The United States Congress has appointed a Senate to analyse the negative impact of algorithms and artificial intelligence by assessing privacy breach on social media platforms like Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Facebook.
US lawmakers are calling for stronger rules on privacy and use of personal data for recommended content. These steps will guide algorithms and AI to check new content served across platforms to keep viewers engaged. Researchers have been criticizing the reliance on artificial intelligence for filtering content displayed on social media. The Senate Commerce subcommittee on Technology, Communications and Innovation claim that the content on popular sites like Facebook and YouTube are conspired and misleading with partial viewpoints.
The Congress continues to press new privacy protection policies that will effectively ban social media giants from misusing any personal data without prior permission from the individual. All content recommendations published online have been questioned regarding safeguarding the privacy of the viewer. Also, a lot of debate emerged regarding social media firms not heeding to Government policies of safeguard children from adult or inappropriate content.
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Social media companies stream more inflammatory and extreme content to gain more shares, subscriptions and likes. The Senate promised to check all Artificial Intelligence tools used by social media companies holding the Companies accountable for algorithms used by them. The Senate suggested the lack of human discretion and control in letting algorithms run wild. It’s important to understand that AI is defined to help humans to shed load and not to take decisions on behalf of them. Algorithms are amoral and need constant cleaning to ensure the right content going online. Senators also explained that the recommendation mechanism automatically pushes sensitive videos and “harmful misinformation” across to children and adults without any filters.
All social media platforms running across the globe need to understand their social, moral duty to discretely publish content after analysing repercussions as they have the power to influence the thoughts and behaviours of billions of people by just one post. The social media companies have immense potential to use AI tools akin to slot machines for more extended customer engagement. Running behind more popularity and subscription has exposed individual privacy to gamble. Blaming Algorithms cannot help these leading firms to get away with the amount of manipulation seen online. Tailored advertisement or content recommendation is needed, but, not at the cost of abusing consumer privacy. Its high time for humans to step in and clear the mess created on social media by bots and AI.
