Facebook paid people to decrypt messenger voice chats

Facebook confirmed to Bloomberg that the contractors transcribed Messenger voice chats to determine

whether the AI ​​interpreted the messages correctly.

Why did they stop

The company reports that all data was anonymousand received exclusively from people who volunteered to decrypt. But despite this, more than a week ago it was necessary to suspend this practice.

The problem is the lack of transparency. Contractors from TaskUs were not told where the audio came from and why they transcribed it. As a result, some workers thought their work was “unethical,” especially when some conversations contained personal information.

As with voice assistants,there is concern that employees may listen to confidential information and potentially abuse it for their own purposes. The company has long faced accusations of eavesdropping phones for advertising purposes. And after a fine of $ 5 billion for violating privacy, Facebook probably did not want to risk further scrutiny by the government.

Why was it necessary

The challenge is to balanceconfidentiality with technical needs. There is still much room for improvement in AI decoding, and it’s hard to improve accuracy without good examples. If Facebook has to permanently end its program, the company will need to find another way to improve AI. Otherwise, he will remain at the same level as now.