Facebook to scrub their content of hateful memes
Facebook recently released an intriguing research paper called "The Hateful Memes Challenge: Detecting Hate Speech in Multimodal Memes."
It's well worth the read and a closer look at the database developed over the course of the research. The idea is simple: Use machine learning to help identify 'mean' and hateful memes.
If such a tool could be developed, it would help not just Facebook. It would help the entire online ecosystem better police the internet, stopping a significant portion of hate speech in its tracks.
Is the AI effective
Unfortunately, as the research shows, the AI still has a ways to go before it can truly be considered effective.
To conduct the search, the company compiled a data set consisting of a million samples of memes from all across the web. They eliminated any that were in clear violation of Facebook's Terms of Service, which left them with 162,000 samples.
They re-created those memes by copying the text onto a new image, sourced via a partnership with Getty Images. That done, they had human reviewers judge whether the memes were "hateful". Once a consensus was reached, they culled the remaining memes down to a final data set of 10,000, using these to attempt to "teach" the AI to identify hateful memes.
The result? The human reviewers had an average accuracy rate of 84.7 percent, versus the AI's 64.73 percent accuracy rate. It was a good effort by the AI, especially since this was the first attempt. Clearly, much more work needs to be done before the AI routine can be said to be truly effective.
A researcher involved in the project had this to say
"If we knew what is missing, it would be easy to fix and the gap between AI and humans would be lower. Generally speaking, we need to work on improving multimodal understanding and reasoning."
Our perspective
One thing you can be sure of is this: The company will keep hammering away at the problem, and the AI's percentages will increase in time. It's an interesting, challenging project that could have an enormous impact. Kudos to Facebook for their work to this point.
~ As Hill Street Blues' Sgt. Esterhaus always advised: "Hey, let's be careful out there! " ~
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The author
Thanks for reading this short post. For more tips on thriving with small business technology, check out the other blog posts at DWPia Blogs. I am also available on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.
I am Denis Wilson, President and Principal Consultant for DWP Information Architects. I help professionals grow their business by building a foundation of rock-solid IT and communications solutions for smaller insurance brokerages, financial services, and accountancy and law firms in Ventura County and San Fernando Valley. I have created cost-effective personal service automation solutions, for over 20 years, specializing in cybersecurity and regulatory compliance. I am also a published author and speaker, working extensively with business and professional associations to provide small business technology education programs.
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