Artificial Intelligence Is Now Used To Track Down Hate Speech

Throughout the last decade, the U.S. has seen immense growth in frequent internet usage, as one-third of Americans say they're online constantly, while nine out of ten say they surf the web several times a week -- according to a March 2021 Pew Research poll. That immense surge in activity has helped people stay more connected to one another, but it's also allowed for the widespread proliferation and exposure of hate speech. One fix that social media companies and other online networks have relied on is artificial intelligence - to varying degrees of success. For companies with giant user bases, like Meta, artificial intelligence is a key, if not necessary tool for detecting hate speech -- as there are too many users and pieces of violative content to be reviewed by the thousands of human content moderators already employed by the company. AI can help alleviate that burden by scaling up or down to fill in those gaps based on new influxes of users.