The Artificial Intelligence Database
Emotional AI
What Happens When an AI Knows How You Feel?
Technology used to only deliver our messages. Now it wants to write them for us by understanding our emotions.
By Will Coldwell
Quick Study
Facebook Says Its New AI Can Identify More Problems Faster
The “Few-Shot Learner” system doesn’t need to see as many examples to identify troublesome posts, and it works in more than 100 languages.
By Tom Simonite
Ideas
An Ethics Bounty System Could Help Clean Up the Web
Tech companies just need to adapt the bug bounty system they already use to detect vulnerabilities in code.
By Jonathan Cohn
The Facebook Papers
Facebook Is Everywhere; Its Moderation Is Nowhere Close
Human reviewers and AI filters struggle to police the flood of content—or understand the nuances in different Arabic dialects.
By Tom Simonite
Social Media
Facebook Quietly Makes a Big Admission
The company’s new approach to political content acknowledges that engagement isn’t always the best way to measure what users value.
By Gilad Edelman
log off
Social Media Algorithms Are Controlling How I Grieve
What happens to a loved one's account after they pass—and how does their digital afterlife affect the ones who survive them?
By Steven Blum
encryption
Apple Walks a Privacy Tightrope to Spot Child Abuse in iCloud
With a new capability to search for illegal material not just in the cloud but on user devices, the company may have opened up a new front in the encryption wars.
By Andy Greenberg
Misogyny
This New Way to Train AI Could Curb Online Harassment
Misogyny on the internet too often slips through the filters of content moderators. A new method hopes to inject more nuance into the process.
By Khari Johnson
Breakthrough
A New System Is Helping Crack Down on Child Sex Abuse Images
There are 150 child sexual abuse laws around the world. Now, metadata is making it easier for countries to work together.
By Matt Burgess
Listening
This AI Helps Police Monitor Social Media. Does It Go Too Far?
Law enforcement officials say the tool can help them combat misinformation. Civil liberties advocates say it can be used for mass surveillance.
By Sidney Fussell
Oops
Don't End Up on This Artificial Intelligence Hall of Shame
A list of incidents that caused, or nearly caused, harm aims to prompt developers to think more carefully about the tech they create.
By Tom Simonite
media
These Ex-Journalists Are Using AI to Catch Online Defamation
CaliberAI wants to help overstretched newsrooms with a tool that’s like spell-check for libel. But its potential uses go far beyond traditional media.
By Gilad Edelman
Overlooked
Twitter's Photo Crop Algorithm Favors White Faces and Women
A study of 10,000 images found bias in what the system chooses to highlight. Twitter has stopped using it on mobile, and will consider ditching it on the web.
By Khari Johnson
Stop Sign
I’m Not a Robot! So Why Won’t Captchas Believe Me?
If clicking crosswalks makes your blood boil, you’re not alone. Fortunately, there are some tips that make solving those challenges way less frustrating.
By Sharon Waters
Mislabeled
The Foundations of AI Are Riddled With Errors
The labels attached to images used to train machine-vision systems are often wrong. That could mean bad decisions by self-driving cars and medical algorithms.
By Will Knight
Checkmate
Why a YouTube Chat About Chess Got Flagged for Hate Speech
AI programs that analyze language have difficulty gauging context. Words such as “black,” “white,” and “attack" can have different meanings.
By Will Knight
Lost in Translation
How Censorship Can Influence Artificial Intelligence
A study finds that algorithms learn to associate words with other words. “Democracy” can equal “stability”—or “chaos.”
By Will Knight
$*#@!!
AI and the List of Dirty, Naughty, Obscene, and Otherwise Bad Words
It started as a way to restrict autocompletes on Shutterstock. Now it grooms search suggestions on Slack and influences Google's artificial intelligence research.
By Tom Simonite
Catching Up
This Chinese Lab Is Aiming for Big AI Breakthroughs
China produces as many artificial intelligence researchers as the US, but it lags in key fields like machine learning. The government hopes to make up ground.
By Will Knight
Year in Review
Chatroulette Is On the Rise Again—With Help From AI
The hottest app of early 2010 faded quickly when it was flooded with unwanted nudity. Smarter content moderation is helping to revive it.
By Kevin Randall