海角大神

"A good conscience is a continual Christmas,鈥� Benjamin Franklin once wrote. Wouldn鈥檛 he be surprised to learn that as we near that very holiday Facebook鈥檚 Artificial Intelligence Research lab has revealed it鈥檚 working on a new program that could serve as users鈥� digital conscience.

Those who follow sociology and social media may find plenty of fodder for debate in this new revelation from the social media giant over the pros and cons of automating the function of a conscience in the digital age.

According to Wired Magazine, Yann LeCun, head of Facebook鈥檚聽AI lab, says he hopes to create a program that will analyze photos and other potential Facebook postings and evaluate whether they might cause poster鈥檚 remorse the morning after.

鈥淚magine that you had an intelligent digital assistant which would mediate your interaction with your friends,鈥� he says, 鈥渁nd also with content on Facebook.鈥�

The app would look at what users upload and say 鈥淯h, this is being posted publicly. Are you sure you want your boss and your mother to see this?鈥欌�澛燣eCun told the magazine.

Formally, a conscience is defined in Webster鈥檚 Dictionary as 鈥渁 knowledge or sense of right and wrong with an urge to do right.鈥�

It鈥檚 not the first time a non-human entity has been offered by a big corporation to act as a conscience and guide. Last time it was Disney offering up Jiminy Cricket talking to the wayward puppet Pinocchio.

Now, however, the social media giant is confident that many users will, as the cricket once sang to the little wooden boy, 鈥淕ive a little whistle鈥� and always let their digital conscience be their guide in what to post.

Some may reel at the thought that Facebook users are puppets willing to add yet another string in the form of an app that will stop you from posting revealing photos or speaking your mind in a semi-public forum.

It鈥檚 also not the first time such pre-emptive technology has been implemented.

According to an article in The Guardian, Gmail聽launched a feature聽back in 2008 asking weekend-evening users to answer a string of simple math problems before sending an email.

That was an effort to deter those too impaired to make calculations from sending off emails they might regret in the sober light of day.

However this new program would entail the use of 鈥渄eep learning,鈥� a focus of research at both Facebook and Google,.

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word conscience comes from the Latin聽conscientia聽"knowledge within oneself, sense of right, a moral sense," from聽com-聽"with," or "thoroughly" +聽scire聽"to know" 鈥� literally the word stems from "with-knowledge."

That is what Facebook, Google and others seeking to recreate: the conscience outside of a human being hang their hats on 鈥� knowledge in the form of lots of data in an algorithm.

Fans of the original Jurassic Park film may hear the voice of the skeptical scientist character Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) voicing his concerns over giving the human conscience a digital cruch, as being just as potentially socially hazardous as bringing back dinosaurs.

Malcolm famously told the fictional character of empire-builder John Hammond, 鈥渂efore you even knew what you had, you patented it, and packaged it 鈥�but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should.鈥�

Time will tell if Facebook鈥檚 developers are doing humanity a service or creating a monster.