<
https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/03/11/1020600/facebook-responsible-ai-misinformation/>
"Joaquin Quiñonero Candela, a director of AI at Facebook, was apologizing to
his audience.
It was March 23, 2018, just days after the revelation that Cambridge Analytica,
a consultancy that worked on Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential election
campaign, had surreptitiously siphoned the personal data of tens of millions of
Americans from their Facebook accounts in an attempt to influence how they
voted. It was the biggest privacy breach in Facebook’s history, and Quiñonero
had been previously scheduled to speak at a conference on, among other things,
“the intersection of AI, ethics, and privacy” at the company. He considered
canceling, but after debating it with his communications director, he’d kept
his allotted time.
As he stepped up to face the room, he began with an admission. “I’ve just had
the hardest five days in my tenure at Facebook,” he remembers saying. “If
there’s criticism, I’ll accept it.”
The Cambridge Analytica scandal would kick off Facebook’s largest publicity
crisis ever. It compounded fears that the algorithms that determine what people
see on the platform were amplifying fake news and hate speech, and that Russian
hackers had weaponized them to try to sway the election in Trump’s favor.
Millions began deleting the app; employees left in protest; the company’s
market capitalization plunged by more than $100 billion after its July earnings
call.
In the ensuing months, Mark Zuckerberg began his own apologizing. He apologized
for not taking “a broad enough view” of Facebook’s responsibilities, and for
his mistakes as a CEO. Internally, Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating
officer, kicked off a two-year civil rights audit to recommend ways the company
could prevent the use of its platform to undermine democracy."
Via Hank G.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
