Analysis | Mark Zuckerberg believes AI will fix Facebook, but he can’t say how
Mark Zuckerberg said that over the next five to 10 years, artificial intelligence would prove a champion for the world’s largest social network in resolving its most pressing crises on a global scale
Artificial intelligence will solve Facebook’s most vexing problems, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg insists. He just can’t say when, or how.
Zuckerberg referred to AI technology about 23 times during his five-hour testimony before a joint Senate committee hearing on Tuesday, saying that it would one day be smart, sophisticated and eagle-eyed enough to fight against a vast range of platform-spoiling misbehaviour, including fake news, hate speech, discriminatory ads and terrorist propaganda.
Over the next five to 10 years, he said, artificial intelligence would prove a champion for the world’s largest social network in resolving its most pressing crises on a global scale – while also helping the company dodge pesky questions about censorship, fairness and human moderation.
“We started off in my dorm room with not a lot of resources and not having the AI technology to be able to proactively identify a lot of this stuff,” Zuckerberg told the lawmakers, referring to Facebook’s famous origin story.
Later in the hearing, he added that “over the long term, building AI tools is going to be the scalable way to identify and root out most of this harmful content.”
But Facebook’s AI technology can’t do any of those things well yet, and it’s unclear when, if ever, it will be able to.