/2014

Facebook copyright notice hoax: How algorithms could stop misinformation.
▻http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2014/12/facebook_copyright_notice_hoax_how_algorithms_could_stop_misinformation.html?

http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/12/141202_FT_FacebookHoaxes.jpg.CROP.promo-large.jpg

Un article prémonitoire de 2014

True, Facebook didn’t invent the viral hoax. It just happens to be the perfect 21st-century venue for the propagation of scams and urban legends that would have propagated by word of mouth, tabloid, or chain letter in earlier eras. But Facebook amplifies misinformation at a speed and on a scale that exceeds what was possible before. Its news feed is the product of cutting-edge software that the company has finely calibrated to maximize user engagement—that is, to prioritize the posts that catch people’s eyes and compel them to click, like, or share. One problem: Hoaxes, scams, and conspiracy theories are specifically optimized to do just that. Truth may be stranger than fiction, but on Facebook, fiction is often more viral.

Facebook will tell you it’s because distinguishing truth from lies is none of its business. The purpose of the news feed, the company explains, is not to sift right from wrong or good from bad according to some objective standard. It’s to sift what’s interesting to each Facebook user from what isn’t—that is, to give its users what they want. And what they want, Facebook has learned, is to see what their friends, family, and acquaintances are talking about. Whether that’s a cute baby photo, a serious current event, a clever lifehack, or a 9/11 conspiracy theory is not Facebook’s concern.

“Our goal is to connect people with the content they’re most interested in and not to prioritize one point of view over another,” spokeswoman Jessie Baker told me.

Similarly, Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg was reportedly moved to tweak the algorithms in a different direction when he saw a co-worker’s birthday ranking ahead of the birth of his niece. The problem: The news feed’s emphasis on relationships was leading it to prioritize trivial posts from his closest connections over the major life events of other friends and family. Facebook’s clever solution: When a post is prompting the word “congratulations” in the comments, show it to a wider audience.

A similarly simple approach could work wonders to counter the inherent virality of popular hoaxes, as Slate science editor Laura Helmuth recently pointed out to me. Let’s say a given post is repeatedly triggering comments that contain links to Snopes.com, for instance, or that include words like “hoax” or “debunked.” Facebook’s algorithms could take that as a subtle sign that the post’s widespread engagement might be ill-gotten. It wouldn’t have to censor the post—just treat it less like a viral sensation worthy of topping everyone’s feeds. The poster’s friends and family might still see it and have a chance to educate or disabuse him of the false information. But it would be far less likely to spread like fungus across the entire platform.

#fake_news #Facebook

Google self-driving car: It may never actually happen, by Lee Gomes
▻http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2014/10/google_self_driving_car_it_may_never_actually_happen.html

There is a surprisingly long list of the things the car can’t do, like avoid potholes or operate in heavy rain or snow. (...)

But what Google is working on may instead result in the automotive equivalent of the Apple Newton, what one Web commenter called a “timid, skittish robot car whose inferior level of intelligence becomes a daily annoyance.” To be able to handle the everyday stresses and strains of the real driving world, the Google car will require a computer with a level of intelligence that machines won’t have for many years, if ever.

(…)

The company frequently says that its car has driven more than 700,000 miles safely, but those are the same few thousand mapped miles, driven over and over again.

(...)

Considering all the traffic signals, stop signs, lane markings, and crosswalks that get added or removed every day throughout the country, keeping a gigantic database of maps current is vastly difficult. Safety is at stake here; Chris Urmson, director of the Google car team, told me that if the car came across a traffic signal not on its map, it could potentially run a red light, simply because it wouldn’t know to look for the signal.

#autopilote #voiture_autopilotée #intelligence_artificielle