Mitigating prejudicial and abusive behavior online is no easy feat, given the level of toxicity in some communities. More than one in five respondents in a recent survey reported being subjected to physical threats, and nearly one in five experienced sexual harassment, stalking, or sustained harassment. Of those who experienced harassment, upwards of 20% said it was the result of their gender identity, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, occupation, or disability. In pursuit of a solution, Jigsaw -- the organization working under Google parent company Alphabet to tackle cyber bullying, censorship, disinformation, and other digital issues of the day -- today released what it claims is the largest public data set of comments and annotations with toxicity labels and identity labels. It's intended to help measure bias in AI comment classification systems, which Jigsaw and others have historically measured using synthetic data from template sentences.

President Barack Obama sees the government playing a role in the development of AI. In an interview with WIRED Editor-in-Chief Scott Dadich and MIT Media Lab director Joi Ito, President Obama said the government should facilitate a range of research in artificial intelligence. "The way I've been thinking about the regulatory structure as AI emerges is that, early in a technology, a thousand flowers should bloom," he says. "The government should add a relatively light touch, investing heavily in research and making sure there's a conversation between basic research and applied research." That means the government should help provide a path for getting AI into the real world.