Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has a simple solution for most of the problems presented to him by Congress: “more AI tools.”
WATCH:
Zuckerberg repeatedly stressed Facebook’s growing focus on artificial intelligence during his testimony in front of the Senate Judiciary and Commerce Committees on Tuesday and the House Energy and Commerce Committees on Wednesday.
The tech billionaire asserted that he could not hire enough employees to review all of the content on Facebook, and instead would be developing AI “tools” and “systems” that could “proactively” censor content from the social media site. (RELATED: Mark Zuckerberg Wants To Use Artificial Intelligence To Ban ‘Hate Speech’)
Zuckerberg cited the success of AI in preemptively flagging terroristic content on Facebook, but conservative lawmakers expressed concerns that such tools would censor conservative content as well. Their fears were not assuaged when Zuckerberg promised to crack down harder on hate speech.
Sen. Ben Sasse, for example, pointed out that the category of “hate speech” is subjective and has unfairly been applied to pro-life and other conservative content. (RELATED: Zuck Says He Wants To Ban ‘Hate’ Speech — Sasse Asks What That Means For Pro-Lifers)
Zuckerberg admitted that “hate speech” is a tough phrase to define, but did not indicate how he would program his AI tools to ensure that their application of “hate speech” is done in an unbiased manner.
