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I discovered that a Chinese anti-American conspiracy theory was promoted by the millions by YouTube's AI
@OliviaGoldhill reported on it, and @YouTube reacted to our findings
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I discovered that a Chinese anti-American conspiracy theory was promoted by the millions by YouTube's AI
@OliviaGoldhill reported on it, and @YouTube reacted to our findings
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Right after publication of the article, @YouTube added a warning on the Chinese video that it's "inappropriate for some users"
For who?
NBA officials😂?
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For who?
NBA officials😂?
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Why hide this video? If anything, people should be able to discover that this is the official Chinese propaganda line.
Why did this video get millions and millions of free ads? Was it truthful, or just efficient at gaming the up-next algorithm? 🧐
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Why did this video get millions and millions of free ads? Was it truthful, or just efficient at gaming the up-next algorithm? 🧐
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It's important to know because, as Google AI expert @fchollet noted, the worrisome thing about AI is:
"the highly effective, highly scalable manipulation of human behavior that AI enables, and its malicious use by corporations and governments"
medium.com/@francois.chol…
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"the highly effective, highly scalable manipulation of human behavior that AI enables, and its malicious use by corporations and governments"
medium.com/@francois.chol…
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The second reaction by YouTube to this article was to tweet a thread about my website algotransparency.org
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First, thanks for the compliment that my site enables to see interesting things. I agree it's not a full picture of YouTube, because only Google has the full data
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AlgoTransparency.org is far from perfect, but until YouTubes shows more data about their recommendations, this is the best we have to try to see where the algorithm is pushing people.
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My response to this comment by @YouTubeInsider:
I'm missing some, but "recommended for you" are a minority, aren't they? I'm thinking on how we could study that at scale outside of Google.
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I'm missing some, but "recommended for you" are a minority, aren't they? I'm thinking on how we could study that at scale outside of Google.
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Here YouTube's PR makes an unfair comparison. That video was from 2 months before, and was not recommended at that time
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Let's get back to the important questions:
1) Why did the AI decide to promote this crazy Chinese conspiracy millions of times?
2) What does the Chinese government promote on YouTube?
3) How much of their views come from YT recommendations?
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1) Why did the AI decide to promote this crazy Chinese conspiracy millions of times?
2) What does the Chinese government promote on YouTube?
3) How much of their views come from YT recommendations?
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Thanks @youtubeinsider to open the debate on Twitter, and challenging my methodology. That's how science gets better. Don't hesitate to provide actual number of recommendations that the AI made for these videos.
Let's all make sure we can trust AI
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Let's all make sure we can trust AI
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