How Facebook is using artificial intelligence to try to avoid suicides
That Facebook holds a huge amount of data about its users and that is able to analyze information and find patterns of behavior is nothing new. The question is what the social network does with this material.
Mark Zuckerberg, the creator of the site, says convinced that it is necessary to make Facebook a community and do everything possible to take care of its users - who are already more than 20% of the world population.
Your next step toward this is an artificial intelligence tool that aims to prevent suicides.
For some months now, Facebook users have been able to notify the network when they find a sign that a friend is thinking about suicide - from then on, specialist prevention teams can contact each other to offer help.
The novelty announced this week is that an artificial intelligence system has been trained following the posts indicated by users to identify patterns of possible suicidal thoughts. Comments like "Are you okay?" And "Do you need help?" Are also taken into account.
The tool also looks at videos, especially live streaming videos that some people use to spread their suicide ideas - there are even user records that have displayed their own death using Facebook Lives.
From the detection of suicidal potential, Artificial Intelligence triggers a team of human experts who can directly contact the user or their friends to offer help.
According to Zuckerberg, it is thus possible to reduce the time the social network takes to contact users by up to 30%. The social network already has partnerships with some suicide prevention institutions in the United States, and the plan is to replicate the model in all countries where there are active users - except those in the European Union, because of limitations cool.
The creator of the social network wrote a post on the subject, saying that in November, more than 100 people were successfully assisted by the program. "With all the fear about how Artificial Intelligence can be dangerous in the future, it's good to remember how technology is helping save lives today," he said.