Say Hello To Google’s AI-Powered Internet Justice League

Google is waging war on internet trolls.

A small subsidiary of the tech giant, called Jigsaw, is looking to take an approach to combating hate speech and online harassment powered by artificial intelligence.

The group, which acts as Google’s own Justice League, is committed to using technology to actually make the world a safer place. As Wired reported on Monday (Sept. 19), Jigsaw will soon release a set of tools called Conversation AI — software that will use machine learning to automatically identify abusive or harassing language.

Jigsaw engineers said the accuracy of the AI technology is better than any team of human moderators or keyword filters.

“I want to use the best technology we have at our disposal to begin to take on trolling and other nefarious tactics that give hostile voices disproportionate weight,” Jigsaw Founder and President Jared Cohen told Wired. “To do everything we can to level the playing field.”

The think tank and tech incubator utilizes Google’s infrastructure and engineering resources to help fix what can be described as the worst parts of the internet — surveillance, extremist indoctrination, censorship.

As Wired explained it, Jigsaw faces the difficult challenge of using artificial intelligence to make people behave nicely on the internet.

But Conversation AI is just one of the projects Jigsaw is using to address its lofty challenges. A Chrome add-on called Password Alert is designed to help block phishing by warning people when they are entering their Gmail password into malicious websites.

Cohen said the common thread that ties together all of Jigsaw’s projects is a focus on “vulnerable populations.”

“We are not going to be one of those groups that sits in our offices and imagines what vulnerable populations around the world are experiencing,” Cohen said. “We’re going to get to know our users. Every single day, I want us to feel the burden of the responsibility we’re shouldering.”