04/16/2024

The AI That Could Heal a Divided Internet

Classifiers could soon improve the state of the web

In the 1990s and early 2000s, technologists made the world a grand promise: New communications technologies would strengthen democracy, undermine authoritarianism and lead to a new era of human flourishing. But today, few people would agree that the internet has lived up to that lofty goal.

Today, on social media platforms, content tends to be ranked by how much engagement it receives. Over the last 20 years, politics, the media and culture have all been reshaped to meet a single, overriding incentive: posts that provoke an emotional response often rise to the top.

Efforts to improve the health of online spaces have long focused on content moderation, the practice of detecting and removing bad content. Tech companies hired workers and built AI to identify hate speech, incitement to violence and harassment. That worked imperfectly, but it stopped the worst toxicity from flooding our feeds.

Please select this link to read the complete article from TIME.