According to an article I read the other day, the job of keeping an eye out for porn, violence and other potentially objectionable content on live streaming and social media platforms is now being outsourced to artificial intelligence-equipped machines, which are learning to discern when things like guns, penises and gaping asshole former Congressmen appear on-screen.
On the one hand, this seems like a logical and efficient solution to the longstanding challenge of preventing inappropriate and offensive content from being displayed in places where, by all rights, I should be seeing yet another post about Pokemon Go. On the other hand, if computers are going to be censoring my news feed, I sure hope they demonstrate sound judgment and haven’t been programmed by total assholes to retain said assholes’ own biases and prejudices.
Or failing that, I at least hope these robots have decent taste. The last thing I need is for my feed to be cleansed of artistic nudes in favor of sad clown and poker-playing dog paintings.
The Brave New World Of Robot Censors? Already Here, Evidently
“Being able to bounce porn inside livestreams or inside pre-recorded videos is already within the grasp of all the major tech companies,” said David Luan, who founded Dextro. “We can already pick out when guns are present or when there’s a protest going on.”
According to its website, Dextro’s “computer vision algorithms analyze the audiovisual elements of the video itself, ensuring video is discoverable, searchable, and actionable.”
The speed with which such AI can analyze videos and determine if they’re potentially problematic is a big part of the appeal – but this only impresses me if the AI is making the right call at such speeds, as opposed to blocking every video in which something which appears to be Newt Gingrich is displayed, when really it’s just an old floor mop which just happens to sport a smug grin all the time.
The bit about being able to spot a protest is curious to me, because I’m not sure if Luan is suggesting a video should be blocked because it depicts a protest, or merely flagged as something which could turn violent and therefore continuously monitored by the robot censors. What concerns me most about this, though, is the potential for mechanical bias. What if the protest is against the mechanization of the workforce? Wouldn’t a robot be tempted to flag the protest as some kind of sick porn, thereby scuttling the video off to a virtual dustbin of some kind?
Maybe robots have more respect for the First Amendment than I fear, but just to be certain, let’s not give the Trump campaign access to any anti-libel robots.
Not All Penises Are Created Equally Offensive
While I’ve never been one to advocate for censorship in any context, I can certainly appreciate why people would prefer not to be exposed to an erect penis on their feed, first thing in the morning. Hell, I don’t even let my husband take off his clothes for a shower until I’ve had my morning coffee.
At the same time, it’s important to remember not every video or picture with a penis in it is “pornographic.” Sometimes it’s a newsworthy penis, sometimes it’s a famous sports penis – and yes, other times it’s Newt Gingrich, which means it should be blocked, either way.
I’m not sure why a computer would be any better than a human at telling the difference between a newsworthy penis and any old Tom or Harry’s dick. In fact, in some rare cases, a human censor might already be familiar with the penis in question, giving them a leg up (or, perhaps, legs open) over the computer cock-blocker. I’m not saying this is likely, but it could happen; you just never know what Syndey Leathers’ next career move might be, after all.
Will The Real Woodrow Johnson Please Stand Up?
While they’re unlikely to fool a human either by sight or touch, I can’t help but wonder if hyper-realistic dildos might cause problems for AI cock-spotters.
Sure, when it’s presented in its entirety on a white background, it’s easy to tell the 8” All-American Whopper Dong isn’t real – but dim the lights, hide the base under the covers and stick out the rest while pointing a night-vision camera at that sucker and I think you could at least fool just about every Ghost Hunters viewer out there into thinking they were looking at the real deal.
The other possibility, of course, takes us back to the question of machine bias. Suppose the AI is able to recognize the Whopper Dong as being something other than real, but instead of making the computer feel comradery with its fellow inanimate object, the machine feels jealousy?
If this seems far-fetched, consider this: While the AI is stuck sifting through human videos all day looking for naughty bits and guns, the Whopper Dong gets to spend its days boldly going where no man has gone quite so effectively before.
Sure, we’d all like to think robots will be above petty traits like envy – but the computer is going to be sitting there thinking “I’m the one who can analyze and categorize hours of video in seconds, but Whopper Dong is the one getting laid all the time; how is that fair?”
Again, I’m not saying this will happen – but let’s keep these computers far away from the kind of guns they’re supposed to be spotting in videos, especially in the workplace, just in case.
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