INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Image copyrightRyan Lash/TEDImage caption
Yasmin Green wants to fight extremism with empathetic technology
The online methods used by Jihadist groups to recruit members and the way Google is countering them, have been revealed at the TED
(Technology, Entertainment and Design) conference.The research director of Alphabet-owned Jigsaw gave a talk outlining the tools the firm is
developing to ease extremist content and harassment.Google faces scrutiny over how it deals with both.It recently announced more human
moderators to remove such content.Yasmin Green revealed that an eight week trial which targeted those searching for Jihadist material on
Google with adverts and videos offering alternative views had reached 300,000 potential recruits.Jigsaw's Redirect Method provided links to
anti-extremist content including messages of peace from clerics, videos from Isis defectors and smartphone footage from those living in
Isis-controlled areas.Such links popped up when anyone typed a search enquiry about Jihadism into Google.Image copyrightPAImage caption
Google has pledged 10,000 more staff to deal with extremist content
Ms Green described the sophisticated ways
in which groups such as Isis recruit people online, including offering propaganda videos in many different languages."They had a video in
They took the time to make sure their message reached the hard-of-hearing," she said.Iranian-born Green said she had spent time in Iraq
meeting young people who had joined Isis and defected to better understand what motivated them."I talked to a 23-year-old who had trained as
a suicide bomber before he defected and I asked him if he had known everything that he now knows whether he would still have joined and he
said 'yes'"."He was so brainwashed that he wasn't taking in contradictory information."She also talked about the need to develop "empathetic
technology" to counter online abuse, which she said worked in a similar way to Jihadist propaganda."Online harassment also wants to work out
what resonates with another human being but not to recruit them, rather to cause them pain.""It is a perverse art of working out what makes
people angry or afraid and then pushing those pressure points."Perspective, a tool Jigsaw developed in partnership with Wikipedia and the
New York Times is an artificial intelligence system which is learning to better understand "the emotional impact of language" in order to
root out abuse.The tool has been criticised since it was launched with many pointing out that its ability to detect hate speech is
limited.According to Quartz, the online hate-speech detector rated "garbage truck" 78% toxic, while "race war now" was only found to be 24%
toxic.Despite the criticism, Ms Green remains convinced that such technology can provide a solution to "reinvigorate the spaces online that
most of us have given up on".
