#frAIday: AI moderators and human contextuality

#frAIday hybrid
This lecture will be held both on Zoom and in Samvetet at Umeå University. We will offer free lunch wraps - limited number available, so come in time to secure yours. Welcome!

Abstract
The increased societal importance of social media with an enormous amount of content being created and shared between users – and consequently – the increase in the power of platforms, has in recent years been met with attempts of tackling the problem through European regulations. This regulation, the Digital Services Act being the focal point in Europe, is aiming at creating safer spaces online and a more transparent experience for users of social media. In turn, this has increased the responsibilities of platforms with demands to remove harmful or illegal content rapidly. As a result, this has created a situation where social media platforms, especially very large platforms, will need to use automated moderation technologies to successfully moderate an almost unimaginable amount of potentially harmful content in a limited timeframe. Not only can automated systems handle considerably more content, and do it faster than human moderators could, it can also ease the burden that human moderators face when being exposed to disturbing content. However, humans can make complex contextualized decisions and understand aspects like underlying intent or cultural circumstances, preventing undue restrictions in content and infringement of users’ freedom of expression.

This talk circles around the complexity of automated content moderation on social media platforms, and to what extent this growing web of regulation allow or demand AI moderation, in relation to human content moderation.