Phys.org: Social media culture can encourage risky and inappropriate posting behaviour, new study suggests. “The use of social media is pervasive among young adults, but not all posted content is necessarily appropriate. Now a new study by the University of Plymouth investigates why young adults might post content on social media that contains sexual or offensive material.”
Research & Opinion
Bloomberg: Facebook Usage Among Teens Set to Drop in U.S., EMarketer Says
Bloomberg: Facebook Usage Among Teens Set to Drop in U.S., EMarketer Says. “EMarketer predicts 14.5 million people from the ages of 12 to 17 will use Facebook in 2017, a drop of 3.4 percent from the prior year. Teens are migrating instead to Snap Inc.’s Snapchat and Instagram, the photo-sharing app that Facebook owns, the research company said Monday in a statement.”
Wired: Machines Taught by Photos Learn a Sexist View of Women
Wired: Machines Taught by Photos Learn a Sexist View of Women. “LAST FALL, UNIVERSITY of Virginia computer-science professor Vicente Ordóñez noticed a pattern in some of the guesses made by image-recognition software he was building. ‘It would see a picture of a kitchen and more often than not associate it with women, not men,’ he says. That got Ordóñez wondering whether he and other researchers were unconsciously injecting biases into their software. So he teamed up with colleagues to test two large collections of labeled photos used to ‘train’ image-recognition software.”
TechCrunch: Microsoft’s speech recognition system hits a new accuracy milestone
TechCrunch: Microsoft’s speech recognition system hits a new accuracy milestone. “Microsoft announced today that its conversational speech recognition system has reached a 5.1% error rate, its lowest so far. This surpasses the 5.9% error rate reached last year by a group of researchers from Microsoft Artificial Intelligence and Research and puts its accuracy on par with professional human transcribers who have advantages like the ability to listen to text several times.”
Engadget: AI creates fictional scenes out of real-life photos
Engadget: AI creates fictional scenes out of real-life photos. “AI’s not quite ready to build photorealistic worlds on its own. But it’s getting pretty close. Researcher Qifeng Chen of Stanford and Intel fed his AI system 5,000 photos from German streets. Then, with some human help it can build slightly blurry made-up scenes.”
Penn State: Older users like to snoop on Facebook, but worried others might snoop on them
Penn State: Older users like to snoop on Facebook, but worried others might snoop on them. “Older adults are drawn to Facebook so they can check out pictures and updates from family and friends, but may resist using the site because they are worried about who will see their own content, according to a team of researchers.”
Study: Online harassment spreading as social media use increases (Greensburg Daily News)
Greensburg Daily News: Study: Online harassment spreading as social media use increases. “As communication through social media increases, online harassment rises, according to a recently released study. The Pew Research Center found that nearly half of Americans have personally experienced some form of online harassment. Even more, 66 percent, have witnessed social media attacks directed toward others.”
