Facebook is doubling its efforts to make AI ubiquitous in its products and may see them come true next year.
Apparently, Facebook is planning to create a new neural sensor that can read people’s thoughts and turn them into motion. This latest effort would bring the social media giant deeper into the artificial intelligence arena, some of which did not go well with Facebook. Facebook has also announced a new app that lists news storeys in bullets so that users do not have to waste a lot of time on them a step that could potentially affect publishers on the social media platform.
The announcements were made at the annual Facebook conference, including everybody working at the organisation. The specifics of the meetings are not open to the public, but BuzzFeed News has managed to procure an audio file that has been broadcast to all staff. Facebook has announced some serious plans that are related to improvements in the AI category, as the company finishes a predictably challenging year with much tougher events that have presented a challenge.
The neurosensor that the company is said to be creating uses the tools of CTRL Laboratories, a company that Facebook purchased in 2019. According to the study, the sensor would take the electrical impulses from the brain through the spinal cord and arms, and to the right of the wrist. This will encourage users to execute physical acts based on their emotions. According to Facebook, this will allow users to carry a virtual object, type and manipulate a character in a video game. This is oddly similar to the nascent brain-reading technologies that Elon Musk’s Neuralink company is working on. It’s going to be fascinating to see what spin Facebook is giving this technology.
Facebook has been caught up in a variety of conflicts, including political bias in India, resentment among workers, and most notably, anti-trust lawsuits for domination in the US and elsewhere. Most of the disagreements was the elimination of hate speech, which makes significant use of AI-powered resources. Facebook is also widening its range to include many more AI-enabled items, including a new overview app for news storeys. It said that about 20,000 workers joined Facebook this year and that, due to the pandemic, people were using Facebook and its services more than ever before.
But for Facebook, artificial intelligence is not a small accessory that can be used by its providers. The social media giant is pegging AI as a panacea for all the issues it has encountered and is sure to encounter in the future. “We’re paving the way for breakthrough new experiences that will improve the lives of billions without hyperbole,” said Mike Schroepfer, Chief Technical Officer at Facebook’s conference, BuzzFeed News.
Facebook uses AI to do just about anything, from curbing the dissemination of propaganda on its social media sites to eliminating hate speech, along with scanning political news. Schroepfer also said that AI was helping Facebook identify 95 per cent of hate speech rampant on the site. However this is totally contradictory to what some ex-employees who have worked closely with the company’s AI products have said that AI has contributed less than 5% to the removal of hate speech content. Facebook didn’t come clean about this claim, forever.
Moving forward, Facebook is launching the “TLDR” app, which is basically a tool that would generate a synopsis of news storeys, saving readers a lot of time. This sounds unfavourable to journalists that have strong links to Facebook for news material, along with unique initiatives that are connected to the battle against misinformation on the site. It is not entirely clear if this feature would have an effect on the company’s relationship with publishers. The Facebook spokesperson did not make any remarks on this development.
