Online hateUsing AI, machine learning to understand extent of online hate
The Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) Center for Technology and Society (CTS) announced preliminary results from an innovative project that uses artificial intelligence, machine learning, and social science to study what is and what isn’t hate speech online. The project’s goal is to help the tech industry better understand the growing amount of hate online. CTS has collaborated with the University of California at Berkeley’s D-Lab since April 2017 to develop the Online Hate Index. ADL and the D-Lab have created an algorithm that has begun to learn the difference between hate speech and non-hate speech. The project has completed its first phase and its early findings are described in a report released today. In a very promising finding, ADL and the D-Lab found the learning model identified hate speech reliably between 78 percent and 85 percent of the time.
The Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) Center for Technology and Society announced preliminary results from an innovative project that uses artificial intelligence, machine learning, and social science to study what is and what isn’t hate speech online. The project’s goal is to help the tech industry better understand the growing amount of hate online.
The Center for Technology and Society (CTS) has collaborated with the University of California at Berkeley’s D-Lab since April 2017 to develop the Online Hate Index. ADL and the D-Lab have created an algorithm that has begun to learn the difference between hate speech and non-hate speech. The project has completed its first phase and its early findings are described in a report released today. In a very promising finding, ADL and the D-Lab found the learning model identified hate speech reliably between 78 percent and 85 percent of the time.
“For more than 100 years, ADL has been at the forefront of tracking and combating hate in the real world. Now we are applying our expertise to track and tackle bias and bigotry online,” said ADL CEO and National Director Jonathan Greenblatt. “As the threat of cyberhate continues to escalate, ADL’s Center for Technology and Society in Silicon Valley is convening problem solvers and developing solutions to build a more respectful and inclusive internet. The Online Hate Index is only the first of many such projects that we will undertake. U.C. Berkeley has been a terrific partner and we are grateful to Reddit for their data and for demonstrating real leadership in combating intolerance on their platform.”
“This project has tremendous potential to increase our ability to understand the scope and spread of online hate speech,” said Brittan Heller, CTS’s director. “Online communities have been described as our modern public square. In reality though, not everyone has equal access to this public square, and not everyone has the privilege to speak without fear. Hateful and abusive online speech shuts down and excludes the voices of the marginalized and underrepresented from public discourse. The Online Hate Index aims to help us understand and alleviate this, and to ensure that online communities become safer and more inclusive.”
