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Google admits citing 4chan to spread fake Vegas shooter news

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Re: Google admits citing 4chan to spread fake Vegas shooter news

#61
post #25

>We are working to fix the issue that allowed this to happen This is not some issue that you can fix. This is not some color being off, or some chat message appearing out of order. This is about AI in its continued infancy that’s now being actively and maliciously targeted. It’s also about a huge responsibility of the worlds two greatest media outlets that both think they can have machines do a humans job and miserab…

The kinds of systems picking up these stories isn't "AI". PageRank I wouldn't classify as AI.

The real issue is that any system which attempts to organize or curate untrusted information is subject to adversarial attacks.

AI up until this point, has been mostly trained on labeled, human curated data sets. But as it starts to get trained on real user input, it'll be subject to attacks by people trying to game it. AI needs to address this robustly, but it's in it's infancy as you say.

I mean, we're still working on bias issues like machines learning that "doctor" is "male" because you trained on a corpus of English text, and therefore, most of the input text referenced a doctor as male, and that's the AI getting poisoned by cultural biases, which wasn't even an organized attack.

Re: Google admits citing 4chan to spread fake Vegas shooter news

#62
I am amazed at how bad this situation is.

> Something happens.

> /pol/, being /pol/, flipped the switch that generates semi-random information around a subject, seasoned with bias-of-the-day

> some posters on /pol/ decide to blame Geary Danley for the Vegas shooting

> google indexes /pol/

Given that:

> Searches for _words_ yield content related to _words_

> Searches for a name yield content related to a name

> Searches for "Geary Danley" yield content related to "Geary Danley"

This ensues:

> Media shitstorm because google is "citing 4chan to spread fake Vegas shooter news"

This only happens because:

1) We are expecting google to feed us only the truth? Otherwise we would say "someone took google seriously and arrived to the wrong conclusions"

2) We don't care the slightest what URL we follow from google? Otherwise we would say "someone who doesn't know what /pol/ is is taking it seriously"

3) We find it easier to blame some conspiracy than to take a step back and think? We ascribe blame to google.

4) All of the above?

I feel I am living in some bizarro world where everyone's feelings and expectations must be met, and any deviation from this will result in riots and name calling[0].

Few things exist to serve your purposes. Think before using any tool. You wouldn't use a blowtorch to trim your nails.

[0] https://phys.org/news/2011-11-poop-throwing-chimps-intellige...

Re: Google admits citing 4chan to spread fake Vegas shooter news

#63
post #25

>We are working to fix the issue that allowed this to happen This is not some issue that you can fix. This is not some color being off, or some chat message appearing out of order. This is about AI in its continued infancy that’s now being actively and maliciously targeted. It’s also about a huge responsibility of the worlds two greatest media outlets that both think they can have machines do a humans job and miserab…

This is advertising platforms being given a free pass on liability for the content they get paid to distribute, nothing less and nothing more.

Re: Google admits citing 4chan to spread fake Vegas shooter news

#65

I am amazed at how bad this situation is. > Something happens. > /pol/, being /pol/, flipped the switch that generates semi-random information around a subject, seasoned with bias-of-the-day > some posters on /pol/ decide to blame Geary Danley for the Vegas shooting > google indexes /pol/ Given that: > Searches for _words_ yield content related to _words_ > Searches for a name yield content related to a name > Search…

It's weird that people are blaming a search engine for providing relative links for discussion on a topic. Again, it's a search engine first and foremost, not a media outlet. It indexes media outlets.

It shouldn't be Google's job to vet articles. That should fall on the end user, and this push to hide "fake news" is just asking for more problems down the road.

Re: Google admits citing 4chan to spread fake Vegas shooter news

#66
post #25

>We are working to fix the issue that allowed this to happen This is not some issue that you can fix. This is not some color being off, or some chat message appearing out of order. This is about AI in its continued infancy that’s now being actively and maliciously targeted. It’s also about a huge responsibility of the worlds two greatest media outlets that both think they can have machines do a humans job and miserab…

The people who expect the top stories on the internet returned by Google to be unfailingly factual and true are the ones ceding a human’s job to a machine.

Re: Google admits citing 4chan to spread fake Vegas shooter news

#67

I don't know whether these automated news aggregators rely on machine learning per se, but this kind of reminds me of recent ML fails like Microsoft's Tay bot turning into a Nazi, or Google Photos labeling black people as gorillas. Andrew Ng interviewed Ian Goodfellow in the first course of his deep learning specialization on Coursera. Ian said that he's really interested in machine learning security, in part guardin…

Part of the problem is that there's no quality control in AI or ML. "Good enough to show the investors" is the benchmark.

Re: Google admits citing 4chan to spread fake Vegas shooter news

#68

I am amazed at how bad this situation is. > Something happens. > /pol/, being /pol/, flipped the switch that generates semi-random information around a subject, seasoned with bias-of-the-day > some posters on /pol/ decide to blame Geary Danley for the Vegas shooting > google indexes /pol/ Given that: > Searches for _words_ yield content related to _words_ > Searches for a name yield content related to a name > Search…

>We are expecting google to feed us only the truth?

To be fair, that is how Google presents things like the snippets. There's no disclaimer for the answers.

Normal non tech users wouldn't know if these were automated and highly fallible, or manually curated and somewhat reliable.

Here's my go-to example, where Google says a quarter is worth 50 cents. https://imgur.com/a/oibA7

No disclaimer or indication that this is at best, a bad guess. Also, it's been this way for months and months, even though I post it everywhere as an example. I also clicked the feedback button quite some time ago and reported it.

I understand this case wasn't a snippet. But it was labelled "Top Stories" and probably carousel featured. That sort of thing, like rich snippets, implies Google is presenting it as something more than just a search result.

Re: Google admits citing 4chan to spread fake Vegas shooter news

#69
post #65

I am amazed at how bad this situation is. > Something happens. > /pol/, being /pol/, flipped the switch that generates semi-random information around a subject, seasoned with bias-of-the-day > some posters on /pol/ decide to blame Geary Danley for the Vegas shooting > google indexes /pol/ Given that: > Searches for _words_ yield content related to _words_ > Searches for a name yield content related to a name > Search…

It's weird that people are blaming a search engine for providing relative links for discussion on a topic. Again, it's a search engine first and foremost, not a media outlet . It indexes media outlets. It shouldn't be Google's job to vet articles. That should fall on the end user, and this push to hide "fake news" is just asking for more problems down the road.

Exactly, what happens when a credible news source has to _retract_ a need story?

Do we crucify Google for surfacing an expost facto false story?

It's not Google's job to verify sources of news. Could they algorithmically "guess" a credibility score and attach that to the newslink, sure, I suppose.

Re: Google admits citing 4chan to spread fake Vegas shooter news

#70
post #65

I am amazed at how bad this situation is. > Something happens. > /pol/, being /pol/, flipped the switch that generates semi-random information around a subject, seasoned with bias-of-the-day > some posters on /pol/ decide to blame Geary Danley for the Vegas shooting > google indexes /pol/ Given that: > Searches for _words_ yield content related to _words_ > Searches for a name yield content related to a name > Search…

It's weird that people are blaming a search engine for providing relative links for discussion on a topic. Again, it's a search engine first and foremost, not a media outlet . It indexes media outlets. It shouldn't be Google's job to vet articles. That should fall on the end user, and this push to hide "fake news" is just asking for more problems down the road.

And if Google did start vetting articles in a more opinionated way, ie, making value judgments on content beyond popularity, they would most likely get hit with an antitrust lawsuit after someone didn't like Google's assessment.
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