Facebook Develops Virtual Assistant
Facebook's Artificial Intelligence Research Lab is developing a digital assistant who will offer you a second opinion before you hit the 'post'' button on your Facebook account.
In an interview with the Wired, Facebook's Yann LeCun, who leads the project, the assistant "would remind you of social media's extraordinary reach and permanency." The assistant would essentially say: "Uh, this is being posted publicly, are you sure you want your boss and your mother to see this?" He wants to build a kind of Facebook digital assistant that will, say, recognize when you?re uploading an embarrassingly candid photo of your late-night antics.
Learning algorithms examine your overall Facebook behavior in an effort to identify the right content for your news feed - content you're likely to click on - and they'll soon analyze the text you type into status posts, automatically suggesting relevant hashtags. But LeCun and his team are also looking towards AI systems that can understand Facebook data in more complex ways - and guide you in directions you may not go on your own
The larger aim, LeCun says, to create things like his digital assistant, things that can closely analyze not only photos but all sorts of other stuff posted to Facebook. "You need a machine to really understand content and understand people and be able to hold all that data," he says. "That is an AI-complete problem." BR>
But at the same time, the team is looking beyond this sort of thing. LeCun hints this might involve the Oculus Rift - the virtual reality headset that Facebook acquired earlier this year - saying his team has at least discussed research with the Oculus team.
But for the short term, Facebook's software will will be able to answer questions like Apple's Siri or Google Now.
Learning algorithms examine your overall Facebook behavior in an effort to identify the right content for your news feed - content you're likely to click on - and they'll soon analyze the text you type into status posts, automatically suggesting relevant hashtags. But LeCun and his team are also looking towards AI systems that can understand Facebook data in more complex ways - and guide you in directions you may not go on your own
The larger aim, LeCun says, to create things like his digital assistant, things that can closely analyze not only photos but all sorts of other stuff posted to Facebook. "You need a machine to really understand content and understand people and be able to hold all that data," he says. "That is an AI-complete problem." BR>
But at the same time, the team is looking beyond this sort of thing. LeCun hints this might involve the Oculus Rift - the virtual reality headset that Facebook acquired earlier this year - saying his team has at least discussed research with the Oculus team.
But for the short term, Facebook's software will will be able to answer questions like Apple's Siri or Google Now.
