Facebook Hires More Humans to Do What Its AI Cannot Do

(p. B5) If telling us what to look at next is Facebook’s raison d’être, then the AI that enables that endless spoon-feeding of content is the company’s most important, and sometimes most controversial, intellectual property.

. . .

At the same time, the company’s announcement that it is hiring more humans to screen ads and filter content shows there is so much essential to Facebook’s functionality that AI alone can’t accomplish.

AI algorithms are inherently black boxes whose workings can be next to impossible to understand—even by many Facebook engineers.

For the full commentary, see:

Christopher Mims. “KEYWORDS; The Algorithm Driving Facebook.” The Wall Street Journal (Monday, October 23, 2017): B1 & B5.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Oct. 22, 2017, and the title “KEYWORDS; How Facebook’s Master Algorithm Powers the Social Network.”)