Digital Discourse Database

Number of Posts: 13
Posts 1 - 10

Facebook and Google activate safety features after Barcelona attack: How to mark yourself safe

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Newspaper | Telegraph
Date | 17.8.2017
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | Facebook, Google, threat
Summary | After the Barcelona attacks, Facebook and Google have activated their safety features.
Image Description | Screenshots of Facebook and Google's safety features, and three tweets.
Image Tags | Facebook, Google, Twitter

Teaching A.I. Systems to Behave Themselves

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 13.8.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, Facebook, Google, threat
Summary | Artificial intelligence systems have made huge development leaps in recent times but there is still a lot of learning to do. The image recognition AI assistants of Facebook and Google demonstrate how, on the one hand, they can recognize a lot of images correctly if they have had enough data to learn from and, on the other hand, how it still makes bold mistakes. It suffices to manipulate a few pixels and the AI system gets confused. Developing AI systems not only takes a lot of data but also trial and error phases which are monitored and taught by human teachers.
Image Description | Programmers working on computers.
Image Tags | computer/laptop, female(s), male(s)

Farhad's and Mike's Week in Tech: A Snap and Google Tie-Up?

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 5.8.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, Facebook, Google, Instagram, marketing, Snapchat
Summary | There is a rumor that Google might be interested in acquiring Snapchat. Instagram copies all features of Snapchat. Facebook has built a huge marketing company with Facebook itself and Instagram. Facebook is also working on improving its artificially intelligent chatbots so that they get better at understanding natural speech.
Image Description | Google and Snapchat logo.
Image Tags | Google, logo, Snapchat

Daily Report: The Limits of A.I.

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 16.6.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, Facebook, Google, YouTube
Summary | Facebook wants to use artificial intelligence to remove offensive content from their platform. It is however not easy to teach a computer the nuances of offence. Google has tried to do the same thing on YouTube and they have definitely required human employees to double-check the content the artificial intelligence program has flagged.
Image Description | N/A

In Europe’s Election Season, Tech Vies to Fight Fake News

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 1.5.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | computer programming, Facebook, fake news, Google, law, politics
Summary | In light of recent elections, many people are eager to combat misinformation online. Major tech companies like Facebook and Google are being pressured to purdue solutions to stop the spread of fake news on their platforms. Germany even demands fines from Facebook for not complying with federal laws targeted at keeping hate speech and fake news controled. Competitions with rewards of several thousand dollars are asking for programmers to come up with fact-checking software which can weed out false news.
Image Description | Image of a computer programmer working on solutions to flag fake news and a Reuters image of election posters from France.
Image Tags | female(s), male(s)

Uncle Sam Wants Your Deep Neural Networks

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 22.6.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | (mental) health, artificial intelligence, brain, Facebook, Google
Summary | Image recognition softwares are being developed with artificial intelligence technologies. Programs are fed information that they are supposed to learn from much like a human brain. Google and Facebook have been using such an approach for a while to enable the recognition of faces in images. The field of medicine is also using artificial intelligence softwares to augment doctors' analytic abilities in detecting lung cancer for instance and airport security is using such technology for their body scanners.
Image Description | A woman standing in an airport body scanner with a male officer in the background.
Image Tags | female(s), male(s)

Merkel says big internet firms 'distort perception': Chancellor demands Facebook and Google make their algorithms public

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Newspaper | Mail Online
Date | 28.10.2016
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | Facebook, Google, marketing, politics, privacy
Summary | Merkel wants Facebook and Google to be more transparent and reveal the algorithms that select stories people see. She claimed that those algorithms distort our perception of reality. Internet giants don't agree with that; they said that viewers have access to a wide range of opinions.
Image Description | Photograph of Angela Merket speaking at a conference, photograph of the Facebook logo with the reaction buttons, and Twitter logo.
Image Tags | Facebook, female(s), logo, Twitter

Tech industry slowly rallies behind Apple in iPhone fight

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Newspaper | USA Today
Date | 19.2.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | Facebook, Google, law, privacy, smartphone, threat
Summary | The FBI had issues a court order to Apple to hack into the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino terrorists. When Apple declined, other tech magnates like Google and Facebook sided with them saying that tech companies cannot be ordered to compromise their customers' privacy by the governement. Allowing this to happen now would set a problematic precedent for the future.
Image Description | Portrait of Mark Zuckerberg.
Image Tags | Facebook, male(s)

Siri, Alexa and Other Virtual Assistants Put to the Test

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 27.1.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, Facebook, Google
Summary | The five major tech companies now all offer artificial intelligence assistants: Apple with Siri, Microsoft with Cortana, Amazon with Alexa, Facebook with M, and Google. They were all put to the test with a few tasks: find out who is playing in the upcoming Super Bowl, play some music, schedule something one's calendar, book a flight, find out about the traffic situation, and find nearby restaurants and order food. None of the AI assistants did perfectly with the highest score of 3.1 out of 4.0 going to Google.
Image Description | Drawing of the five AI assistants as little robots with name tags and their overall score.
Image Tags | Facebook, Google

China Disrupts WhatsApp Service in Online Clampdown

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 18.7.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | censorship, Facebook, Google, Instagram, privacy, threat, Twitter, WhatsApp
Summary | The Chinese government has partly shut down the use of WhatsApp within their borders. The app is widely used around the globe and was used by some in China do communicate with people outside of Chine with end-to-end encryption. Other popular social media platforms and internet sites like Google, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram are blocked under the "Great Firewall" in China.
Image Description | Woman using a smartphone and women standing in front of Facebook and Instagram logos as well as emojis.
Image Tags | emojis, Facebook, female(s), Instagram, logo, smartphone

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