Facebook's AI suicide prevention tool can save lives, but the company won't say how it works

For many people who’ve dedicated their lives to preventing suicide, social media posts can be a precious dataset that contains hints about what people say and do before they attempt suicide.  

In the past few years, researchers have built algorithms to learn which words and emoji are associated with suicidal thoughts. They’ve even used social media posts to retrospectively predict the suicide deaths of certain Facebook users. 

SEE ALSO: How your brain responds to certain words might predict your suicide risk

Now Facebook itself has rolled out new artificial intelligence that can proactively identify heightened suicide risk and alert a team of human reviewers who are trained to reach out to a user contemplating fatal self-harm.  Read more…

More about Facebook, Artificial Intelligence, Social Good, Mental Health, and Social Media

from WebHits.io Blog http://blog.webhits.io/facebooks-ai-suicide-prevention-tool-can-save-lives-but-the-company-wont-say-how-it-works/