers data. They have previously given other companies permission to go through customers messages and directly advertise for them based on their accounts.  This could be as a continuation of this sort of behavior exhibited by Facebook and allow even more unwanted personal data to be gathered. In order for this to go over more seamlessly, Facebook should ask their users if they would allow their account to be subjected to this. After analyzing videos, who’s to say that Facebook would not give this data to companies to advertise for specific individuals. Furthermore, I would think that this can be misleading if someone posts a video outside of their usual content, then if the artificial intelligence decides to further examine that video it may produce false advertisements for that specific person. I would want to know if the artificial intelligence would examine multiple videos for one person and compile some broad similarities or go video by video. 

While the nature of the technology may not be very compelling, the technology being used is quite impressive. Creating this technology opens the door for much more data capturing capabilities within companies. It is mentioned that the system used is based on the human brain. This can be scary to think that artificial intelligence is teaching itself more things on its own. Furthermore, I feel like this software is designed based on some assumptions. I think it is assumed that users will be posting clear audio and video for the artificial intelligence to analyze. When working with sample data, I can see how doing the tasks that are mentioned could be easier than real life data that can be a bit trickier. Another assumption is that there is a demand for this type of data. Facebook mentioned how this feature would allow users to search references in videos. However, an example could be if someone who does not want to be on Facebook gets tagged because they were in a video, I could see privacy issues forming.

Overall, I think this is a very interesting technology that has the potential to be very useful. The implications for using it for hate speech as well as other violent implications can make the internet a more positive and safer place for users. There are many improvements that still need to be made but with time I think this could be a helpful software.

Source: https://fortune.com/2021/03/12/facebook-reveals-a-i-project-that-improved-instagram-video-recommendations/ 

Resources

1. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-46618582