Fighting Extremism and Harrassment

During her talk on security, Yasmin Green identifies the problems and dangers of the Internet, while offering tech-based solutions that incorporate machine learning and human understanding. The speaker is the director of research and development at Jigsaw — a company that is supported by Google and whose mission is to provide solutions for global safety and propaganda challenges.

The talk on security focuses on two main issues that have become more efficient with the digitalization of the world. The first one is terrorism. Yasmin Green advocates that technology can be a helpful tool in countering the manipulative recruitment strategies of violent extremists. She identifies them as a group of people that have and know how to exploit the "insights into the prejudices [and] the vulnerabilities" of the public. The solution, however, is not only tech-based but it relies on understanding "the human journey at its core." Knowing that radicalization is a process, during which questions about "ideology, religion, living conditions" and so on arise, Yasmin Greene and her team partners with Moonshot CVE. The collaboration produces 'The Redirect Method.' When people inquire about joining dangerously extremist groups like ISIS, the search engine will give them a suggested advertisement of a YouTube video that counters the propagandistic message with an authentic answer through a first-hand observer, for example.

The talk on security also highlights the second problem — online harassment. Yasmin Greene and her team built machine-learning models that have the capabilities of understanding the emotional impact of language. The first-generation is called 'Perspectives' and it is responsible for the increase of New York Times' space for online conversation. Although the project has long ways to go in terms of development, Yasmin Green's talk on security makes it sound extremely promising.