Why Mark Cuban is Dead Wrong About Twitter and Artificial Intelligence – Inc.com

Twitter hasn't done anything interesting with AI lately.

I know this because whatever machine learning they use to stop online harassment is more like an email filter to weed out some political fluff from your inbox or kill spam. Users are still able to create fake accounts, send harassing tweets, criticize you over and over again, remain completely anonymous, and come up with a variety of unflattering slams against celebrities that are never caught by the filters and go completely ignored for days or weeks on end.

That's what makes Mark Cuban's comments today about investing in Twitter because of their foray into AI a bit perplexing. What AI? The one that still lets trolls do whatever they want? The one that allows a tweet through that tells me to stick a fork into my front lobe?

There might be some confusion on this topic.

Recently, the company did implement new algorithms that can limit the accounts of users who show a pattern of abuse, something that is not exactly an AI. And, they've talked about using IBM Watson to help, but that's not exactly developing the AI in house.

An AI--designed and developed by Twitter--would identify abusive content based on context and be able to warn the offending user before he or she ever posts it in real time--say, when the user types a message that is obviously hurtful and tries to post it. Facebook has the same issue, because today you can post a revenge porn image or say something derogatory, and it's only when another user identifies the harmful comments or images that any pattern recognition kicks in.

The problem, of course, is that Twitter wants to appear intelligent. They haven't fully addressed the problem, and have let the issue slide since a blog post way back in March. If they are making progress on actual machine learning, they haven't let any of us know. Today, you can still tell someone to commit suicide or send other abusive comments--any real form of artificial intelligence would spot that and block it.

Twitter is walking on a tightrope here. To block very hurtful comments that do not use hate speech (something like "why don't you step in front of a truck") could be perceived as limiting free speech. An AI is not able to tell the difference quite yet. Context--e.g., who said what and why, when they said it, who they know, how often they engage in conversation--is difficult even for humans at times. I've received multiple tweets this last week that I took as hurtful and harmful, and I'd rather not see them, but it's all part of living in the age of trolls. If Twitter made a better AI, I could simply choose to block these tweets. If someone keeps sending death threats, or I report that person, or they use abusive words or hate speech, then Twitter's machine learning might kick in--or it might not. The problem is that, if the AI is only partially effective, is it really effective at all?

Meanwhile, an entire generation of people under 30 have moved over to Instagram and tend to avoid Twitter, which is widely known as a bastion of trolls.

There's often a serious misunderstanding about how an AI works. It's not just a filter or an algorithm. There has to be "intelligence" and understanding, a way to make a decision about context. That's the really hard part. Filters have existed for decades, but computer scientists know that an AI has to be able to deal with fuzzy logic and even moral quagmires. Is someone I know just joking around and telling me to jump off of a bridge? Is it someone who has a bone to pick with me because they invest in the company I'm criticizing? When I've tweeted before about email overload, the people who often send abusive comments just happen to be email marketers. An AI would have to understand that, and it's not exactly humming along nicely at Twitter.

There's no reason to think Twitter won't solve this, but for now--the machine learning is more like a spam filter. That doesn't seem like rocket science to me.

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Why Mark Cuban is Dead Wrong About Twitter and Artificial Intelligence - Inc.com