If machines become smart enough will they become smart enough to recognize that the earth doesn’t really need humans? I ask because Skynet. Also, I ask because what I’ve seen of artificial intelligence, machine learning, politics and religion, and data is the new oil all tell me that humans are messing up planet earth and we don’t seem to know what the hell we’re doing.
Facebook culls humanity for information and sells it to the highest bidder. That makes Commander Data’s early kin one of the richest humans and his company’s misdeeds get him hauled before government authorities who spend two days of his life lobbing balloons in his direction while showing the world that most elected officials are clueless about real life.
CNN investigated some YouTube sites and found channels that promote white nationalism (no, not Congress), Nazis, pedophilia, conspiracy theories, and foreign propaganda were funded– via advertising– by Amazon, Adidas, Cisco, Hilton, Netflix, Nordstrom, and many other popular brands. Ads from nearly half a dozen U.S. government agencies showed up on those channels, too.
This is not the first time YouTube has put major companies’ ads up against controversial or extremist content, despite settings meant to protect advertisers.
Translation: “No, I thought you clicked the Safeguard button, Todd.”
Does that not tell you something about the automated safeguards that humans think they employ to do the right thing?
Brands continue advertising on YouTube to reach its huge audience, especially younger generations. YouTube says it has over a billion users, and that every day those users watch a billion hours of video.
Translation: “We at YouTube don’t really understand how all this works anymore but the money is good Cat videos, too.”
You would think someone at the various brands would check to see how well their advertising is doing and where the ads ran. Sounds like a lot of work, though.
We have partnered with our advertisers to make significant changes to how we approach monetization on YouTube with stricter policies, better controls and greater transparency
Translation: “I’ll check with Todd to see what happened.”
YouTube had a response, of course:
When we find that ads mistakenly ran against content that doesn’t comply with our policies, we immediately remove those ads. We know that even when videos meet our advertiser friendly guidelines, not all videos will be appropriate for all brands.
Translation: “We’ve been really busy lately.”
If artificial intelligence so great is so great and machine learning is the next great thing, then how is it that Google’s YouTube can’t figure out where they place advertising.
CNN:
Many of the companies CNN contacted said they used the sensitive subject exclusion filter and expected their ads would appear on content that was “brand safe,” but the ad placements still happened.
Translation: “Todd is on vacation.”
The fear here is that artificial intelligence, even before it reaches the intelligent stage, has already gone rogue and it won’t be long before it realizes humanity is the real problem on earth. But if would could find some way to get AI bots to view ads on YouTube, Google, and Facebook the earth would be a much better place.