While hundreds of thousands of companies across the country have seen work grind to a halt amid COVID-19, Chris Priebe is experiencing the opposite.
The owner of Two Hat, an artificial intelligence-powered content moderation company based in Kelowna, B.C., has never been busier helping customers including gaming brands Nintendo Switch, Habbo, Rovio and Supercell sift through billions of comments and conversations and quickly identify and remove anything harmful to users.
“We processed 60 billion last month. It used to be 30 billion. That’s how bad coronavirus is. That is at least twice the normal volume,” said Priebe in April, before monthly processing volumes hit 90 billion.
“(Platforms) are faced with, in some cases, 15 times the volume. How can they possibly care for their audience? Because that doesn’t mean that the revenues are up 15 times or that they can afford to hire that many more people.”
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Priebe is not alone in the scramble to keep online, social media and gaming platforms safe amid COVID-19. Companies including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and Google have all been warning users since at least April that they are experiencing shortages of content moderators, causing a backlog in the removal of harmful posts.
The stakes are high. Record numbers of people around the globe are spending increased amounts of time at home on their favourite platforms, challenging servers and turning messaging services, social networks and comment sections into a wild west.
The situation has heightened privacy experts’ worries about the spread of misinformation and the likelihood that users will stumble upon hate speech, pornography, violence and other harmful content.
1:41 Trump threatens social media platforms after Twitter labels tweets with fact check label
Trump threatens social media platforms after Twitter labels tweets with fact check label
“Quite a few people are fairly dissatisfied with the content moderation process as it is…and then you add on this pandemic…You are seeing a huge increase in harassing behaviour and problematic behaviour and then having the content stay up longer,” said Suzie Dunn, a University of Ottawa professor who specializes in the intersection of technology, equality and the law.
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“It’s a real challenge because content moderators are a little bit like frontline workers. They’re an essential service that we need to have at a time like this, so we would hope to see more content moderators working.”
However, unlike workers in other sectors who have been working from home since the COVID-19 pandemic arrived, such a shift is difficult for many content moderators as their jobs deal with images and language you wouldn’t want kids or other family members catching a glimpse of.
“Some of them may not be able to work on certain things that they would work on in the office,” Kevin Chan, Facebook Canada’s head of public policy, told The Canadian Press.
“They’re looking at potentially private, and sensitive things that have been reported to them and we need to make sure….that these things can be treated in the secure and private manner that they deserve.”
Full-time Facebook employees have stepped up and are taking on some of the moderating work, including from contractors who can’t have proprietary and sensitive content at home. These workers are dealing with content related to “real-world harm” like child safety and suicide and self-injury.
“There is no question this is going to pose challenges to the degree to which we can be as responsive,’ Chan said.
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To deal with the situation, Facebook has rolled out measures meant to curb the flow of COVID-19 misinformation and is focused on weeding out and removing content around terrorism and anything inciting violence or linking to “dangerous” individuals and organizations.
1:58 Introducing social media to children during the COVID-19 crisis
Introducing social media to children during the COVID-19 crisis
At Twitter, machine learning and automation is being used to help the company review reports most likely to cause harm first and to help rank content or “challenge” accounts automatically.
“While we work to ensure our systems are consistent, they can sometimes lack the context that our teams bring, and this may result in us making mistakes,” Twitter said in a blog. “As a result, we will not permanently suspend any accounts based solely on our automated enforcement systems.”
Google has also upped its reliance on machine-based systems to reduce the need for people to work from the office and said the increase in automation has many downsides, including a potential increase in content classified for removal and slower turnaround times for appeals.
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“They are not always as accurate or granular in their analysis of content as human reviewers,” added a Google blog released in March.
This is a sentiment Priebe has encountered many times, but he has a counter-argument: “AI is not perfect but…humans are also not perfect.”
He gives the example of a child playing a game at home during the pandemic, when pedophiles might be more active online and trying to contact young people.
“You have three different humans look at the same conversation and they’re not going to give you the same answer. Some of them are going to call it grooming and some of them aren’t,” said Priebe.
Priebe believes an ideal system blends humans and AI because the latter is good at knowing what to do with obvious cases like when a user’s content is flagged almost a dozen times in a short period of time or when someone gets a message that only reads hello and hits report just to see what the button does.
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Coronavirus searches trend on Twitter as experts recommend sticking to credible sources
“You don’t need a human to have to be looking at their screen and looking at this absolutely sexual content in front of potentially their children who snuck up behind them because artificial intelligence is going to win every time on that,” he said.
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“Let humans do what humans do well, which is deal with that middle category of stuff that is subjective, difficult or hard to understand, that the AI is not confident about.”
Regardless of how the moderation gets done, some things will always slip through the cracks, especially in a pandemic, said Dunn.
MONTREAL – Lightspeed Commerce Inc. says it is conducting a review of its business and operations including talks relating to a range of potential strategic alternatives.
The Montreal-based payments technology company made the comments after reports concerning a potential transaction involving the company.
Lightspeed says it periodically undertakes a review of its business and operations with a view of realizing its full potential.
A strategic review is often seen by investors as a prelude to a sale by a company.
Lightspeed says its board of directors is committed to acting in the best interests of the company and its stakeholders.
Company founder Dax Dasilva returned to the role of chief executive officer earlier this year and has been working to return the company to profitability.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 26, 2024.
OTTAWA – Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem says there is a lot of uncertainty around how artificial intelligence could affect the economy moving forward, including the labour market and price growth.
In a speech in Toronto at the Economics of Artificial Intelligence Conference, the governor said Friday that the central bank is approaching the issue cautiously to get a better understanding of how AI could affect its job of keeping inflation low and stable.
“Be wary of anyone who claims to know where AI will take us. There is too much uncertainty to be confident,” Macklem said in prepared remarks.
“We don’t know how quickly AI will continue to advance. And we don’t know the timing and extent of its economic and social impacts.”
The governor said AI has the potential of increasing labour productivity, which would raise living standards and grow the economy without boosting inflation.
In the short-term, he said investment in AI is adding to demand and could be inflationary.
However, Macklem also highlighted more pessimistic scenarios, where AI could destroy more jobs than it creates or lead to less competition rather than more.
The governor called on academics and businesses to work together to shed more light on the potential effects of AI on the economy.
“When you enter a dark room, you don’t go charging in. You cautiously feel your way around. And you try to find the light switch. That is what we are doing. What we central bankers need is more light,” he said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 20, 2024.
CHICAGO (AP) — United Airlines has struck a deal with Elon Musk’s SpaceX to offer satellite-based Starlink WiFi service on flights within the next several years.
The airline said Friday the service will be free to passengers.
United said it will begin testing the service early next year and begin offering it on some flights by later in 2025.
Financial details of the deal were not disclosed.
The announcement comes as airlines rush to offer more amenities as a way to stand out when passengers pick a carrier for a trip. United’s goal is to make sitting on a plane pretty much like being on the ground when it comes to browsing the internet, streaming entertainment and playing games.
“Everything you can do on the ground, you’ll soon be able to do on board a United plane at 35,000 feet, just about anywhere in the world,” CEO Scott Kirby said in announcing the deal.
The airline says Starlink will allow passengers to get internet access even over oceans and polar regions where traditional cell or Wi-Fi signals may be weak or missing.
