Comment by 6stringmerc | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 6stringmerc | Hacker News Reader

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Look, I get the investment in technology and desire to push the limits, but sometimes these kinds of articles reveal a type of hubris that doesn't sit well with me.

>Facebook today cannot exist without AI. Every time you use Facebook or Instagram or Messenger, you may not realize it, but your experiences are being powered by AI.

It's not a "strong statement" as much as it is belligerently arrogant to the point of misguided. Facebook is its Users. No amount of AI can sell advertising the way Users can. And, last time I checked, it's still the User clicking around and having experiences.

AI is a servant and, for the foreseeable future, an extremely limited and immature one. Sure, in time it will help a lot of mundane things go more smoothly.

Like with this:

>For images and video, the AML team has built a machine learning vision platform called Lumos.

Great! Now Facebook can end the scourge of Freebooting and Copyright Infringement once and for all! I dearly look forward to the highly publicized ban-hammer drops! Because that's one of the main reasons those tools exist, right, to serve the actual creators and not the Facebook ecosystem at the end of the day? Oh. Right.

"And, last time I checked, it's still the User clicking around and having experiences."

On a giant request, query, storage, and analysis engine that predates the AI trends. I'm sure Facebook uses plenty of machine learning algorithms but I wouldn't call it an AI company at this point. It's an advertising, media, and communication company that relies on user-generated content and ad networks. That's not as cool as an AI company, though. ;)

"Facebook is its Users. No amount of AI can sell advertising the way Users can. And, last time I checked, it's still the User clicking around and having experiences."

I think you might be over reacting to this language, I believe the intent of the original article was to say that "the current Facebook USER EXPERIENCE cannot exist without AI" - clearly there are other things (users, user engagement) that make up integral parts of Facebook. No one is saying the product is AI.

The fact that these "algorithms" and "deep learning" and "AI"s are applied to facebook is exactly the thing that makes me not want to use it.

I want a chronologically ordered list of the things my friends post. That's it. I get that ads are a necessary evil, but I don't like some AI picking and choosing what posts I get to see and what I don't. I don't trust facebook anymore, and I want to move off it - I just can't because that's where everybody is.

>... metrics on how well the company has managed to reduce fake news

Or an arrogance in how they believe it's fine (if not their duty) to censor news stories, as they deem fit, almost as if people of voting age can't think for themselves.

Was it already "censorship" when Facebook didn't present me, a card-carrying socialist, with far-right websites in my feed? Or is it "censorship" when they start taking USUncut out of my feed because, frankly, its journalistic quality is crap?

Which one of these was censorship? Does Fox News have a right to show up in my feed, given that I very much don't want to see it?

A small group of people doesn't get to say what is true, and then impose it on everyone else, without being called arrogant, infantilizing of their own users, or simply pushing politics (which is not farfetched given their execs had such strong ties to one party last election). You should have the ability to curate your own feed even if by managing your friends, but the buck stops there.

While I would never say the Facebook staff are intellectual authority figures, I think that "a small group of people doesn't get to say what is true" is just plain false. A small group of people tell the rest of us what's true all the time. They're called domain experts.

>You should have the ability to curate your own feed even if by managing your friends, but the buck stops there.

The feed is generated by an algorithm designed to maximize the chance I click links from my feed. It has never been a rote concatenation of my Facebook friends' walls/timelines/whatever-they're-called-today.

That kind of concatenation and interleaving of content from my friends would be an improvement. It's just not what we ever had at any point. Facebook has not suddenly acquired a bias or agenda. It's been filter-bubbling everyone since forever, and now people have objected that some of what it feeds them in their own personal bubble is bullshit.

> A small group of people doesn't get to say what is true

The pope didn't endorse Donald Trump. That is objective fact. Yet that popped up on facebook.

Why shouldn't they censor that shit?

This is exactly why the facebook feed and people getting news from it is such a problem. God forbid you see an alternative viewpoint.

Judging by the number of people I see on my feed who share Onion articles without realizing they're satire, it's pretty clear that the ability of many to think for themselves is lacking.

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