How Facebook Is Using Artificial Intelligence To Control Your Behaviour

Have you watched i-Robot or Resident Evil, if yes, then you would have an inkling of what Artificial Intelligence is about, but what you might not now is that Facebook is using AI to govern behaviour and yours too. 

The theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks normally requiring human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages is called Artificial intelligence(AI).

In computer science, artificial intelligence, sometimes called machine intelligence, is intelligence demonstrated by machines, in contrast to the natural intelligence displayed by

humans and animals. Wikipedia

Artificial intelligence uses machine learning to mimic human intelligence. The computer has to learn how to respond to certain actions, so it uses algorithms and historical data to create something called a propensity model. Propensity models will then start making predictions (like scoring leads or something).

Predictive analytics is a category of data analytics aimed at making predictions about future outcomes based on historical data and analytics techniques such as statistical modeling and machine learning. The science of predictive analytics can generate future insights with a significant degree of precision.

So, the main difference is that AI is just “broader” than predictive analytics. Predictive analytics tends to analyze historical data and predict the outcomes or give recommendations that can help business owners to improve service, while AI can perform a much wider range of functions.

Why is predictive analytics important?

Predictive Analytics offers a unique opportunity to identify future trends and allows organizations to act upon them. As Dr. Siegel states, data is the “collective experience of an organization” and building machines that can harness such data in order to find patterns that hold true in new situations is important.Sep 9, 2013

Facebook As A Case Study

A document, described as “confidential,” outlines a new advertising service that expands how the social network sells corporations’ access to its users and their lives: Instead of merely offering advertisers the ability to target people based on demographics and consumer preferences, Facebook instead offers the ability to target them based on how they will behave, what they will buy, and what they will think. These capabilities are the fruits of a self-improving, artificial intelligence-powered prediction engine, first unveiled by Facebook in 2016 and dubbed “FBLearner Flow.”

From the above statement, it means FBLearner Flow, which is an Artificial Intelligence of Facebook is using "Predictive Analytics" to boost its Advertising prowess! 

One slide in the document touts Facebook’s ability to “predict future behavior,” allowing companies to target people on the basis of decisions they haven’t even made yet. This would, potentially, give third parties the opportunity to alter a consumer’s anticipated course. Here, Facebook explains how it can comb through its entire user base of over 2 billion individuals and produce millions of people who are “at risk” of jumping ship from one brand to a competitor. These individuals could then be targeted aggressively with advertising that could pre-empt and change their decision entirely — something Facebook calls “improved marketing efficiency.” This isn’t Facebook showing you Chevy ads because you’ve been reading about Ford all week — old hat in the online marketing world — rather Facebook using facts of your life to predict that in the near future, you’re going to get sick of your car. Facebook’s name for this service: “loyalty prediction.”

Think of how this would impact your world and your continent.

What is the downside of applying AI in Facebook?