Facebook has introduced their new AI, DeepText, a software capable of understanding your Facebook statuses better than anyone.
DeepText is Facebook’s “understanding engine” capable of analysing “several thousand posts per second” in over 20 different languages. It’s a step up for artificial intelligence as it has always been a challenge for AI to comprehend context.
Facebook has seemingly achieved a great feat, DeepText uses “word embeddings,” a mathematical concepts that keeps semantics in words. Basically with the use of DeepText, Facebook will understand slang better, when you say “fam” it will know you mean “family.”
The English language is full of colloquial words with multiple meanings that have no resemblance to each other. Take the word “squash,” it could mean the sport or the beverage cordial (sorry to everyone learning English as a second language).
DeepText will understand context better by analysing an entire Facebook Messenger conversation. So if you say to a friend “I like blackberry,” DeepText will look at the context of the conversation and understand whether you’re talking about the fruit or the device.
Facebook has already started testing DeepText as seen in this video. With DeepText analysing your Messenger conversations you can use integrated tools within Facebook to call a taxi or even sell something.
Science fiction has planted the idea of artificial intelligence as something to embrace and fear. Whether you’re on-board or not, it doesn’t matter as AI will be the next big thing in the tech world eventually.
Google has also heavily invested in artificial intelligence just like Facebook, turning it into what could be a two horse AI race. Google are also working on their own AI smart messaging service called Allo. Google are trying to make Allo powerful enough to produce replies during conversation. It will apparently be smart enough to know what breed of cat is in the picture you sent to your friend.
Security services expert Steve Lord expresses suspicions with tech giants investing heavily into AI.
“Facebook, Google and Microsoft are all working on text comprehension so they can sell you things you don’t need. If you don’t want Facebook’s AI to know about it now or in the future, don’t post it. If you don’t want Facebook and Google to track you then make sure you have a decent ad blocker whenever you use the Internet.”
We often joke about Skynet (Google or Facebook) accidentally creating a sentient killbot, that will give you only seconds to comply before shooting giant holes into your corpse. Its not looking so farfetched, be afraid but also enjoy the communication convenience before judgement day.
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