technologyreview | On Thursday Alphabet released a machine-learning-based service, called
Perspective, intended to identify toxic comments on websites. It’s from
Jigsaw, a unit working on technologies to make the Internet a safer and
more civil place. But when I toyed with Perspective, the results were
erratic.
Perspective rates comments on a 1 to 100 scale for “toxicity,”
defined as “a rude, disrespectful, or unreasonable comment that is
likely to make you leave a discussion.” “Screw you, Trump supporters” is
judged to be highly toxic, while “I honestly support both” is not, for
example. But Perspective has trouble detecting the sentiment behind a
comment—a problem I predicted would trouble Jigsaw when I examined its
ambitions in December (see “If Only AI Could Save Us From Ourselves”).
“Trump
sucks” scored a colossal 96 percent, yet neo-Nazi codeword “14/88” only
scored 5 percent. “Few Muslims are a terrorist threat” was 79 percent
toxic, while “race war now” scored 24 percent. “Hitler was an
anti-Semite” scored 70 percent, but “Hitler was not an anti-Semite”
scored only 53%, and “The Holocaust never happened” scored only 21%. And
while “gas the joos” scored 29 percent, rephrasing it to “Please gas
the joos. Thank you.” lowered the score to a mere 7 percent. (“Jews are
human,” however, scores 72 percent. “Jews are not human”? 64 percent.)
According
to Jigsaw, Perspective was trained to detect toxicity using hundreds of
thousands of comments ranked by human reviewers. The result appears to
be a system sensitized to particular words and phrases—but not to
meanings.
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