Tag: facebook

Zuckerberg said, recent videos including the horrific video of a man killing himself and his 11-month-old daughter in Thailand was “heartbreaking,” Just last week, we got a report that someone on Facebook Live was considering suicide, “We immediately reached out to law enforcement, and they were able to prevent him from hurting himself.”

In a Facebook post-Wednesday, said the company will add 3,000 people to its community operations team around the world in addition to the 4,500 it employs today to review “the millions of reports we get every week and improve the process for doing it quickly,”

“If we’re going to build a safe community, we need to respond quickly. We’re working to make these videos easier to report so we can take the right action sooner — whether that’s responding quickly when someone needs help or taking a post down.”

In his Facebook post announcing the move, Zuckerberg acknowledged the recent string of violent videos that have raised questions about the company’s moderation practices:

Over the last few weeks, we’ve seen people hurting themselves and others on Facebook—either live or in a video posted later. It’s heartbreaking, and I’ve been reflecting on how we can do better for our community.

Two videos of a Thai man killing his 11-month-old daughter in April were available for 24 hours before being removed and were viewed over 370,000 times. 

Facebook’s chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg said: “Keeping people safe is our top priority. We won’t stop until we get it right.”

Zuckerberg said Facebook workers review “millions of reports” every week. In addition to removing videos of crime or getting help for people who might hurt themselves, he said the reviewers will “help us get better at removing things we don’t allow on Facebook like hate speech and child exploitation.”

There have been many horrifying incidents in recent months that were posted on Facebook. An Alabama man committed suicide on Facebook live last month, there were three Facebook Live-related suicides, including a 14-year-old girl in Miami who took her own life. On Easter Sunday, Cleveland man uploaded a clip showing himself shooting and killing a random 74-year-old man on the street.

Wednesday’s announcement is a clear sign that Facebook continues to need human reviewers to monitor content, even as it tries to outsource some of the work to software due in part to its sheer size and the volume of stuff people post.

Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook fame had purchased a 700-acre tract of beachfront land on the Hawaiian island of Kauai in 2014 for over $100 million with the intention of creating a private getaway for his family.

Small plots of the 700 acres of land in question are occupied by hundreds of local Hawaiian families handed down over generations as reported by the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.

Fourteen plots of over 8 acres of land are the disputed areas as they, allegedly, infringe on the tech billionaire’s private property. Last month Zuckerberg’s legal team started filing lawsuits against these plot owners, including some who are not alive anymore.

According to the Honolulu Star Advertizer, “Three Zuckerberg companies — Pilaa International LLC, Northshore Kalo LLC, and High Flyer LLC — filed eight quiet title lawsuits Dec. 30 in state Circuit Court on Kauai.”

A quiet title lawsuit basically means that a case is filed in a relevant court over ownership of disputed property.

In the Mark Zuckerberg case, the strategy adopted by his legal team is called the “quiet title and partition” lawsuit which requires the owners to sell their plots of disputed land to the highest bidder in a public auction.

Zuckerberg ordered a genealogical research in a bid to identify the owners of the 14 plots that traverse his property, who are supposed to be the descendants of the Kuleana farmers that were granted plots of land between 1850 and 1855. These owners also include descendants of those who purchased the disputed plots from the original farmers.

To clear up the controversies surrounding the lawsuits and the legal ownership, Mark Zuckerberg gave the following clarification in his Facebook post:

“The land is made up of a few properties. In each case, we worked with the majority owners of each property and reached a deal they thought was fair and wanted to make on their own.

“As with most transactions, the majority owners have the right to sell their land if they want, but we need to make sure smaller partial owners get paid for their fair share too.”

He goes on to explain in his post that the purpose of his lawsuits was not to deprive anybody of their rightful share and it was a fair deal because many owners who had a quarter to one percent entitlement on the land didn’t even know about their rights to ownership.

The lawsuits, he explains, were intended to identify the descendants of these part owners so that they could get their fair share of the sale amount.

“To find all these partial owners so we can pay them their fair share, we filed what is called a ‘quiet title’ action. For most of these folks, they will now receive money for something they never even knew they had. No one will be forced off the land.” He guaranteed in the post.

Seventy-two- year- old Carlos Andrade, a retired University of Hawaii professor in Hawaiian studies and one of the 300 descendants of Manuel Rapozo who had purchased four plots of land totaling about 2 acres, is helping Zuckerberg in identifying these descendants as a co-plaintiff.

According to Andrade, he is supporting Mark Zuckerberg in the case to ensure that his family property is not lost to the county. However, the expenditure involved in documenting Manuel Rapozo’s family tree and identifying what percentage of ownership was entitled to whom is one of the major issues he faces among others.

Mark Zuckerberg is known for setting a personal challenge for himself at the beginning of each year with the intent to accomplish it before the year ends and set a new personal challenge for the following year.

His personal challenge for 2017 in his own words was “to have visited and met people in every state in the US by the end of the year,” a statement which has given rise to speculations about his political ambitions.

“My work is about connecting the world and giving everyone a voice. I want to personally hear more of those voices this year.”

Well, his personal challenge for this year began with a trip to Dallas on Monday, January 16, 2017 – the starting point of his intended visit to 30 states, he hasn’t been to before, by the end of 2017.

His Dallas agenda was a combination of work and philanthropy. In his, Facebook post-Zuckerberg wrote, “The first state I’m visiting this year is Texas. I’m here in Dallas for work, but I’m also taking time to meet members of our Texas community over the next few days as part of my Year of Travel challenge.”

According to his post, he spent Monday with members of the Oak Cliff community “planting a garden.” It was to mark the community’s “Day of Service” in honor of Martin Luther King Jr.

Zuckerberg referred to Oak Cliff as a “food desert” and the garden he and the community members worked on was “going to be a source of fresh fruits and vegetables for the community.”

Another agendum on his “service project” was interacting with some students from the TAG Magnet School in Oak Cliff, “one of the best public high schools in the country,” feels Mark Zuckerberg.

He seemed to be happy and impressed with the fact that computer science was a mandatory subject for every freshman at the TAG Magnet School.

“Every freshman at TAG is required to take computer science, and some of the students I talked to have already gotten into schools like MIT.”

He expressed his gratitude in his FB post to all the members of the community for sharing their experiences and to Taylor Toynes, especially, who has been a teacher at the W W Bushman Elementary School since August 2014 and is also a Community Impact Associate at Commit team, for inviting him.

“Service events like this are a great reflection of Dr. King’s spirit and his life’s work. And thanks to all of you who participated in a Day of Service in your community,” he added in his post honoring the work of Martin Luther King Jr.

Zuckerberg made it a point to include a visit to the Dallas Police Department in his “service project” agenda where he met with officers and exchanged views on how social media was impacting law enforcement.

“The officers had good ideas for how we can help them connect with their communities to keep people safe, and I’ll be taking a lot of them back to our teams.” Zuckerberg wrote in an earlier post.

Taylor Toynes, who was host to Zuckerberg, wrote on his Facebook post “Today one of the richest men in the world walked one of the most poverty-stricken neighbourhoods in the city of Dallas.” He took the opportunity to thank Mark Zuckerberg and the Facebook team for taking time out to be there; however, he did not hesitate to add that “there is still much work to do.”

By choosing Dallas as the starting point of his 2017 “personal challenge,” Zuckerberg has killed two birds with a single stone, as, Tuesday, he has to testify in Dallas on a $2 billion lawsuit against him accusing him of obtaining the Oculus VR Company in 2014 on stolen technology.

The reports about a restriction of two years on Mark Zuckerberg serving as a government functionary while remaining with Facebook, which he founded, was a misinterpretation of the STATES SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION (SEC) documents.

Therefore, the apprehensions that had been circulating for a while that Mark Zuckerberg may have to quit Facebook to serve in the U.S. Government for an indefinite period of time has been laid to rest.

The question (Will Zuckerberg have to quit Facebook to serve in United States government?) has been answered with proper reference to the United States STATES SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION (SEC) documents.

A close and detailed scrutiny of the SEC documents by experts reveals that Zuckerberg has to fulfil only one of these two mandatory requirements below:

a. He needs to own enough Facebook stock – OR
b. Have the Facebook Board of Directors’ authorization (approval) to serve in the government

The third scenario would be to serve in the government for only two years should he fail or desist from meeting one of the two requirements for a life term government service – well, nobody would believe that Zuckerberg would be thrilled with the third option at his disposal.

In an earlier story on our website timelybuzz.com, titled “Mark Zuckerberg Builds AI Assistant for Home and Family” we had spoken about that particular achievement as one of his yearly resolves which he makes as a challenge to himself at the start of every year.

This is what he wrote on his Facebook post on Tuesday:

“Every year I take on a personal challenge to learn new things and grow outside of my work. In recent years, I’ve run 365 miles, built a simple AI for my home, read 25 books and learned Mandarin.

My personal challenge for 2017 is to have visited and met people in every state in the US by the end of the year.”

Now, the idea of resolving to meet people of every state in the U.S. in 2017 reflects his political ambitions, as interpreted by many.

Now, with the two-year-time-limit dilemma out of the way, is his FB post a not-so-subtle hint about his political dreams? Well, most speculate that it probably is!

The inadvertent, hopefully, misreporting or rather the misinterpretation of the SEC by publications such as Fortune, Vanity Fair, The Guardian, and TechCrunch may have risen from the court findings of the text messages exchanged between Zuckerberg and Andreessen.

The messages talk about a debate on the two-year limit with no mention of the other two, more feasible, alternatives available. TechCrunch, however, has acknowledged the discrepancy and issued a correction.

Coming back to Mark Zuckerberg’s political ambitions, the challenge he has set for himself to meet people from all states, “My work is about connecting the world and giving everyone a voice. I want to personally hear more of those voices this year.”

Sounds like a politically motivated challenge he has set for himself in 2017 – and why not? The United States is a free country and Mark Zuckerberg is no ordinary personality.

You can read Zuckerberg’s full post on Facebook, if you haven’t already, and judge for yourself.

As far as the writer’s opinion is concerned, and I am sure many would agree, it is not a bad idea at all to have a talent like Mark Zuckerberg in the government.

However, it’s not going to be an easy job to earn the faith of the people who still have the fake news scandal fresh in their minds – but Mark Zuckerberg has proved that he thrives on challenges and he has the talent and wherewithal to meet his 2017 resolution.

The massive philanthropy initiatives he has taken along with his wife Priscilla Chan and her foundation, the “Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative”, show that he has a genuine concern for people.

He has all the requisites to be as successful in government as he has been in his various ventures.

Over the years we have seen quite a few examples of science fiction of the past, also termed ‘future shocks’ by many, become the reality of the present, Artificial Intelligence included.

To put it in layman’s terms Artificial Intelligence is the creation of computer hardware and software that are capable of intelligent behaviour and can be programmed to mimic human intelligence like “learning” and “problem-solving.”

While Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become an indispensable element in modern day technology, especially in the 21st century, the concept has been around for some time now.

However, like with many other technological realities of today, the successful creation and deployment of Artificial Intelligence has experienced its share of setbacks as well, its trials and travails can be traced as far back as the 1950s, or maybe even earlier.

In modern times Artificial Intelligence has been successfully integrated into many technologies like understanding human speech, gaming technologies, self-driving cars, to name a few – and ongoing research can and will find many other uses of this amazing technology.

Back in January Mark Zuckerberg made public his plan of coding a program with the help of Artificial Intelligence to perform basic day to day tasks for his home and family.

On January 4, 2016, Facebook post, Zuckerberg wrote:

“My personal challenge for 2016 is to build a simple AI to run my home and help me with my work. You can think of it kind of like Jarvis in Iron Man”

In the Marvel-Comics- based Iron Man films franchise, Jarvis is the stylized form of J.A.R.V.I.S the acronym for “Just a Rather Very Intelligent System.

“I’ll start teaching it to understand my voice to control everything in our home — music, lights, temperature and so on. I’ll teach it to let friends in by looking at their faces when they ring the doorbell. I’ll teach it to let me know if anything is going on in Max’s [Maxima Chan-Zuckerberg, his daughter] room that I need to check on when I’m not with her.” He continued in his January post.

“This should be a fun intellectual challenge to code this for myself. I’m looking forward to sharing what I learn over the course of the year,” he concluded.

With the year nearing its end, the challenge he had set for himself has been realized with some degree of success as there is always further work involved to make such projects work at the optimum – some more tweaks and fine tuning, one would suppose, to make a perfect AI home assistant.

Daniel Terdiman, a San Francisco-based tech journalist with almost 2 decades of experience behind him, writes on fastcompany.com:

Mark Zuckerberg’s ‘Jarvis’

“Zuckerberg has always enjoyed what he calls the “deterministic” nature of engineering—the element of being able to sit down and build something that does exactly what you want it to do.”

He goes on to say, “Often, Zuckerberg told me, he emerges from a coding session feeling much like he does when he studies Mandarin, the language he learned as his 2010 challenge. He feels like his brain is activated, on fire.”

Talking about the goal he had set for himself at the start of 2016, Zuckerberg writes in his December 19, post:

“So far this year, I’ve built a simple AI that I can talk to on my phone and computer, that can control my home, including lights, temperature, appliances, music and security, that learns my tastes and patterns, that can learn new words and concepts, and that can even entertain Max. It uses several artificial intelligence techniques, including natural language processing, speech recognition, face recognition, and reinforcement learning, written in Python, PHP and Objective C. In this note, I’ll explain what I built and what I learned along the way.”

He goes on to explain the technical aspects of his personal 2016 challenge of building the Artificial Intelligence assistant which he compares to Jarvis of Iron Man fame under the following headings:

* Getting Started: Connecting the Home
* Natural Language
* Vision and Face Recognition
* Messenger Bot
* Voice and Speech Recognition
* Facebook Engineering Environment
* Next Steps
* Conclusions

To know more about the points above refer to his post on Facebook.

However, world-renowned theoretical physicist Prof Stephen Hawking, one of Britain’s pre-eminent scientists, told the BBC: “The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.”

Well, if he were to be believed, it’s a very scary prediction indeed for the human race