3 ms·

Hey, we're using NLP to help you rather than spy on you. No...really!

spinningslate 7y ago
I’m afraid that’s pretty close to my initial reaction too. When I read the headline, there was an implied suffix of “so we can more effectively intrude on your privacy”. It’s a great shame. There are clearly some very talented people at Facebook. But all that work is paid for by a dystopian business model that has moved effortlessly and insidiously from connecting people for benign social good (or at least relatively so) to one that facilitates erosion of privacy and social manipulation on a global scale. As a software engineer I’m deeply troubled that the craft I’ve loved since my teens is being wielded to such negative societal consequence.
- java-man 7y ago
  you don't think it was the design goal from the start?
  - sporkologist 7y ago
    It started as a "Hot or Not" type co-ed rating app....
- skybrian 7y ago
  The interesting part of this story for me is that computer proficiency on language tasks is improving so rapidly that a benchmark introduced just last year has become too easy. It seems like there is little reason to think this research will hit a wall any time soon? Will we have computers acing SAT's and writing college essays? It hardly matters which tech giant paid for it this time, since they are publishing the results and the others will build from there. Next year it might be Google's turn again? Here is the part I find scary: consider that they're publishing the models and the code, so anyone could use it. What might malware authors or nation-state actors build? (Sometimes working together.)
dillondoyle 7y ago
To be fair most of the examples and benchmarks they use are for translation.
kingmakers 7y ago
Why do companies even want to spy on you in the first place? Because advertisers want to target ads more effectively. Advertisers believe they can manipulate consumer behavior through ads, so they are willing to pay facebook a shit ton for it. As NLP technology gets better and better, you won't even need traditional ads anymore. You can control people's behavior directly just by selectively boosting real organic posts that push for your agenda. It's only impractical right now because they don't have the tech to get that sort of high level control. For example the recent controversy about Youtube radicalizing people with more and more extremist videos is just a bug. In a more boring dystopia you would just be shown better and better Mcdonald memes until you name your first-born a Mcnugget. I can't think of anything this tech won't touch once they have algorithmic control of information. Rather than targeting ads for elections, you might be able to say something like "find all posts that swing voters will find convincing and show it to them". Whoever can convince facebook to do that will name the next president.
wheelerwj 7y ago
> "Using NLP to better connect..." > facebook.com I'm not even going to bother clicking on that link.

I’m afraid that’s pretty close to my initial reaction too. When I read the headline, there was an implied suffix of “so we can more effectively intrude on your privacy”. It’s a great shame. There are clearly some very talented people at Facebook. But all that work is paid for by a dystopian business model that has moved effortlessly and insidiously from connecting people for benign social good (or at least relatively so) to one that facilitates erosion of privacy and social manipulation on a global scale. As a software engineer I’m deeply troubled that the craft I’ve loved since my teens is being wielded to such negative societal consequence.

java-man 7y ago
you don't think it was the design goal from the start?
- sporkologist 7y ago
  It started as a "Hot or Not" type co-ed rating app....
skybrian 7y ago
The interesting part of this story for me is that computer proficiency on language tasks is improving so rapidly that a benchmark introduced just last year has become too easy. It seems like there is little reason to think this research will hit a wall any time soon? Will we have computers acing SAT's and writing college essays? It hardly matters which tech giant paid for it this time, since they are publishing the results and the others will build from there. Next year it might be Google's turn again? Here is the part I find scary: consider that they're publishing the models and the code, so anyone could use it. What might malware authors or nation-state actors build? (Sometimes working together.)

dillondoyle 7y ago

To be fair most of the examples and benchmarks they use are for translation.

kingmakers 7y ago

Why do companies even want to spy on you in the first place? Because advertisers want to target ads more effectively. Advertisers believe they can manipulate consumer behavior through ads, so they are willing to pay facebook a shit ton for it. As NLP technology gets better and better, you won't even need traditional ads anymore. You can control people's behavior directly just by selectively boosting real organic posts that push for your agenda. It's only impractical right now because they don't have the tech to get that sort of high level control. For example the recent controversy about Youtube radicalizing people with more and more extremist videos is just a bug. In a more boring dystopia you would just be shown better and better Mcdonald memes until you name your first-born a Mcnugget. I can't think of anything this tech won't touch once they have algorithmic control of information. Rather than targeting ads for elections, you might be able to say something like "find all posts that swing voters will find convincing and show it to them". Whoever can convince facebook to do that will name the next president.

wheelerwj 7y ago

> "Using NLP to better connect..." > facebook.com I'm not even going to bother clicking on that link.