Facebook has apologized after the social media site’s artificial intelligence (AI) technology inadvertently missed a video of black men chatting with white police officers called ‘primates’.
Social media users, who had viewed the video, were asked immediately afterwards if they wanted to continue watching ‘primate videos’. This information was published on the Daily Mail.
“This was an unacceptable mistake,” Facebook spokeswoman Dani Lever said in a statement to USA Today. ‘We turned off the topic recommendation feature, as soon as we were notified, so that we could investigate the cause and prevent it from happening again. Although we have made improvements to our AI, we know that it is fallible and needs to be further refined. We apologize to anyone who received these outrageous recommendations. ‘
This incident is the latest in a series of racial blunders online, brought on by what looks like prejudices embedded in automated systems. According to recent studies, facial recognition technology can be biased towards people of color and generally find it more difficult to identify them. This resulted in incidents, in which black people were discriminated against or arrested because of a computer problem.
Social media users, who had viewed the video, were asked immediately afterwards if they wanted to continue watching ‘primate videos’. This information was posted to the Daily Mail. ‘This was an unacceptable mistake,’ Facebook spokeswoman Dani Lever said in a statement to USA Today. ‘We turned off the topic recommendation feature, as soon as we were notified, so that we could investigate the cause and prevent it from happening again. Although we have made improvements to our AI, we know that it is fallible and needs to be further refined. We apologize to anyone who received these outrageous recommendations. ‘This incident is the latest in a series of racial blunders online, brought on by what looks like prejudices embedded in automated systems. According to recent studies, facial recognition technology can be biased towards people of color and generally find it more difficult to identify them. This resulted in incidents, in which black people were discriminated against or arrested because of a computer problem.
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