Facebook apologizes for A.I. mishap

Facebook apologized for "an unacceptable error" on Friday after one of the videos on the platform had an error with the artificial intelligence feature. The video from 2020, posted by The Daily Mail, had clips of Black men in arguments with white civilians. Users who watched the video on Facebook got a prompt from the platform that said "keep seeing videos about Primates" even when the content didn't have anything to do with animals or monkeys. 

Dani Lever, spokesperson for Facebook apologized for the offensive recommendation.  She said they are making improvements to their artificial intelligence and it has not been perfect but they are making progress with it. Other tech companies like Google and Amazon have also been scrutinized over the years for their biases in AI especially with race identification. Studies show that facial recognition technologies are often biased towards people of color leading to many Black people being arrested and discriminated against due to computer errors. 

Source: The New York Times