Facebook announced Thursday that artificial intelligence software now detects 94.7% of the hate speech that gets removed from its platform.
Mike Schroepfer, Facebook’s chief technology officer, revealed the figure in a blog post, adding that it is up from 80.5% a year ago and just 24% in 2017. The figure was also shared in Facebook’s latest Community Standards Enforcement Report.
Social media firms such as Facebook, Twitter and TikTok have been criticized for failing to keep hate speech, such as racial slurs and religious attacks, off their platforms.
The companies employ thousands of content moderators around the world to police the posts, photos and videos that get shared on their platforms. On Wednesday, more than 200 Facebook moderators said in an open letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg that the company has risked their lives by forcing them back to the office during the coronavirus pandemic.
But humans alone aren’t enough and the tech giants have become increasingly reliant on a field of AI known as machine learning, whereby algorithms improve automatically through experience.
“A central focus of Facebook’s AI efforts is deploying cutting-edge machine learning technology to protect people from harmful content,” said Schroepfer.
“With billions of people using our platforms, we rely on AI to scale our content review work and automate decisions when possible,” he added. “Our goal is to spot hate speech, misinformation, and other forms of policy-violating content quickly and accurately, for every form of content, and for every language and community around the world.”
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