Facebook is trying to get rid of bias in Trending news by getting rid of humans

Facebook will no longer employ humans to write descriptions for items in its Trending section, which attracted controversy over allegations of political bias in May. Topics appearing in the Trending section will now appear solely as a short phrase or single word, with an indication of the number of people discussing it on the social network.

Quartz confirmed from multiple sources that Facebook has laid off the entire editorial staff on the Trending team—15-18 workers contracted through a third party. The Trending team will now be staffed entirely by engineers, who will work to check that topics and articles surfaced by the algorithms are newsworthy.

Facebook maintains that trending items have always been selected by algorithms; the former editorial staff was only responsible for writing the story descriptions seen in the Trending section, according to the company. This was disputed by former contractors hired by the tech giant who told Gizmodo in May that they were instructed to manually add some stories by hand. Stories on conservative topics were routinely excluded from the Trending list even though they were popular among Facebook users, Gizmodo reported.

Facebook investigated the claims and said it found “no evidence of systematic bias,” but that hasn’t stopped the company from making changes to the feature.

A new group of humans will still be involved with Trending, although they’ll be asked to focus on correcting the algorithm’s mistakes, like preventing mundane or repetitive stories from appearing as news, according to a Facebook blog post. The retooled Trending feature will now automatically pull excerpts from news articles, a feature that may force Facebook to compensate news publishers in the European Union in the future, under proposed new rules from the European commission.

According to sources, the Trending team’s editorial staff were alerted at 4pm that they were being fired—as the news of Facebook’s switch to algorithms first broke—and were asked to leave the building by 5pm. The contractors (all of whom were at the company less than 1.5 years) were given severance equal to pay through September 1, plus two weeks, sources say.

However, removing human writers from Trending doesn’t necessarily eliminate bias. Human bias can be embedded into algorithms, and extremely difficult to strip out. That’s one of the conclusions from a study (pdf) of a popular algorithm used for processing language from Princeton University and the University of Bath released as a draft yesterday (Aug. 25). It’s currently under review for publication in a journal.

“Language itself contains recoverable and accurate imprints of our historic biases,” the authors write. “Whether these are morally neutral as towards insects or flowers, problematic as towards race or gender, or even simply veridical, reflecting the status quo for the distribution of gender with respect to careers or first names.”

Facebook’s increased reliance on automation reflects the company’s growing faith in machine intelligence. But even machines may fail to overcome some the most fundamental problems that humans face, like operating fairly in the face of embedded bias.

As Gizmodo reported in May, Facebook’s primary reason for hiring human curators appeared to be to train their algorithms in what was newsworthy—and so it’s very likely their human biases were recorded and potentially amplified by the AI.

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Why you may want to wait for the Apple Watch 3

Bad news if you hoped Apple Watch 2 would be an independent device, as it appears the wearable will still depend on an iPhone to function, just like the original Apple Watch.

While Apple considered giving the new-and-improved Apple Watch the ability to communicate with cellular networks without being synced to another device, the technology was too great a drain on the battery.

That's not to say that Apple isn't taking any criticisms to heart, as the device is rumored to feature GPS location tracking - a boon for joggers and cyclists tired of lugging around their massive iPhone 6S Plus.

The Apple Watch 2 is also expected to have other improvements, including a thinner size, bigger battery, and a brighter Micro-LED display.

While it's disappointing that Apple Watch owners still might have to commit to keeping an iPhone on them, there's still plenty left for Apple Watch 2 to surprise us with when it's announced this fall.

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Apple’s Tim Cook declares augmented reality a ‘core technology’ for the company

Over the last few years, Microsoft has staked out an interest and position in augmented reality (AR) as opposed to virtual reality (VR). As the name implies, “augmented” reality is about showing the user additional information or cues over and above what they can see in the real world, while virtual reality is used to project an entirely different environment from wherever the user is actually standing. Microsoft’s HoloLens is one of the first high-profile AR headsets, while games like Pokemon Go have become smash hits in the real world thanks to the way they leverage augmented reality to project virtual Pokemon into every day life.

Apple has stayed out of either market to-date, but that may be about to change. In a recent interview with the Washington Post, Cook was asked what he thought of augmented or virtual reality. He responded:

I think AR [augmented reality] is extremely interesting and sort of a core technology. So, yes, it’s something we’re doing a lot of things on behind that curtain that we talked about.

What’s interesting about this isn’t the fact that Cook is aware of or interested in AR — plenty of companies undoubtedly are, especially after the success of Pokemon Go — but that he’d describe it as a core technology when Apple, to date, has done absolutely nothing with the feature.

Apple and interfaces

Apple’s greatest strength, historically, has been its ability to capture new interfaces and adapt them for easy use. Apple didn’t invent the mouse or the modern GUI, but it popularized both with its initial Mac 128K in 1984. The iPhone wasn’t the first smartphone or the first device with a touchscreen, but it was the first smartphone to treat touch as the primary means of interacting with a device without a need for a stylus or keypad.

Augmented reality has the potential to rewrite the rules of interface design like few products before it. AR has been a mainstay of science fiction for decades — a tricorder is an AR device with a sophisticated sensor package that can scan a local area for a wide range of measurements, then report those measurements back to the user. While Star Trek rarely showed precisely what the user saw as output, multiple Star Trek episodes feature the device being used to scan for a general anomaly before honing in and following it in a specific direction. Deep Space Nine established that the bridges of Jem’Hadar warships don’t have forward-facing viewscreens — they have wearable devices that project a heads-up display to each individual. While this isn’t exactly the same as AR technology, there’s nothing about the system that implies it can’t be used to communicate other information as well.

But — and this is key — in order for AR to become more than a minor feature, it’s going to have to evolve and grow up. This has significant ramifications for every aspect of system design (and a few for the real world as well). Pokemon Go already has a reputation as a battery killer, precisely because it leverages multiple sensors and devices within your smartphone at the same time.

We don’t know how Apple envisions its AR system working or whether its part of the company’s car project or if it would roll out on an iPhone. But integrating AR into software is difficult, and demonstrating its use case is even trickier. Niantic had a hit with Pokemon Go because it was able to trade on an established game franchise and use expertise gleaned from its previous AR title, Ingress. Any push to bring AR into the real world as a general use case will have to learn from previous high-profile attempts that have gone awry.

It’ll probably still be a few years before we start to see AR showing up in devices and software as a rule, but it’s not too early to plan for it — and Apple has good reason to try and position itself to catch that wave. That’s probably what Apple had in mind when it bought AR software developer Metaio last year as well as Media in January 2016.

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Hold your breath! Samsung has launched the Galaxy Note 7 in India

South Korean tech giant, Samsung has launched the Galaxy Note 7 smartphone in India. The phone, which was globally announced last week has been priced at Rs 59,900.

Samsung also launched the GearFit 2 fitness band and the icon X wireless earbuds along with the smartphone.

Pre-orders starts today and the phone will start shipping from September 2.

The Galaxy Note 7 is an annual celebration of the best Samsung has to offer. The Galaxy Note series has traditionally combined all the best features of the Galaxy line-up, along with the proprietary S-pen, Samsung's smart stylus.

The Galaxy Note 7 integrates tonnes of great features seen in the Galaxy S7 Edge, including the processor, RAM and the rear camera. But even with similar features under the hood, the Note 7 sits above the S7 and the S7 Edge in the Galaxy line up because of a superior display and enhanced privacy features.

With a 5.7-inch Quad HD screen, the Galaxy Note 7 maintains the phablet form factor. The Super AMOLED display also comes protected with the latest Corning Gorilla Glass 5. The screen is curved at the edges, but unlike the previous curved screens seen in the Note Edge 2 and S7 Edge, the metal body and glass bends together, giving it a 3D finish. This screen has also been rated by the folks at display mate as the best one ever, and it's also capable of playing back HDR video.

This is also the first Galaxy Note to come with IP68 dust and water resistant rating which makes the device waterproof over 1.5 metres and 30 minutes.

Under the hood, it's the same 64-bit Exynos 8890 octa-core processor we've seen in the S7 Edge and with 4GB of RAM.

The camera is also borrowed from the S7 Edge- the highly capable dual pixel 12-Megapixel rear camera with f/1.7 wide lens and smart optical image stabilization, phase detection auto focus and LED flash. The front camera is 5-megapixel with a f/1.7 wide angle lens.

The Galaxy Note 7 also packs some nifty security features. Apart from the fingerprint scanner, there is an iris sensor which scans your eyes to unlock the phone.

The S-pen too wasn't left behind. The S-pen is now thinner and more precise and thanks to the newly updated firmware, the S-pen can now magnify any content, translate written notes and make GIFs from any video in just a few simple taps. It's also water resistant.

The phone is also the first Samsung phone to feature a USB-Type C port which is backwards compatible with the older USB ports.

The battery on the Note 7 is a 3500mAh behemoth. Although its nothing close to the 5,000mAh smartphones that are in vogue this year, optimizations under the hood makes it last a day (almost).

As with all Samsung products, with great specs, comes a hefty price tag and the Galaxy Note 7 is rather expensive. But it's also premium as hell.

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