In a tacit admission that its much-hyped artificial intelligence still lags behind humans, Google said it would increase the number of people it has monitoring YouTube for offensive and extremist content to 10,000.
The Mountain View tech giant has been facing a revolt by advertisers over ads paired with disturbing videos, such as those made by hate groups and religious extremists. Subsequent revelations that YouTube was offering up cartoons featuring what the BBC called “animated violence and graphic toilet humor” added fuel to the controversy.
And it turned out that some cute videos posted by kids were attracting trolls of the worst kind, drawing “hundreds of pedophiliac comments, including encouragement to do lewd acts and links to child-abuse content,” according to the Wall Street Journal.
On Dec. 4, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki said in a blog post that the company would continue increasing the number of people reviewing YouTube content to more than 10,000 next year. It was not immediately clear whether those would be contract workers or actual Googlers.
To be sure, YouTube is more than a cesspool for haters and kooks, and Wojcicki reminded the world of that.
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