Facebook’s latest acquisition is all about fighting fake news
The social network’s reported purchase of Bloomsbury AI will bring in a very specific kind of talent and expertise.
Some background: Automating online content moderation using AI remains a significant challenge. As we’ve said before, algorithms struggle to understand context and pick up on things like hate speech. Although Facebook is getting better at detecting it, the platform still has a long way to go.
The news: TechCrunch says that Facebook is coughing up between $23 million and $30 million primarily to acquire the UK-based startup’s employees. The company’s head of research, Sebastian Riedel, is among the leading lights in the field of natural-language processing and has experience fighting fake news. Facebook will apparently be applying the Bloomsbury team’s skills to combat inappropriate and false content on the platform.
Why it matters: Facebook’s willingness to spend tens of millions to get the staff that comes along with a company shows how tight the labor market in artificial intelligence has gotten. The Alphabet-owned firm DeepMind has also turned to UK startups as a source of AI specialists.
Keep Reading
Most Popular

Meta has built a massive new language AI—and it’s giving it away for free
Facebook’s parent company is inviting researchers to pore over and pick apart the flaws in its version of GPT-3

The gene-edited pig heart given to a dying patient was infected with a pig virus
The first transplant of a genetically-modified pig heart into a human may have ended prematurely because of a well-known—and avoidable—risk.

Saudi Arabia plans to spend $1 billion a year discovering treatments to slow aging
The oil kingdom fears that its population is aging at an accelerated rate and hopes to test drugs to reverse the problem. First up might be the diabetes drug metformin.

Yann LeCun has a bold new vision for the future of AI
One of the godfathers of deep learning pulls together old ideas to sketch out a fresh path for AI, but raises as many questions as he answers.
Stay connected

Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review
Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.