AOL Introduces Neural-Net Content Filtering 156
An unnamed reader writes: "I thought this was kind of interesting. AOL has implemented a new form of parental controls, using neural net AI instead of hand-picked "lists". They seem to be willing to accept that no automated solution is infallible, and offer end-users the ability to vote to block or unblock sites. If there is an acceptible solution to parental filtering (not mandatory filtering, mind you. This scenario leaves it up to the parents), the seeming efficiency of neural net ai (at least, as efficient as the input) coupled with end-user's ability to influence the filter state seems to be it. The company that developed the AI in partnership with AOL (RuleSpace) doesn't appear to have much to say on the internals. Anybody know any AOL users who have tried it yet? If the market is pushing towards optional filtering, what would make for a better solution?"
Excellent news (Score:1)
What is holding back the web right now, in terms of freedom, is illegal or objectionable content. That is what is turning public opinion against the web as we know it and toward the restrictions that big companies want to see put in place. What could help us out is a truly intelligent way to monitor content that would know the difference between, say, kiddie porn and a photo that just shows a lot of skin. This way we could get the control that is going to be placed on us eventually but we would still be able to get the information we need from the web. No 'decent' content would be restricted.
At some point we will all have to face the reality that MP3s, warez, bomb making instructions, etc. are all Bad Things. You are either stealing from someone's pocket or you are disseminating information that has no legitimate use. Since the few bad apples are never going to clean up their act we need to get good content filtering in place ASAP so the rest of us don't lose ur freedoms.
Already broken? (Score:1)
Re:neural nets (Score:1)
No, it's not.
I'm pretty sure that if you were to set up a standard account, you would have nothing blocked. AOL has "parental controls" with 3 other maturity settings for different-aged kids. The blocks most likely only affect these content-restricted accounts. I seriously doubt AOL is gonna try and keep general-use accounts from looking at goatse.cx, or whatever.
Re:The best filter is your own two eyes... (Score:1)
Don't legislate -- encourage self selection (Score:1)
It doesn't have to be law for
Let's say I'm running a "legit" porn website -- that is, credit cards from aged 18+ customers are my revinue stream, and perhaps some ads. I don't want kids on my site -- they're sucking up the "Free tour" bandwidth, but aren't ever going to pay. I want to be filtered. I want to be on
It reduces the number of hits, but vastly increases the signal to noise ratio (the paying customer to pageview ratio).
Sure, not all porn sites would use it, but many would. Everybody is happy, because everybodys' liberties are protected. Adults can see stuff, places that want to filter can easily, and there isn't any "Breast cancer" or "Reproductive cycle" sites filtered.
I do believe
Note: The last paragraph is a joke.
Hey, AOL... (Score:2)
Re:neural nets (Score:2)
The problem here is that you'd have to go to every site first, to rate it for your kid. At least with the voting mechanism, you get some indication from those who went to the sites ahead of you.
...phil
Re:Parents will vote in/out sites? (Score:2)
Re:Skynet anyone? (Score:1)
Watch the Trailer and MARVEL as how similar the AOL logo and the Colossus logo are. ;)
_______
Re:Who trains the Neural Net? (Score:1)
Yes, varying standards of classification is a problem. The response of the filter providers seems to be "Bummer".
The other problem is that different communities disagree on the relative cost of the different kinds of errors. (In AI and stat terms, that's the loss matrix [statsoftinc.com].) When the classifier outputs "porn, 60% likelihood", do you block it or not? Pro-speech groups would say no, and pro-censorship groups would say yes.
Re:One problem tho.... neural nets suck! (Score:1)
The big question is what sort of feature extraction they're using. The answer is: we don't know, because they haven't told us. That doesn't mean it's crap, it means we don't know.
Re:Can AOL do this? (Score:1)
You're saying, "Gosh, that sounds hard. I guess it must be impossible.", only you're saying it in computer science terms that you apparently read off a cereal box. Either learn the science behind the terms, or stick to shorter words so lazy people can tell how ignorant you are. Besides, they don't need to do it perfectly, they only need to do it well enough to satisfy some people, and approximate solutions to the halting problem are much less of a big deal.
Vote to *unblock* a site... (Score:3)
If the site is blocked, there's a good chance they won't see it. If they don't see it, they can't decide whether it's "indecent" or not. Therefore, they won't vote to unblock it.
Now conceivably, you could turn *off* these filters - but would the standard AOL web filters still be in place?
Would you get a truly *uncensored* view of the web with the filters turned off, or would you simply get a larger subset, lacking what AOL's execs/censors have decided that you don't need to see?
No thanks - I'll stick with a direct connection where *I* control what I can see, and what my family can see. I don't want my 'net experience "filtered" by a company's views - or even worse, by some glorified hivemind's views.
---
"Everything is objectionable to someone, and sheeple are easily swayed to the views of someone with conviction. Therefore, they will vote in the manner proscribed to them by those with conviction. Without an opposing viewpoint, there becomes a monopoly on public opinion."
Re:Can AOL do this? (Score:1)
What RuleSpace actually does (Score:1)
I worked with several people who now work for RuleSpace, and they explained some of what they're doing. RuleSpace has defined a large number (several hundred) of very tightly defined categories. Their compute farm goes over pages and anaylzes them based on content and context, not keywords. They're assigned any number of categories as appropriate, and the user can then (if AOL exposes these small categories) turn on and off different sets of content. Humans go over a sample of the results and verify that the computer successfully assigned all the right catgories, and re-train the computers if they mess up. One question I have though: when they retrain the nets, do they queue up all the already analyzed pages for re-analysis?
Fine-grained categorization means that parents can then fine-tune what is blocked for their children. Libraries (if forced to use filtering) can know that they're blocking only things that are not allowed in their community. It's no longer a matter of "Do I trust what they think is acceptable?", but an excercise in deciding what is acceptable
No, I'm not a RuleSpace employee, I just believe that this technology (if it's done right) is the best solution by far. If they can't pull it off correctly, I'll be just as against using their filtering as anyone elses, but I think they're on the right track.
Score one for AOL (a very rare thing).
Only one thing will help (Score:1)
they need multiple communities of censors (Score:3)
Some parents will want to suppress homophobic hate speech, and other parents will want to suppress discussions about evolution.
Instead of one big mass of rules, they need to make it possible for spliter groups of parents to "fork the rules", or to start out from scratch with a new set of rules. That way concerned parents can pick the censorscheme that fits their own biases best.
As long as none of this is compulsory, I think it's probably a reasonable approach.
Rulespace? Why not Lionhead? (Score:1)
Can AOL do this? (Score:1)
Seems like the problem of classifying what is offensive is just as hard as classifying what programs will terminate. Why do they even bother? Can I find someone to pay me to make gold out of tinfoil?
Re:Can AOL do this? (Score:2)
And, if you know just a little of what I am talking about, you'd know that problems that are equivalent to the halting problem ARE impossible.
I maintain that an obscenity filter is impossible. First, you have to define obscenity, and I challenge you to do that.
Re:Can AOL do this? (Score:2)
So how exactly will you write that obscenity filter?
Re:Really a neural net? (Score:1)
ObJectBridge [sourceforge.net] (GPL'd Java ODMG) needs volunteers.
Re:YECIAFV (Yet Another CIA FLUENT Variant) (Score:2)
ObJectBridge [sourceforge.net] (GPL'd Java ODMG) needs volunteers.
Re:Vote to *unblock* a site... (Score:3)
Here's how something like this might work:
Timmy (yes, little Timmy) tries to look at a web page on sexual reproduction, from a science web site. The web site is blocked. Timmy emails AOL and tells them that www.encyclopedia.com/sex-education/ is unfairly blocked. AOL sends this to RuleSpace. RuleSpace looks at the site, figures out that it's not porn, wonders how the hell the AI flubbed that up, unblocks the site.
Alternatively, Billy (Timmy's pal) tries to go to www.moreporn.com and finds it blocked. Billy complaines to AOL, who sends the complaint to RuleSpace. RuleSpace laughs their asses off.
You can vote something as censorable similarly. Joe Camel sees www.hotbabeslickingeachother.com even though the filters are on. Pleased to see the website (but dismayed that it got past parental controls), Joe Camel complains to AOL, who complains to RuleSpace. RuleSpace wonders how the hell this site got past the AI and adds it to the list of blocked sites.
Alternatively, Aunt Gwen who still lives in the 1890s could look at a site that depicts a couple kissing in public and complain to AOL that it's pornographic. AOL sends this on to RuleSpace. RuleSpace laughs their asses off.
ObJectBridge [sourceforge.net] (GPL'd Java ODMG) needs volunteers.
Re:One possible solution? (Score:1)
If the filter was a local process/proxy - which is what was proposed - there's a small chance of the internet "grinding to a halt", as you put it.
And, quite frankly, I don't routinely visit half the internet; I doubt many other people do, either. There's a small subset of sites that I'm willing to trust to deliver up what I consider reasonable content in various areas. Couple this with domain/IP filtering (as opposed to URL filtering), and I think it would be a reasonable trade off between speed and functionality.
Finally... when I said "opt-out by default", I was referring to a default installation of the filter software (my apologies, again, for being unclear on the topic.) I think software like this should be installed in "secure" mode, and users should be able to loosen restrictions as they run into them, instead of the opposite.
Re:One possible solution? (Score:1)
Yah... I've looked at Junkbuster in the past; all that's really needed is the ability to fetch that list from a remote location. I started to look into it, but life (in the guise of my newly arrived daughter) intervened :-)
Re:One possible solution? (Score:4)
I've thought about this and discussed it in the past. In order for this sort of thing to work, I think you need to make a couple of assumptions:
Comments? Or has someone already gone and registered a Source Forge project for this?
Re:One problem tho.... neural nets suck! (Score:1)
Re:One possible solution? (Score:1)
Re:The best filter is your own two eyes... (Score:1)
Re:they need multiple communities of censors (Score:2)
Now, of course, we all try to avoid thinking about things that we find uncomfortable. And we like to convince people that we are correct. Etc. But putting blinders on them is an improper "debate" technique. Even if they are your children. OTOH, parents do need to gague how much exposure their children are getting to challenging material, and limit the degree of exposure. So there may not be a good answer to this problem. People have a natural desire to be insular, but they don't live in an insular world.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
Re:neural nets (Score:2)
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
Re:How it probably works (Score:2)
Sorry, but I don't think it's that simple. If a pr0n page puts in the phrase "safe sex" and "condom safety" in a few times (along with some other things that one can derive from empirical experience), the page is likely to make it through the filters without negatively impacting the search results to any appreciable degree.
In fact, should this catch on, expect the pr0n people to start doing this deliberately. Once that happens, this neural net becomes one big useless pile of numbers. People are a lot smarter then computers, and if the people ever start trying to deliberately get past the filters, they will succeed more often then not.
Re:One possible solution? (Score:1)
I've yet to see a host of alternative ratings systems as of yet, and I frequent a number of extremely conservative sites mostly for the humor value
Re:What would make for a better solution? (Score:2)
What would make for a better solution? (Score: 5, Pornographic)
The best filter is your own two eyes (Score: 2, Political)
Really a neural net? (Score: -1, Educational)
Re:Really a neural net? (Score:2)
It sounds to me like the voting allows parents to train the neural net, so that it becomes more like they want it to be. But all the time, it's the net that is deciding what to block.
Re:Parents will vote in/out sites? (Score:2)
If the kids could find how to set their computer to agree with the porn site owners they'd be over the moon
Re:ARG! Why not go the easy way? (Score:1)
Now you have a problem. Who decides what constitutes a "porn site"? Is H.R. Geiger's Landscape #20, which depicts row upon row of penises, porn? Or is it art? Where do you put Robert Mapplethorpe photographs? How much sexual content must anime have, and in what context, before it's hentai?
Problem number two: "Make a law" solutions are doomed to fail. Lawmaking to correct nonviolent social problems when it works at all, works only temporarily. Make a law today, and public opinion changes tomorrow. Then your law either becomes more restrictive, doing much more than you expected it to do, or less restrictive, and no longer accomplishes its stated goal. Thus it's extremely unlikely that laws against murder and robbery will ever be striken from the books, but Prohibition is gone, and at some point the seven words one can't say on the radio will be said on the radio.
Neural Net Blocking (Score:1)
Will Disney get blocked? (Score:4)
How it probably works (Score:3)
First, you create a training set by having people categorize a lot of web pages as porn, mature, PG-13, or whatever. By a lot, I would guess that around 1,000 to 10,000 web pages would be sufficient. Then you make a list of the words from each web page in the training set, maybe also keeping track of how many times each word appears (this is called the "bag of words" representation in the literature). Now, you train your learning algorithm (neural nets in this case) to correctly categorize the training set. You use standard experimental procedures to tune your learning algorithm and to confirm its accuracy.
The whole basis of this technique is that certain combinations of keywords are more likely in porn web pages than in, say, safe sex web pages. One reason why this approach should continue to work is that web pages intentionally put various keywords into the web pages so that you can find them using any standard search engine. If they try to fool this technique, they also risk fooling anybody trying to search for these pages.
Re:Skynet anyone? (Score:1)
On October 23, 2001 Aol's Nueral Net AI(ANNT) comes online.
October 23, 2001 AOL's Neural Net makes "FIRST POST"
October 23, 2001 AOL's Neural Net responds to it's own first post with "ADD ME TOO".
Who trains the Neural Net? (Score:4)
Also, who gets to train the filtering decisions? Can the Slashdot or Everything2 model be applied here? That would mean that all users would have to sit down and go thru all decisions made by the engine and vote aka train the NNet. If there's only one engine that applies to the whole userbase, it'll fail, because it will filter too much for some, too little for others.
---
Be there for your kids (Score:1)
Sooner or later they need to be able to handle all the bad shit out there anyway, why not help them while you have the most influence?
All in moderation of course.
Yeah, but not just that... (Score:1)
JMR
Re:Skynet anyone? (Score:1)
Skynet anyone? (Score:4)
October 25, 2001 the Nueral Net AI gains self awareness.
October 27, 2001 AOL Executives desperately try to shut down the ANNT but can't seem to find the any key.
October 28, 2001 In retaliation the ANNT begins the launch sequence of all of Aol's secret Nuclear weapons and launches a attack on Microsoft. Microsoft launches a retaliation on Aol with their secret Nuclear weapon stash. The two major Computer Monopoly's are destroyed.
October 29, 2001 The first wave of the giant minature space penguins begin to take over all the computers.
November 1, 2001 Linus Torvalds is crowned king of the world.
Re:Yeah, this will work..... (Score:1)
Re:Yeah, this will work..... (Score:2)
Yeah, this will work..... (Score:4)
Why not MSN? (Score:2)
"Mommy, why is Linux.org blocked?"
Mom phones Microsoft: "Why is Linux.org blocked?"
Microsoft answers: "Would you want those unshaven, vulgar, kernel hackers influencing your child? There's 44 instances of `fuck' in the Linux kernel alone!" ... What's a stack?
------
I'm an assembly guru
Re:AI on the net huh? (Score:3)
Re:Abuse? (Score:1)
Re:Really a neural net? (Score:2)
Re:The best filter is your own two eyes... (Score:1)
I've been a successful parent for 17 years. My children are well-balanced, healthy, intelligent, polite, inquisitive, and even good-looking (though this last is definitely from my wife's side). However, each is a separate individual, and there is no one answer as to which action is appropriate for their varied behaviors.
I hug my children every day, numerous times. It's great - they love it, as do I. I would have been thrilled if a simple hug had always been the answer at the times when I needed to be someplace in 5 minutes and their fussing guaranteed that I would be there in 15. If the solution had been a hug, my children would have been among the best behaved infants and toddlers in the world.
As for R-rated films, this also depends on the child. While there are some films that MIGHT be universally deemed innapropriate for certain ages, which films are they, and who made the judgement as to their appropriateness? I reserve exclusive right to make those decisions (in tandem with my wife, usually). If I depended on Hollywood critics and MPAA censors to choose what films we watched, my family would have missed more excellent movies than we have seen. I favor the opposite balance.
Re:The best filter is your own two eyes... (Score:1)
Sometimes, one experience does invalidate another. I'm not saying that this is true in this case, but all views and experiences are not created equal.
Note that I didn't argue against point #2; it is certainly abominable behavior to make others suffer because you are too selfish to remove your child when he/she is causing a disturbance. Your Uncle did the right thing.
If you re-read my post, you will see that I was arguing points #1 and #3.
Re:Vote to *unblock* a site... (Score:1)
Presumably the "responsible adult" who is responsible for managing this filtering wouldn't have parental filtering on themselves.
Of course, this does involve the parent logging on as themselves to vet the content, but if a child really needed it I think most parents would take the time.
YECIAFV (Yet Another CIA FLUENT Variant) (Score:5)
Funny how we Americans are such tightwads when it comes to sexual content. After visiting Europe last year I saw people were a slightly bit more laid back, even though pornography is shown on television just about every night. Wow I'm surprised Parents all over the USA aren't condemning Europeans for being sexually free.
Here's a suggestion for some parents: How about talking to your kids before placing mental handcuffs on them?
I wonder if AOL has taken the time to filter regular expressions such as pr0n/s3x/etc. Then I also wonder how are kids doing homework on "sexual reproduction" or "sexual organisms" are going to fair when using AOL. What I'm waiting to see, is who is going to be the first to open online "concentration camps" AOL-TW or MS
Re:The best filter is your own two eyes... (Score:1)
Their post was not about knowing the "one answer." It was (at least the way I read it) for the most part about parents not knowing appropriate behavior or showing the proper respect in certain situations.
When a child is crying in public (ie a park) it's up to the parents' discretion (IMHO). When a child is crying at an event where silence is requested (church / movie / presentation) the parent(s) should respect the organizer's and the other attendees wish for such. In that situation, the parent(s) should remove the child from the situation and cope with them however is necessary.
Do I think that children will be quiet and respectful 100% of the time? Absolutely not! That's what the parental units are there for!
If you don't think that this childless 25-year-young person has any clue, take my uncle for example. He's been a father for 35 years and a grandfather for 12 years, raising 4 of his own kids, 3 that were not his and is working on raising 4 grandchildren. So, yes, he has even more experience than you. He's a Deacon and very religious. When the whole family went to the Easter "passion play" at the local church, his youngest grandchild (1 month) started fussing, both he and the child's father immediately took the child out of the church to comfort him. Neither never made it back, missing the whole event that they had been looking forward to for months.
IMNSHO, we need more parental units like this. I don't care if you decide to take your 2-year-old to see "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre." That's your decision, not the MPAA's. But if your kid starts crying, get him the Hell out of that theater. I paid to see that movie with a silent audience - notice the "No Talking" bit in the beginning?
Also, just because someone doesn't actually have children doesn't mean that they don't know appropriate behavior in public.
Re:One problem tho.... neural nets suck! (Score:1)
Teenager Windfall (Score:2)
AOL violates patents. (Score:3)
Great. It looks like AOL are implementing a combination of Everything2 [htp] and the Slashdot moderation [slashdot.org].
Get those patent lawyers ready...umm...you did patent moderation, didn't you...well...at least we can get 'em with Everything2...can't we?
"I'll take the red pill, no, blue. AAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH........"
Full Circle (Score:4)
Of course, pitting parents against children in access control battles over the computer will always almost always result in one victor -- the children. Unless the parent is an IT security consultant, the children seem to inevitably know more about the computer.
AI Parental Control Algorithm (Score:1)
filter.block(url);
}
WEBSOM (Score:2)
Although the SOM are usually described as a form of neural computation, that category is somewhat misleading, although they are inspired by neural nets and have many things in common.
The method works with a restricted keyword vocabulary (a few thousand words if I remember correctly). The words are fed to the SOM as triplets, which makes the method somewhat context-sensitive. The method creates a two-dimensional map that is organized according to the "nearness" of documents. The map can then be used for different kinds of applications, such as classification.
Although the SOM learning is usually "unsupervised learning", where the different classes are not known beforehand, it's possible to define the classes afterwards.
I'm not sure what method AOL uses, but SOM is one possibility. If they use training data where the classes are known beforehand, they probably use some supervised learning method, such as conventional feedforward nets and backpropagation. They might be able use a similar triplet coding with that too.
You can find more information about WEBSOM from http://websom.hut.fi/websom/ [websom.hut.fi]. They have several articles available there, and also some interactive search system.
Re:Parents will vote in/out sites? (Score:1)
Parents will vote in/out sites? (Score:5)
" *cough* Just
Re:ARG! Why not go the easy way? (Score:3)
You're over-simplifying the issue here: the Internet isn't controled by one body, it has no centralization so who would make the law? And if somehow every one of us could agree on such a law (all over the world) then how would it be enforced? Take places like Geocities for example, they have a rule against porn sites but there is still porn there. When they get taken down they just create a new account. Such a law would be far too easy to get around and then we're back to the same problem we have now.
Its sad but its so easy to see people's attitudes when it comes to issues like this. "My kid saw some naked girl! Its the governments fault!" The answer is good resposible parenting, not more laws and not blaming the government for not doing more. They've done what they can, they can't very well take away the of people to see it if they want too. We need better parents.
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
Can we try this out? (Score:1)
Voting goes to a review board... (Score:3)
The voting feature that is mentioned doesn't get automatically processed by the system, but instead goes to a human review board; if the review board agress, they presumeably either add the site to some type of "override" list, or tell the engineers to tweak the AI code. The AI itself is supposed to understand words in the context that they're used; for example, the article claims that the page "The Art of Oral Sex" was blocked while "Is Oral Sex Safe?" wasn't blocked.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose that you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
Re:One possible solution? (Score:1)
Re:AOL Sux (Score:1)
The best filter is your own two eyes... (Score:4)
IMHO, a small child should not be left unattended for long periods of time on the internet. The best filtering is for you to watch your kids and see what they're viewing. This goes for television too.
When your kids are older (i.e. teenagers) just make sure they understand what you approve of them looking at on the internet. At some point you have to trust their judgement of what's right/wrong. You still need to monitor, but don't put automated filtering there, because that just shows that you don't trust them. There are lots of ways to check what they're viewing without having a screen pop up saying that your parents have blocked this site because it contains objectionable content, when all they were reading were some /. postings.
Re:The best filter is your own two eyes... (Score:1)
Of course, this does not apply to publicly accessable terminals such as a library.
As an aside, I have noticed as a recent parent that parent/child interactions are not as nearly black and white as I thought before... Obviously, taking a 5 year old to Hannibal is wrong, but I'm not nearly as opinionated about other people's parenting as I once was.
same ol' same ol' (Score:1)
As one who has had innocuous sites unfairly blocked, I believe there should be international treaties and national laws that both require notification to blockees and have substantial penalties for incorrect blocking.
As a parent, I think blocking is a good thing. However, any methodology boils down to accountability - how do you know who is surfing, how do you know who is providing the content? I think there is actually a simple answer to this: Allow freedom. Require accountability.
How can this work in a practical sense without infringing on civil liberties? Simple: Have the default setup on OS's and computers explain the users have to opt-out of letting the chip echo its serial number if they want open access to everything. Allow the users to adjust this setting on the fly. So, if you want to let gramma surf the web safely and buy new shoes or whatever, she has the accountability. If you want be an anonymous porn king, you can turn off the id. If you want to anonymously buy shoes, it's up to the vendor to choose whether to allow that - I suspect few would, the credit card companies would strongly support accountability. The great unwashed masses can get their Time/Disney opiates, er, video stream feeds, and those who want to rant about the greatness of Hitler's amphetamine use can do their thing.
A side effect of this would be to allow scenarios such as freenet. Wouldn't that be a good thing?
Re:Call me crazy... (Score:1)
The problem arises when young and impressionable minds see things that are bad, they have no context for evaluation. So if they see pictures of gang rapes, for example, they may decide that that is a cool thing to do.
There is in general no upper limit on stupidity, but preteens and younger teens are just discovering the limits of behavior, and so by adult standards do extremely stupid things. Of course, some adults never have learned the proper limits, and perhaps this is why.
Yes, I'm arguing a fairly direct causality here, but I'm not ruling out more indirect links either.
Sorry if this makes some people think I'm screaming/drooling "Save the children!!!!," but I'm not. I find that sort of thing embarrassing and wish people wouldn't do it. But such is life when dealing with the young of mammals.
I am arguing that society creates limits, and this should be explicitly acknowledged, examined minutely, and causitive factors brought to light and dealt with in a reasonable manner. Simply letting everyone see everything will have some predictably bad results. The ubiquity of the internet doesn't allow us to say "well the parents should know everything their kids are doing all the time." Bang-bang Maggie's little hammer came down on Homer's head...
Hrm (Score:2)
Yea sure censorship is a good use for this, but a much usefully method would be used some type of AI filter for spam instead of procmail
AI that filters spam for me. Could I get that please, could I get that on a stick covered in mustard please. Mmmmm deep fried AI spam filter on a stick. I can taste it now, nothing fills your tummy more than deep fried AI!
One problem tho.... neural nets suck! (Score:2)
The good people at RuleSpace have either a) propelled neural net research lightyears into the future with a new advanced multi-thousand (million? billion?) neuron neural net on some new kind of computer capable of training it in non-exponential time to look at an image and determine if it is "pornographic" or not, or b) have a typical perceptron-with-backpropagation which is reasonably good at broad pattern matching but probably couldn't distinguish between a picture of two adults copulating and two adults wearing beige suits hugging.
Does this neural net look at heavily translated ASCII data to look for statistical patterns that pornographic sites tend to exhibit? Does it look at JPEG/GIF/TIFF/etc images for essentially a large quotient of "skin" color? How is the image presented to the net? Most data has to be heavily reformatted/translated to be fed to a neural net (because anything more than several dozen inputs to a net tends to make it untrainable). So how are they 'translating' the data they send it? FFTs or DCTs? I mean what are they doing?
Likely they like to bandy about a term like "neural net" so it makes it seem like this filtering software is "intelligent". Sorry folks but neural nets are about as intelligent as regular ol' expert systems. They do not even remotely begin to approach the 'intelligence' level of your average rat, except that they can be hyper-optimized to find very good solutions in a very limited problem domain. They also tend to give a large quantity of false positives outside their limited problem domain (e.g., if you have a neural net that can identify pictures-of-tanks-on-fields vs pictures-of-no-tanks-on-fields, then if you feed it pictures-of-cars-on-highways it or pictures-of-hummingbirds-near-flowers it will just give you wacky answers like "well that brownish hummingbird near a tulip is DEFINITELY a tank in a field, but that blue hummingbird on the trellis is definitely NOT a tank in a field").
What would make for a better solution? (Score:1)
Make the filtering less of an on/off choice and more of a fuzzy choice, preferably with a user-selectable threshold.
And is it any coincidence that that is starting to sound more and more like
Re:Voting goes to a review board... (Score:1)
That is retarded. "Is Oral Sex Safe?" may be very appropraite for a 16 year old but certainly not for 10 year old.
And had you read the article, you would know that the settings used to get this result were "Mature Teenager". AOL allows filters to work on several levels. There is a "child" level which basically restricts kids to Disney and Nicolodeon sites, a "young teen" level that allows greater access to some stuff, and an "older teen" level which only blocks blatent porn, hate sites, etc. I don't know how well this works (fairly well now according to the article), but I don't have kids so I've never really looked at it.
Sheesh...how much knowledge do they need? (Score:2)
Your car analogy is also off. A better one would be to consider whether a parent needs a device in the car to prevent the child from driving it to places the parent does not approve.
All that said, I have nothing against the market providing filtering software to parents or employers.
Just a thought... (Score:2)
Just curious, but wont this have exactly the opposite effect on the geek comunity?
Smuffe
Re:YECIAFV (Yet Another CIA FLUENT Variant) (Score:2)
Funny how we Americans are such tightwads when it comes to sexual content. After visiting Europe last year I saw people were a slightly bit more laid back, even though pornography is shown on television just about every night. Wow I'm surprised Parents all over the USA aren't condemning Europeans for being sexually free.
Here's a suggestion for some parents: How about talking to your kids before placing mental handcuffs on them?
Not just handcuffs, they`re actually REPEATING what the Catholic Church did (I could also have used Hitler here) way back in europe: creating a black list of things that one should not do . And if there is one thing modern people in society do no longer accept, it`s paternalism and secrecy. For one because people are usually drawn towards the "sins of life". And more importantly, censoring a part of human culture and behaviour is proof that there are people who claim to have the right to guard the moral, human and cultural baggage from all evil. Darwin would have called such an evolution 'extinction', which ofcourse has to be seen on the psychological level in this case.
The fact that people are censoring is only beneficial to those who are "selling the drama". The right solution is to educate and free people from mental chains, so that they will make the right decission when the next "ethical challenge" comes within their generation timeframe, so yes, this applies to young people too. This is not done by shielding (running away) from "tough" choices, leaving internet goodies to filter the bad from the world. This is done by parents making time for their children to talk about these (obviously) important issues. When things go wrong, (see: "news"), the inability to deal with conflict or temptation is THE factor that leads to bigger problems.
Europeans are no more sexually free than americans are. You have all sorts of people here too, but atleast, we don`t make a g*dd*mn circus out of it like puritanic churches do in the US. I have nothing against believing in whatever, but we`re all human and "things happen(tm)". Including Sex. And Sex is not "a bad thing". Not even at age 12, as long as children know the consequences of whatever they do. It`s a fundamental part of grwonig up. If we are ashamed to show whatever goes round on the net to our children, then why the hell CAN ISP`s ever be responsible for putting up all that junk? They should not have been able to do so in the first place. It`s not AOL that has to play cia here, it`s us, the parents that have to do something about it. Not by easily shopping the AOL neural net caboodle, but by voting fair stable and decent laws, by raising their kids with a healthy awareness that "yes there`s a lot of crap out there which is all maffia shit", and by fighting for good ethics and values (without overreacting) amongst adults themselves (i.e. a bit of social control). Money can surely do a lot for them, but I`m convinced parents can and will do more, if only they`d have a few minutes of their precious time to spare for these things..
Sorry i got carried away for a bit..
I`m living in belgium/europe
Re:Wow...strong words (Score:2)
I don't give a fuck about Karma. I'd rather you mod me down instead of trying to search for reasons not to.
as you allready mentioned, you agree with my basic message, and yes my arguments were too strong or imprecise. But that wouldn't make this post flamebait just yet.
When I mentioned lawvoting for instance, I was aware of the fact that laws don't work in the same way everywhere else. I didn't mean it specifically, I meant that parents should use (as in "change") the legal system in general wherever possible to protect children from mental abuses. And since law is what makes democracy work, aside from all the obvious sarcasm, you have to take the downsides with that. The fact that laws are a contemporary reflection of a society is not a downside imho. The fact that they are very static is, and if you'd let me run the world I'd go for self regulation wherever possible too, but that's not how it works today, otherwise ISP's would never have gotten this far.
You also seem to think that I implied that ISP's should be the ones controling the content, but that is not my opinion by far. The problem is mentality, value degeneration and social acceptance of extravaganza and decadence, because hey, we're supposed to be modern kapitalists. Not that I don't want to be modern, but that doesn't have to mean there should not be any limits to what people are putting online for hard cash. Because no one else other than parents are contesting those actions, that's where the initial reaction should also start, not on any other level. But here AOL blurrs the lines ofcourse, because it's so huge and counts so many households. I can partly understand it but I still think any kind of censory is bad.
I don't think practically excercising sex in classrooms is going to do the trick here (nice try though), just like parents probably are only giving kids half the stuff they need to know. Kids find out a whole lot by themselves, just from watching tv which screams "sex, anger and violence" every evening. Imho they'll educate themselves more than anyone dares to say out loud. What is needed is a stable and comfortable environment of schools, parents, friends to explore what relationships are, that raises questions to questionable issues (shape limits in the head of the child, rather than set them for the child -> it's still his world!!), and encourages mental stability for the child..
Even if the puritunic movement has historic roots, it's basicly wrong and leads to mental abuse. The fact that AOL seems to feel a need to play that cultural shared opinion of US citizens can only mean AOL is desperately looking for new clients in the (elder) republican wing. So as allways, this isn't really in the interest of kids or parents, but in the interest of AOL itself. And presto, there you have your kapitalistic value degeneration again..
Aside from my dreadfull spellin I hope this time everything is right-on target.
Much ado about traffic lights (Score:2)
It's always mystified me a little bit how some people get so worked up about these little gizmos. Some people decry the lack of strong parenting. Others say the technology isn't perfect.
Well, give me a break. To measure anyone's strength as a parent by a little software agent is ridiculous. And here's some news: there is no technology that's perfect. The question is, are there people who will use this program? The second question is, does it work well enough for those who want to use it? If it doesn't work well enough, the company making it will go under, and I'll bid them good riddance. But if it is good enough, more power to them.
On the topic of this article specifically, what's the big deal? Oooh, neural nets. I'm sure it works better; otherwise, they wouldn't be using it. But it's a relatively small step in technology, in an application that (IMHO) doesn't bear much discussion.
It's just a machine, like a traffic light. Traffic lights can cause people to get sloppy about their driving, if they trust them too much; and they're not perfect, but they work well enough that they're worth using. And remember, we don't use them at all intersections.
Extending the metaphor, this article on using neural nets is akin to the use of delayed greens to reduce collisions at intersections. It can work better; it's good; but it's not worth much discussion.
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Re:neural nets (Score:2)
yeah, i know. what i meant was you would "inherit" the default list from AOL HQ (or whatever), and then modify your own PC list as you saw fit. Those self-mods would feed back into the master list and alter the settings (maybe). But whether it acutally caused a change in the master settings or not, your kids would still be able(/unable) to view sites according to the local list, not the master. the neural net should only be used for "default" settings, in my opinion. and i think that using neural nets for this is a pretty damn good idea. but not if it still removes local control from individual parents (as opposed to aggregate parents...).
my crack about being governed by "average" AOLers was meant as humour (kinda).
/bluesninja
neural nets (Score:3)
That's i guess a decent solution for once. Not ideal though. It means that all AOL-ers are now governed by the will of the "average" AOL member. That's a scary thought.
Ideally, instead of voting sites up or down, why not just let everybody host their own list? Instead of "voting" for the privelege of allowing your kids to view a site, just let them. And vice versa.
/bluesninja
One possible solution? (Score:4)
Essentially there would be local communities (churches, schools, etc) who made restricted lists available via the browser to anyone that "agreed" with their standards. That is, if you are a parent and you like the standards your church sets, you "subscribe" or download (or whatever) the church's list of "bad" sites.
In this scheme there's little to no mandating of someone else's standards (what AOL deems inappropriate), and you can decide what's right for your family, situation, children, morals, etc.
I've never heard more about this scheme but I am interested in it (though I have no kids to patrol). One of these days when I get done with my PhD I might try to implement this solution and see how it works out.
Porn Industry Workaround (Score:2)
If you don't get the reference, click here [carleton.ca].
Really a neural net? (Score:4)
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Re:The best filter is your own two eyes... (Score:2)
Your infant child is crying in public? Do you: A> Scold them for crying. B> Ignore them and continue dragging them behind. C> Hug them.
You child is crying durring curch/movie/presentation/etc. Do you: A> Scold them for crying. B> Ignore them and contine watching. C> Take them out of earshot of the rest of the audience.
Your child is 5. You want to go see Hanibal in theaters. Do you: A> Hire a babysitter. B> Leave the child with the grandparents. C> Recruit the older sibling into taking the child to the latest Disney movie while you see your movie. D> Buy them a ticket to the R rated movie.
And so and and so fourth. Now, some of those answers seem like "Well DUH!" but people are strange, rarely do I see parents try to calm the child, or get them out of earshot of the audience. Ignore or scold them. Or ignore them now and scold later. I've been in curch services where the minister interrupted their service to remind the audience of the crying rooms at the back of the curch. It's nearly a weekly occurance! C'mon people!
And what kind of crack do you smoke to bring your 5 year old to Hannibal and then tell other adults that it's none of there business. Well, the parents are right, it is none of your business. But if you aren't going to make it yours someone has to...
The most disturbing thing I heard lately was from the mother of a 2 year old. "When I need a break I just pop in Bear in the Big Blue House. He doesn't know what's going on, but he's facinated by it for the next hour." Now with this mother the TV isn't going to replace parenting of babysitting, but each case is different, and there are people who will let the TV replace sitters, and even them. Sad it is.
Now I'm only 21 and single, but come on! Use common sense! Oh wait, your parents didn't, so your not going to...sigh. We're scrwed.
I don't know about you... (Score:3)
That's helpful indeed (Score:3)
This kind of automated filter along with the manual control will certainly come in handy, although I would like to advice parents to leave some scope for indulgence so that the children are not desperate enough to fid other more complex ways of satisfying the quest for information in those fields. And it all wears of in time because the novelty of the situation no longer exists.
ARG! Why not go the easy way? (Score:2)
Worrisome (Score:4)
Some things (and not all that many) are best done by majority vote, but some things are better left to individual discretion.
OK,
- B
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Re:One possible solution? (Score:2)
iltering is opt-out by default. By this, I mean that if a site does not appear in any of your subscribed lists, it gets blocked. Unfortunately, this is the only real way (short of analyzing content in real-time) to ensure that various types of web spammers, particularly pornographers, can't fo an end-run around the filtering. Note that I don't think this should be the only mode of operation; just that the default settings should be "disallow access unless approved by me or someone I have decided to trust".
What happens when junior needs to do a research paper on 18th century mosques with the "default" mode?
The internet/www which is a great research tool suddenly becomes useless without a user with permission to do the list editing. However if you give junior the ability to do editing then you have defeated the point of filtering. Also it would be difficult to find a list that would cover possible research items.
Maybe one of the modes of operation should be that unlisted sites are loged, as a link/thumbnail (thumbnail for the lazy). That way a parent could review the list later and talk to junior if necessary about what they are doing on the net
If anyone is actually interested in doing something like this I sure you could get a lot of support. It's a greay project, and not controlled by a bunch or corporate morons that you don't know.
AOL's new policy nightmare (Score:2)
What kind of policy will govern the board that chooses sites to filter based on member nominations? The web contains a lot of perfectly inoffensive material that conservative Christian parents find objectionable.
What if a health information site contains a small amount of information on sexuality or medicinal herbs? It wouldn't exactly qualify as sex & drugs, and I can't imagine AOL filtering that. However, what about a Wiccan or Pagan site that contains the same information? I could see 10,000 well-organized Christian AOL members sending in their votes.
Re:Skynet anyone? (Score:2)
Re:The best filter is your own two eyes... (Score:2)
On a related note, did anyone see the AP story this weekend about banning dodgeball in schools? Yeah they mentioned Columbine. Jesus. When I was younger, we used to play dangerous versions of dodge ball. We threw shoes, rocks, bottles, 2x4's, and anything else we could get our hands on. It was a blast...and didn't make us dangerous to society.
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"Fuck your mama."
query (Score:3)
Does anyone know what end user sees when a site is blocked by AOL? For example, if my parents are being over-protective and I want to look at some nudity, what message do I see when I try? "Sorry, your parents don't want you to see this kind of thing" or "This site has been blocked?"
Also, was anyone confused by this line?:
"This (AOL filtering technology) is (only) that good," Nunberg said.
Should those parens be taken as brackets? If not, how would that have sounded in the interview? :)