Social media platforms are using AI to serve their users. Know what they are doing

Artificial intelligence holds the potential to change every industry around the world. We are witnessing mass digital transformations and the adoption of AI and machine learning technologies to accelerate the growth of the business and boost customer satisfaction.

We can train these technologies to leverage individual behavioral patterns, preferences, beliefs, and interests to personalize customer experiences. This data becomes fuel for the AI systems to draw insights to make increasingly relevant predictions and curate strategies to prevent impending business risks and financial losses.

The popularity of artificial intelligence has grown so much that currently, it has become a chief component of social media platforms. Top social media platforms like Facebook, Snapchat, and Twitter are reaping the benefits of artificial intelligence. Introducing voice bots, identifying visuals, enhanced security, social media platforms are using AI, entirely under the discretion of the company that owns the platform. Even social media marketers have started using AI, machine learning, and automation technologies to boost their audience reach.

Let us look at some ways how top social media platforms are using AI for their benefits and to serve the customers.

Facebook:

Facebook Artificial Intelligence Researchers, also known as FAIR, have been working to analyze and develop AI systems with the intelligence level of a human. It will not only help advance artificial intelligence technologies but also help monitor malicious activities on the platform.

Facebook uses an artificial intelligence tool called the Deep Text to monitors the comments, posts, and other data generated on Facebook to understand how people use different languages, slangs, abbreviations, and exclamation marks, to learn the context. The company is also applying ML algorithms to build its automatic AI-based translation system to enable users from different parts of the world to translate the posts appearing in their news feed.

Facebook has also introduced chatbots in its application. It has also introduced artificial intelligence-based systems to thwart suicides.

Twitter:

One of the many ways Twitter uses AI in its platform is to understand what tweets recommendations to suggest on the users’ timelines. It aims to recommend the most relevant tweets to the users for an increased personalized experience. Twitter also uses artificial intelligence to fight against racist, homophobic, islamophobic, and other inappropriate remarks. In UK and Germany, the company has started levying fines to prevent hate speeches, fake news, and illegal content on the platform.

Twitter uses IBM Watson and natural language processing (NLP) to track and remove abusive messages. Watson is not only capable of understanding the natural language but also interferes with the tones in the messages and the meanings of different visuals, therefore, it can analyze millions of obscene and inappropriate messages in seconds.

Instagram:

Millions of people use Instagram as a means to share images, videos, and statuses with friends and families. Facebook-owned Instagram has also started implementing big data and artificial intelligence to enhance user experience, filter spam, and boost the results of target advertising. With the help of tags and trending information, the platform users can find photos of a particular activity, place, event, restaurants, food, and discovery experiences.

Recently, in a study, Instagram has used over 100 million photos available on the platform to learn more about global clothing patterns. Like any other social media platform, Instagram uses AI to fight against hate speeches and cyberbullying. It uses Deep Text to identify these messages and posts and remove them from the platform.

Snapchat:

Snapchat is using machine learning models and augmented reality technology, to superimpose digital animation on videos, like windshield wipers on an individual’s glass or droplets of water falling, and other feats like that. Snapchat’s AI engineers are training deep learning models to do things like intercepting hand gestures. These hand gesture models can then be imported to create other features using augmented reality.

The goal behind implementing artificial intelligence in the platform is to serve its enormous user base and enable these users to access these technologies easily.

Pinterest:

Machine learning is crucial for Pinterest’s core business. The platform serves tailored content to enhance user engagement and retain more customers. Without machine learning models, it would be possible for Pinterest to generate such data.

The platform dedicates most of its operations to the continuous iteration of the ML models. It not uses ML for pin recommendations but also uses it in their daily business operation, to run the business efficiently. These ML models are only good as long the users are actively spending time on the platform. The more data generated, the better recommendations the users will gain.

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Google’s platform — Google Developers Launchpad to help startups grow will now support social impact startups in India. The platform has partnered with startup accelerator Social Alpha to help such startups with mentorship, tools, and methodologies for growing businesses. The tie-up will help the incubator develop learning programmes for startups based on information from a select group of world’s leading accelerators, it said even as Social Alpha will also gain access to Google’s network and its experience in helping startups globally.

Social Alpha, which is supported by Tata Trusts claimed to be the first Indian accelerator to partner with the Google Developers Launchpad and become part of a network of independent accelerators across Latin America, Africa, Europe, and Asia. Google will not take equity in startups supported by this initiative.

“Google Developers Launchpad doesn’t take an equity stake in accelerator portfolio start-ups, but instead focuses on developing companies and their ecosystems over the long term,” said Kevin O’Toole, Head of International Growth for Launchpad, Google.

The startups in focus would be those having deep technologies including artificial intelligence and machine learning in their model to help them scale given the low resources they have along with customers who often are not able to afford their services.

Google and Social Alpha will also look for ways in which resources can be identified to offer customized support to startups with respect to the sector they operate in. 

The tie-up with Google with help Social Alpha in providing “access to world-class technologies especially in the areas of data science and machine learning,” said Manoj Kumar, Founder and CEO, Social Alpha.

Google recently announced names of startups to participate in its third batch of three-month acceleration programme — Google Launchpad Accelerator. The accelerator was launched in 2018 in India to offer support including cloud, UX, Android, web, product strategy and marketing, focusing on building AI and ML capabilities.

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Mason Grimshaw grew up on the Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation in South Dakota but moved to Rapid City during high school to pursue a better education. When it came time to apply to college, he hopped online, typed “best engineering schools” into Google, and applied to two places: MIT and his father’s alma mater, the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology. He was admitted to both, but when he got into the Institute, his father insisted that he go.

It wasn’t an easy decision, however. Grimshaw felt guilt about leaving his community, where he says that everyone helps each other get by. The move to Rapid City had been difficult enough for him, given that 90 percent of his family lived back at the reservation. Coming to Cambridge was an even bigger step, but his family encouraged him to take the opportunity.

“I didn’t really want to leave home, because that is such a strong community for me. I thought if I did leave, it was only going to be worth it if I could get the best education possible,” he says.

Now a graduate student at the MIT Sloan School of Management working toward a Master of Business Analytics (MBAn) degree, Grimshaw hopes to eventually bring the skills and knowledge he acquires at MIT back home to the reservation.

Looking at the big picture, Grimshaw has aspirations to bring programming to Rosebud. The ultimate dream would be to open a software or web development consulting firm where he could teach community members computer science skills that they could, in turn, teach others. He hopes that through this business, he can equip people in the community with enough technical skills to be able to sustain the company on their own without his help. It’s a long-term goal, but Grimshaw aims high.

Discovering data

After earning his bachelor’s in business analytics at MIT, Grimshaw saw the MBAn as a natural next step. The program teaches students to apply the techniques of data science, programming, machine learning, and optimization to come up with business solutions.

“Because I did it as an undergrad, I thought this stuff was so cool. You can kind of predict the future and help anyone make a better decision. If I was going to be that person to help people make decisions that are important and change people’s lives, I wanted to make sure that I was as prepared as possible,” Grimshaw says.

Surprisingly, Grimshaw did not touch a line of code before coming to MIT. In fact, he entered college intending to study mechanical engineering. But in his first year, his friend was having issues with an assignment for a computer science class, so he decided to help him take a crack at the problem.

The work was fun, Grimshaw says, and coding came naturally for him. Eventually, he dropped his mechanical engineering pursuits and started studying computer science. He later switched majors and applied his computer science education to business analytics.

As a part of his MBAn program, he must complete an analytics capstone project, in which students work with a sponsor organization to create data-driven solutions to specific problems. Grimshaw, along with his program partner Amal Rar, will be working with the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) this summer to make The Ride, MBTA’s door-to-door paratransit service, more efficient.

Bringing business to invisible places

Grimshaw is also currently assisting MIT Sloan Senior Lecturer Anjali Sastry in writing a case study for South African nonprofit RLabs. RLabs seeks to inspire hope by providing business training and consulting to underprivileged South African communities. Grimshaw liked the organization’s mission, and he hopes that working on the RLabs case could give him some ideas about how to bring hope and innovation to his own community back home.

The nonprofit has, in part, inspired some of Grimshaw’s future aspirations for Rosebud. It has also gotten him to think about alternative ways to invest in or give back to communities that don’t necessarily focus on money. Some people, he says, need a place to stay or food more immediately than they need money.

Evaluating those circumstances and developing business models that address those more immediate needs as a form of payment can be a unique alternative to traditional compensation. Grimshaw stresses that monetary compensation is still important, but that being responsive to the specific areas of need within a community also has value.

“There’s a fine line. You can’t just say, ‘These people have nothing so they should just be happy to have a roof over their heads.’ I’m certainly not trying to do that, but there’s a difference in values and in what people place value on. Using that to make your business a little more sustainable is interesting,” Grimshaw says.

The reservation that Grimshaw is from lies within Todd County, an area that was previously listed as one of the poorest in America. He hopes to demonstrate to businesses that it is possible and worthwhile to invest in overlooked areas. He says that a lot of case studies in his field don’t feature stories from the emerging world or rural areas. He wants to show that through creative thinking and problem-solving, companies can work in these places, create jobs, and help lift people out of poverty.

Family forward

Outside of his studies, Grimshaw mostly spends time with his wife and 5-month-old son, Augustine. His face lights up as he speaks about them.

His wife, Julia, also has a passion for helping people and works as the assistant activities director at Hale House, an assisted senior living facility in Boston. The two of them grew up together and hope to move their family closer to home after Grimshaw finishes his MBAn. For now, their favorite things to do in Boston are going to the Public Gardens (Augustine loves the grass, Grimshaw says), getting a bite at Tasty Burger in Fenway, and watching the “Great British Bake Off” at home.

He also continues to participate in the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES), which he joined as an undergraduate. There were very few members when he arrived at MIT in 2014, and while the number is still small, Grimshaw is enthusiastic about its growth.

“It was pretty cool because when I came here there were four, and on a good day five, of us. I still go to meetings. As I go now, there’s always 10 people, sometimes up to 12 or 15, and it’s awesome to see how much it’s growing,” he says.

While most people going into his field may opt for Silicon Valley or somewhere else on the coasts, Grimshaw would rather take his skill set closer to home. He won’t necessarily move back to Rosebud itself; somewhere within a reasonable driving-distance is more likely. He’s thinking about Denver, with its up-and-coming tech scene, but nothing is set in stone. Wherever he ends up, if a company is interested in helping others through data, Mason Grimshaw is here to help.

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