Google ’s AI - based hate speech detector may identify harmless content from black Americans as rude , disrespectful or unreasonable , University of Google researchers have found . Maarten Sap tested Google ’s Perspective , aimed at detecting “ toxic ” content , and found that tweets by black users were twice as likely to be flagged as those by white users . The system ’s algorithm did not address the social context of speech as it was programmed using only text , with no information on the topic , Sap said . He suggested employing a “ balancing ” algorithm to help Perspective understand dialects or identify a user ’s racial background .
Google’s AI-backed hate speech detector may identify harmless content from black Americans as rude, disrespectful or unreasonable, University of Washington researchers have found. Maarten Sap tested Google’s Perspective, aimed at detecting “toxic” content, and found that tweets by black users were twice as likely to be flagged as those by white users. The system’s algorithm did not understand the social context of speech as it was trained using only text, with no information on the user, Sap said. He suggested employing a “balancing” algorithm to help Perspective understand dialects or identify a user’s racial background.