As long as there are power imbalances, insecurities, and competition among humans, so too will there be bullies. Name a decade, a century, and a place, and an era-equivalent to the toilet swirlie doubtless occurred.
The digital age amplified this dynamic to the extreme, empowering those who seek to intimidate their targets with a bigger “toilet” to flush faces in: the internet.
Bullying was once confined to schoolyards, but today’s kids (and some adults) take it everywhere they go. They take it on their phones, on their computers, on their tablets, and anywhere else connected to the web, where our online identities are all but hopelessly entwined with our physical ones.Cyberbullying is a serious problem that has claimed the lives and sanity of too many — and one that has not been helped by the growing ubiquity of the internet. The influence of the web in our day-to-day lives is not going away anytime soon. So it only makes sense that technology, which has abetted bullying, will be part of the solution too.
Who and what can drive this force for good? Here’s a bold proposition: The First Lady of the United States, using artificial intelligence.
Battling online bullies with bots
FLOTUS Melania Trump proposed to tackle cyberbullying as a benchmark issue earlier on in her husband’s administration, a crusade she finally returned to this September during a U.N. speech. Ironic though it may seem given the President’s tweeting habits, let’s take Melania at her word and hope that she uses every advantage at her disposal to make a difference.
Might Melania consider tackling tech with tech?
And specifically, by supporting AI initiatives?Using AI as a way to identify online abuse as it occurs is a striking idea, certainly, but not nearly as far-fetched as it sounds. If anything, it would be a shame to overlook an opportunity to address the issue of cyberbullying while also promoting AI as something that can help humanity instead of hurt it.
How would this work? Currently, the burden of identifying and penalizing online abuse falls on human moderators, of which there are far too few to catch every instance. A machine, in theory, and increasingly in practice, could be far more efficient. As Wired explained, “If…
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