Google AI expert: Facebook is used for 'psychological control'

A Google artificial intelligence (AI) expert believes Facebook can be used for "psychological control" and says researchers who want to work for the social media giant should "show some conscience" and abandon the platform. François Chollet, a software engineer who specializes in deep-learning algorithms, said in a series of tweets published that internet users should now strive towards technology products "that are the anti-Facebook." "The problem with Facebook is not just the loss of your privacy and the fact that it can be used as a totalitarian panopticon," he wrote. "The more worrying issue … is its use of digital information consumption as a psychological control vector." He spoke out in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal in which an app developer allegedly harvested the Facebook account information of 50 million users for use in targeted political campaigns.