Facebook uses artificial intelligence to prevent suicide

"A good way to use artificial intelligence: the prevention against suicide ", thus begins the post of the CEO of Facebook , Mark Zuckerberg, announcing the function that will allow to identify patterns that can coincide with suicidal intentions and thus allow, first to the platform and then to the local entities, to help those who may be thinking of ending their life. Related

Facebook has been working on these tools for years and now adds a new piece to the puzzle: artificial intelligence algorithms will be used to recognize dangerous behaviors and intervene to try to avoid acts of extreme self-harm.

How does the Facebook anti suicide function work?

The new anti-suicide function aims to quickly identify any farewell post and other content that could mean that a user is thinking about committing suicide.The system identifies patterns that denote an upset, even through the comments of other users .For example, attention is paid to the frequency of phrases such as "Are you okay?" or "How can I help you?".

Once the messages that can mark a dangerous pattern for the user have been identified, the system alerts human moderators to evaluate the possibility of sending resources to the person: messages with offers from User support, alerts to your friends or directly by contacting local entities able to intervene quickly.

For this, Facebook also is dedicating more moderators to suicide prevention tasks and trains them to deal with these cases 24 hours a day and 7 days a week, also in collaboration with partners places like Save.org and the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline and Forefront associations.

Facebook consulted experts on the subject to simplify the process and decided to add a system based on behavioral analysis to generate an automatic alert that will be sent to the prevention team.A indicator to establish the seriousness of the situation .

Facebook uses artificial intelligence to prevent suicide

Is it real philanthropy?

So Facebook confirms its new phase of social commitment, along with the fight against Fake News and porn-revenge.As Zuckerberg himself explained, with almost evangelical tones, all this will have a cost, but the new philanthropic dimension of the founder seems a fact.However, the skeptics suspect a marketing operation , to counter the accusations of 'danger', with respect to the numerous cases of cyberbullying.

On the other hand, the anti-suicide algorithm will be extended worldwide, except for the European Union , where personal data protection legislation makes unconditional access to publications and publications very difficult., especially, to contact friends or other people so they can intervene.

This has also led to the suspicion that Facebook's social mission is actually a weapon to weaken the new European General Data Protection Regulation, which will enter into force in May 2018, and that calls for greater transparency in the information collected not only by the giants of the network, but to companies of all sizes.Who would complain about the data collected, against whom is trying to save human lives?

The scope of the phenomenon

According to WHO, about 800,000 people die each year from suicide .The majority (78%) are located in low-income countries.Cases were calculated per 100,000 inhabitants and Available data indicate that the country with the lowest number of suicides is Saudi Arabia (0.4), followed by Syria (0.4), Kuwait (0, 9), Lebanon (0.9) , Oman (1) and Jamaica (1,2).The countries with the highest suicide rates are Guyana (44.2), North Korea (38.5), South Korea (28.9), Sri Lanka ( 28.8), Lithuania (28.2), Suriname (27.8) and Mozambique (27.4), followed by Nepal (24.9) and Tanzania (24.9).

In Europe, the countries with the lowest number of suicides are Azerbaijan (1.7), Armenia (2.9), Georgia (3.2), Greece (3.8), Tajikistan (4.2), Cyprus (4.7), Italy (4.7) and Spain ( 5.1 ).Those with the highest number are Lithuania (28.2), Kazakhstan (23.8), Turkmenistan (19.6), Hungary (19.1) and Belarus (18.3).In the United States, the rate increased of the 10.5 suicides per 100,000 people in 1999, at 14 in 2014, a growth of 24 percent.The figure marks an important change with respect to the nineties prior to the Internet, when suicides were in decline./p>

A plague among the youngest

However, the data are relatively valuable, especially for some countries, because, for cultural and religious reasons, suicides are not recorded.Suicides, moreover, are the second leading cause of death in the age group of between 15 and 29 years old , so online prevention can be very important, being the place where the intentions or discomfort of teenagers prone to suicide are very often manifested.

A study this year has identified on Instagram the practice by which, on the one hand, users express a concern and, on the other, the community reacts trying to run to the rescue.Therefore, the use of artificial intelligence For preventive purposes it is the next step to the natural response that many users already give and that Facebook is trying to integrate with existing tools.

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