The difference between cannabis and tempura broccoli could be the difference between deletion and promotion for weed-minded Facebook users–and artificial intelligence is swooping in for the rescue.
While AI may not be a miracle solution to the beleaguered network’s many issues, company’s chief technology officer (CTO) Mike Schroepfer said this week in a keynote speech at Facebook’s 2019 F8 conference that it has the potential to make significant progress–despite the “complex” nature of the problems it faces.
At the conference, Mike Schroepfer, company’s chief technology officer, displayed images of cannabis flower and broccoli tempura, which appeared remarkably similar. Photo: Twitter @karissabe
The CTO displayed a large screen upon which images of cannabis flower were juxtaposed with images of broccoli tempura, which appeared remarkably similar.
Schroepfer said that the company has developed an algorithm to sense subtle differences in comparable images, which then enables a computer to discriminate between the two.
Schroepfer says that the new technology will help Facebook identify and flag images that otherwise might not have been spotted. “If someone reports something like this, we can then fan out and look at billions of images in a very short period of time and find things that look similar,” he explained.
The CTO did not specify whether the AI might help in distinguishing between cannabis sales and cannabis education.
Facebook forbids the use of its platform for the sale of recreational drugs–legal or otherwise. But last summer, the online platform came under fire for censoring promotion for a scientific symposium funded by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research in Montreal.
Meanwhile, the strict and often seemingly-arbitrary rules have spawned the birth of alternative platforms such as Jadeo and CaneXions for cannabis enthusiasts wanting to connect without the risk of suspensions or deletions.
Source: 420intel.com
