Artificial Intelligence, Extreme Speech, and the Challenges of Online Content Moderation

Sahana Udupa, Antonis Maronikolakis, Hinrich Schütze, Laura Csuka, Axel Wisiorek, Leah Nann

Abstract: Online extreme speech has emerged as a significant challenge for democratic societies worldwide. Governments, companies, and academic researchers have responded to this phenomenon by increasingly turning to Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a potential tool that can detect, decelerate, and remove online extreme speech. In this policy brief, we will outline the challenges facing AI-assisted content moderation efforts, and how the people centric collaborative coding framework proposed by the ERC Proof-of-Concept project “AI4Dignity” offers a way to address some of the pertinent issues concerning AI deployment for content moderation. We recommend that social media companies and governments should institutionalize the practice of reaching out to communities and bringing feedback to bear on the future development of AI-assisted content moderation. Collaborative models independent of corporate and government spaces also need to be fostered and supported.