Tag Archives: facebook ai

Giveaway Winner, Sneak Peaks and Other Exciting Stuff

In the excitement of the holiday weekend, Black Friday sales activities and other distractions, I forgot to draw the winner of the Make Wall Quilts e-book.  This morning, using my scientifically random system of drawing names ( Hey Julia, what is a number between 1 and 42?), Nancy was selected as the winner of the book.  Nancy, I hope you enjoy it and make some fun projects with it!  Remember, if you want a copy of the book – it is a bargain on Amazon. Truly – only $2.56 for the hard copy of the book.  Great gift for yourself or your quilty friends!

Now that business has been taken care of, want a peak at the quilt I am making?  Sarah Goer is a talented quilter, pattern designer, and blogger. We both started our blogs at roughly the same time and became friends at that time.  This is the second time I have pattern tested for her and I really enjoy it.  Before having children she was a math teacher at the junior high school level.  I think this gives her a great background for pattern writing.  An affinity for math and puzzles gives her the skills to write a clean, well understood pattern.   For now though, this is all I am going to say!  Here is a look at what I am working on.

I asked for opinions on color choices on Facebook and Instagram about a week ago and got lots of feedback.  This blue and yellow combo was quite popular and I am very happy with the look so far!

Finally, I was reading the news this morning and saw an article about Facebook that caught my eye.  Facebook gets a bad reputation from the way fake news is often generated, hysteria builds based on ridiculous, irresponsible posting, the cyber-bullying that occurs etc.  Much of this is due to poor decision making on the part of the Facebook user community as well as lack of parental monitoring of the youth that use social media.  When Facebook introduced live video options last year some really disturbing videos were posted. In response to this, Facebook hired a large team (3,000+ employees) to monitor the videos for harmful content or intent.  For quite a while now, they have monitored text for any disturbing conversation that may indicate children and potentially abusive adults (sexual predators)  They will notify authorities when suspicious text is found.

Now Facebook has expanded their use of Artificial Intelligence to scan posts for text that indicates possible suicidal tendencies.  When such information is picked up, there is a team of interventionists ready to contact the person posting as well as persons who may have responded to the posts with supportive information such as suicide hot line phone numbers and other resources which may be able to assist.  Realizing that this sort of intervention has to happen quickly, Facebook has trained employees available at any hour to speak with authorities in the language of their country if something suspect is found.

Facebook is a powerful social media platform with over two billion users.  Many would say Facebook noses around where they shouldn’t.  That they push annoying ads targeted at users and monitor conversations to be able to do so.  However, it is my belief that people using Facebook are making a decision to be posting on a highly monitored platform and thus making their lives somewhat public.  I think it is a good thing to know that the company uses the tools they have to try to protect the safety of the users. I am curious to hear your thoughts on this. To me it shows a very responsible use of the incredibly powerful technology developed by Facebook.

Off to the sewing room!  I want to make some good progress on the baby quilt I am making with Sarah’s pattern.  Hope everyone is carving out a little creative time in their day.

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