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Facebook deploys AI for early signs of suicide

techcrunch.com

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Re: Facebook deploys AI for early signs of suicide

#4
It's kind of amusing that all the investment in ML/AI by the internet companies is part of how they'll be regulated. I suspect it won't be good enough for a long time anyway and they're just going to have to hire a lot more people.

Re: Facebook deploys AI for early signs of suicide

#5

I wonder how they build up their training set? That couldnt have been that easy.

You're assuming it will be anywhere close to accurate. Knowing Facebook's previous attempts at AI, I wouldn't expect much. I wonder what the false positive rate will be.

"Dave, you should stop thinking about killing yourself!"

- "But...I wasn't thinking about killing myself?!"

"Come on, Dave, deep down you know you want to. You can't fool me! I know everything about you."

"- Well, now that I think about it, watching Facebook all day does make me feel quite depressed..."

Re: Facebook deploys AI for early signs of suicide

#9
Maybe they should also rethink how Facebook impacts people's lives in a negative way (https://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/how-facebook-makes-u..., https://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/12/study-using-facebook-makes-y...). The problem is that's incompatible with their business model: capture people's attention.

Treat the causes (some of them at least), not the consequences.

Re: Facebook deploys AI for early signs of suicide

#10

I wonder how they build up their training set? That couldnt have been that easy.

From the article:

> Facebook trained the AI by finding patterns in the words and imagery used in posts that have been manually reported for suicide risk in the past. It also looks for comments like “are you OK?” and “Do you need help?”

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