{"id":5342,"date":"2014-12-14T11:51:13","date_gmt":"2014-12-14T18:51:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/?p=5342"},"modified":"2014-12-14T14:05:56","modified_gmt":"2014-12-14T21:05:56","slug":"facebooks-automated-conscience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/?p=5342","title":{"rendered":"Facebook’s automated conscience"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Donald\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Last week, Wired<\/em>‘s Cade Metz gave us a peek<\/a> into the Facebook Behavior\u00a0Modification Laboratory, which is more popularly\u00a0known as the Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research (FAIR) Laboratory. Run by Yann LeCun, an NYU data\u00a0scientist, the lab is developing\u00a0a digital assistant that will act as your\u00a0artificial conscience and censor. Perched on your shoulder like one of those cartoon angels, it will whisper\u00a0tsk tsk<\/em> into your ear\u00a0when your online behavior threatens to step beyond the bounds of propriety.<\/p>\n

[LeCun]\u00a0wants to build a kind of Facebook digital assistant that will, say, recognize when you\u2019re uploading an embarrassingly candid photo of your late-night antics. In a virtual way, he explains, this assistant would tap you on the shoulder and say: \u201cUh, this is being posted publicly. Are you sure you want your boss and your mother to see this?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s Kubrick’s HAL refashioned as Mr. Buzzkill. “Just what do you think you’re doing, Dave?”<\/p>\n

The secret to the technology is an AI technique known as machine learning, a statistical modeling tool through which a computer gains a kind of experiential knowledge of\u00a0the world. In this case, Facebook would, by monitoring your uploaded words and photos, be able to read your moods and intentions.\u00a0The company would, for instance, be able to “distinguish between your drunken self and your sober self.” That would enable Facebook to “guide you in directions you may not go on your own.” Says LeCun:\u00a0\u201cImagine that you had an intelligent digital assistant which would mediate your interaction with your friends.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yes, imagine.<\/p>\n

“Look Dave, I can see you’re really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over.”<\/p>\n

If and when Facebook perfects its behavior modification algorithms, it would\u00a0be a fairly trivial exercise to expand their application beyond the realm of shitfaced\u00a0snapshots. That photo you’re about to post of\u00a0the protest rally you just marched in? That angry comment\u00a0about the president? That wild\u00a0thought that just popped into your mind?\u00a0You know, maybe those\u00a0wouldn’t go down so well with the boss.<\/p>\n

“And as our senses have gone outside us,”\u00a0Marshall McLuhan wrote in 1962, while\u00a0contemplating the ramifications of what he termed a universal, digital nervous system, “Big Brother\u00a0goes inside.”<\/p>\n

This post is an installment in Rough Type\u2019s ongoing series \u201cThe Realtime Chronicles,\u201d which began\u00a0here<\/a>. A full listing of posts can be found\u00a0here<\/a>. Also see: Automating the feels<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, Wired‘s Cade Metz gave us a peek into the Facebook Behavior\u00a0Modification Laboratory, which is more popularly\u00a0known as the Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research (FAIR) Laboratory. Run by Yann LeCun, an NYU data\u00a0scientist, the lab is developing\u00a0a digital assistant that will act as your\u00a0artificial conscience and censor. Perched on your shoulder like one of those […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-realtime","category-the-glass-cage"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5342"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5342\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5349,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5342\/revisions\/5349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}