Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd
The UK-based company ASI Data Science unveiled a machine learning algorithm Wednesday that can identify terrorist propaganda videos with 99 percent accuracy.
This development marks one of the first instances of a company successfully using A.I. to flag extremist propaganda. The Islamic State group is notorious for its social media recruiting efforts, and this algorithm could help curtail them.
While the researchers at ASI wouldn't discuss any technical specifics of the algorithm, it appears to work like other kinds of A.I. recognition software. The algorithm can examine any video and determine the probability that the video is a piece of extremist propaganda. According to the BBC, the algorithm was trained on thousands of hours of terrorist recruiting videos, and it uses characteristics from these videos to assign probability scores.
Source: https://www.inverse.com/article/41273-uk-company-creates-algorithm-to-flag-propaganda
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bob_super on Thursday February 15 2018, @01:38AM (1 child)
> the algorithm was trained on thousands of hours of terrorist recruiting videos
And then it became really good at telling you which are extremist propaganda, e.g. any video where women don't wear Burqas, any video featuring music, any video showing Christians and Jews not get beheaded, as well as any video featuring any elected person.
In totally unrelated news, the personnel at ASI Data Science had to be evacuated from their building by SWAT teams, and internet access was cut off in the area.
One developer was allegedly heard muttering "what have we done?" as he was strapped into an ambulance, next to a second one who was screaming something about Launch Codes.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by requerdanos on Thursday February 15 2018, @01:44AM
I remember an anecdote wherein an AI got really, really good at identifying pictures of tanks (military track-driven vehicles). Until later they noted that it was really mostly just discerning whether the pictures had been taken in cloudy or sunny conditions, which aligned with their test image set pretty well.