Facebook’s New Suicide Detection A.I., Could Put Innocent People Behind Bars

By MassPrivateI

Imagine police knocking on your door because you posted a ‘troubling comment’ on a social media website.

Imagine a judge forcing you to be jailed, sorry I meant hospitalized, because a computer program found your comment(s) ‘troubling’.

You can stop imagining, this is really happening.

A recent TechCrunch article warns that Facebook’s “Proactive Detection” artificial intelligence (A.I.) will use pattern recognition to contact first responders. The A.I. will contact first responders, if they deem a person’s comment[s] to have troubling suicidal thoughts.

Facebook also will use AI to prioritize particularly risky or urgent user reports so they’re more quickly addressed by moderators, and tools to instantly surface local language resources and first-responder contact info. (Source)

A private corporation deciding who goes to jail? What could possibly go wrong?

Facebook’s A.I. automatically contacts law enforcement 

Facebook is using pattern recognition and moderators to contact law enforcement.

Facebook is ‘using pattern recognition to detect posts or live videos where someone might be expressing thoughts of suicide, and to help respond to reports faster.’

Dedicating more reviewers from our Community Operations team to review reports of suicide or self harm. (Source)

Facebook admits that they have asked the police to conduct more than ONE HUNDRED wellness checks on people.

Over the last month, we’ve worked with first responders on over 100 wellness checks based on reports we received via our proactive detection efforts. This is in addition to reports we received from people in the Facebook community. (Source)

Why are police conducting wellness checks for Facebook? Are private corporations running police departments? 

Not only do social media users have to worry about a spying A.I. but now they have to worry about thousands of spying Facebook ‘Community Operations’ people who are all to willing to call the police.

Our Community Operations team includes thousands of people around the world who review reports about content on Facebook…our team reviews reported posts, videos and live streams. This ensures we can get the right resources to people in distress and, where appropriate, we can more quickly alert first responders. (Source)

Should we trust pattern recognition to determine who gets hospitalized or arrested?

Pattern recognition is junk science

A 2010, CBS News article warns that pattern recognition and human behavior is junk science. The article shows, how companies use nine rules to convince law enforcement that pattern recognition is accurate.

A 2016, Forbes article used words like ‘nonsense, far-fetched, contrived and smoke and mirrors’ to describe pattern recognition and human behavior.

Cookie-cutter ratios, even if scientifically derived, do more harm than good. Every person is different. Engagement is an individual and unique phenomenon. We are not widgets, nor do we conform to widget formulas. (Source)

Who cares, if pattern recognition is junk science right? At least Facebook is trying to save lives.

Wrong.

Using an A.I. to determine who might need to be hospitalized or incarcerated can and will be abused.

You can read more from MassPrivateI at his blog, where this article first appeared.


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29 Comments on "Facebook’s New Suicide Detection A.I., Could Put Innocent People Behind Bars"

  1. Who ‘really’ created Facebook… CIA! Mark Zuckerberg is Jacob Greenberg, grandson of David Rockefeller.

  2. I could be forcibly hospitalized by the police for making online comments a computer program interprets as suggesting self-harm?
    That isn’t a world I want to live in.
    Oops.

    • No oops. The only way to stop this nonsense is to start playing with the AI. I don’t do facebook but I have started to answer those unidentified robo calls. If it is a computer calling with AI, I tell them that I don’t talk to computers, that they are evil, etc.
      Arrange a day (or multiple days – every other Monday) where 1 million facebook users post something about ending their lives, let the nazi police get swarmed with calls, and then maybe this crap will end.

      • I agree unreservedly.
        [“Oops,” because saying I don’t want to live in that world might be construed as suicidal and prompt my involuntary indefinate incarceration in a ‘mental health’ facility. See what I did there?]

  3. Open the door, Hal…

  4. There would be no fakebook if the Idiocracy wasnt alive and well.

  5. Solution: don’t use facebook or apple products. Easy.

  6. This is just another scheme for promoting Fecesbook form of Political Correctness.

  7. This article is a lie. It equates medical treatment with prison; it equates first responders with the police.

    “First responders, also known as first interveners,
    include a variety of public officials who deal with
    emergency situations on a day-to-day basis. This
    group includes, but is not limited to firefighters,
    police officers, EMTs, paramedics and emergency
    department personnel.“Assess the person for need of medical treatment”
    – Address any serious medical needs first, and
    if not equipped to handle mental health
    issues, involve somebody who is, such as a
    mental health clinician or crisis intervention
    worker. If not aware of the appropriate
    professional to contact, ask a supervisor for
    direction.
     “Establish rapport with the person” – Listen
    carefully and speak with the person in a nonconfrontational
    manner.
     “Assess the person for risk of suicide” –
    Determine whether an attempt has already
    been made while keeping them under
    constant observation. If the person is suicidal,
    arrange for them to be transported to a local
    hospital or mental health center.”

    http://www.dph.illinois.gov/sites/default/files/publications/first-responders-050216.pdf

    When the police ARE the first responders, they hand over the person to medical professionals.

    Articles that make false equations like this are complicit in preventing treatment for the mentally ill.

    The trade off is that most of the 34,000 suicides a year are preventable if early detection and treatment are available.

    We all have a right to take our own lives, but most suicides are by the mentally ill, who also have a right to medical treatment.

    • This article is not a lie. Somehow a company called Facebook thinks it can write a program that sends first responders – which may be police – to your doorstep because of the possibility that some people are mentally ill and might want to off themselves.
      And you have no problem with that invasion of privacy.
      We need an “opt-out” option to all these invasive programs.

    • there are a few inconsistencies in your narrative
      “When the police ARE the first responders” and “Establish rapport with the person” don’t fit together
      but most importantly, the gist of the article, maybe it is only me, is that neither facebook, nor any AI should ever be assessing anyone – yes, there are thousands out there who may need help, and many of them need to be recognised as needing help, but that is what community (not online community) and family is for!
      not sure whether to point out that “psychology” is a pseudoscience that has no basis in reality

    • lies, upon lies, upon lies, of yours…

    • It is not up to FB or AI to determine if we need a “wellness check”.

  8. Signing at ‘Facebook’ sounds like signing for a piece of warranty for an ‘exchange’ of very personal information, with UNKNOWN CONSEQUENCES. Since Facebook requests birthdate AND photo to sign in, only the honest ones are in a real danger.
    Fake clients, who do not exist on records, might be safe.. Mr. Sugarmountain (Zuckerberg read in german and backwards), or whoever established the ‘exchange market’, seems to know very well, how to prey on personal information, sucking out blood (literally, since equivalent to time spend on ‘friendly social media’ while being irradiated from the very source of that device allowing to be on that platform) of its every single user!!! It’s like the old Roman, conquering everything and everyone, brainwashed enough to sign up for the ‘book of the faces’ crap (the name alone is pretty offending). ‘Book of the faces’ degrades one among the highest gifts everyone got, namely the face, to a bunch of non-existing paper crap, since its only computer based.. How can people give a single penny for such a idiotic monstrosity, while WASTING their lifetime?? Hope not be too critical about ‘facebook’… Need to add extremely important facts about FACES:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lf8fdiU1Qk

  9. Yet another paranoia inducing article circulating the alternate media with no credible evidence. They rely on the fact most people who use websites like this one for their “news” smoke marijuana and are paranoid already and hence have limited judgement when it comes to seeing what is right/wrong, true/false. Since coming of the pot the paranoia has gone and my interest in these sort of ridiculous stories plummeted. I don’t even know why i’m wasting my valuable time commenting on such idiocy.

    • Like me, you were probably wondering if the comments might show hints of some hysteria percolating. Looks like the story didn’t have the intended effect of creating more programmed fear. That’s always good. 😉

  10. The police are worthless.

  11. I have left all social media chat sites including FB. Life is much simpler.

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