Google to rely on AI and human oversight to help stop terrorists

Google, like all the other giant tech companies, are under pressure to help get rid of extremists’ online presence. And the tech giant’s response to this includes four steps to help flag and remove pro-terrorism content on its pages, especially on YouTube. One way is to rely on its machine learning tech that can automatically flag and take out terrorist videos. At the same time, it’ll keep up “innocently-posted” clips like news reports. Another way is to build on its counter-radicalization system, which will show anti-extremist ads to would-be terrorist recruits and pull ads from extremist videos.

But artificial intelligence won’t be enough, as Google acknowledges. The company intends to “greatly increase” the number of people who are part of its YouTube Trusted Flagger program to help find these terrorist material faster. The company is also working with anti-extremism groups to help get rid of recruiting-oriented content. Google even wants to take on videos on YouTube it sees as containing “inflammatory” religious or supremacist material. These will come with warnings and Google will stop them from getting ad revenue, viewing recommendations, and comments. Whether these measures will work is an entirely different story, but we appreciate the effort.

Japanese creatives get the spotlight in web documentary series

If you’re a fan of Japanese comics, video games, art, or design, then this ongoing web series might be something you’d want to check out. Called Toco Toco TV, this series has already featured many Japanese creatives in 10- to 20-minute documentary style interviews. Its latest video features director of Nier: Automata, Yoko Taro. The video delves deep into the game designer’s creative process and how his games feel a bit more offbeat and human than others. While the episodes are in Japanese, you can turn on subtitles for either English or French.

Source: The Verge

Automatic captioning system on YouTube now identifies sound effects

While limited, YouTube is venturing out of just automatically captioning what’s being spoken. Google’s technology is now able to caption three specific sounds: [LAUGHTER], [APPLAUSE], and [MUSIC]. YouTube concentrated on these three first because these are exactly the sounds most video producers manually caption in their clips. These three are considered to be “relatively unambiguous” as compared to the sounds lie [RING], which as Google engineer Sourish Chauduri points out, can refer to the ringing of a bell, alarm, or phone. If you’re curious about how the company managed to do so with its tech. You can read more about it in detail in this link. You can see it in action in the video embedded above. Just make sure to click the CC button to see the sound effect captioning system at work.

Review: 2016 Hyundai Sonata Hybrid

Text and Photos by Emily Chung

I’ll be honest, my complaint with the early generation Hybrid technology was that I never felt like I was driving a car… more like I was playing a video game. There wasn’t much response or feedback from the road. Well, the technology has come a long way and one of the first hybrids I ever road tested was the Hyundai Sonata Hybrid a few years ago. I was looking forward to having it again for a road test, and you know what? I really enjoyed my time with it!

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