Pittsburgh Universities Unite To Fight Online Hate
By Michael Henninger
- University Communications and Marketing
- Email pkerwin@andrew.cmu.edu
- Phone 412-268-1151
In the back of the room, a red-digit countdown clock ticked off 180 seconds as Rachael Harris showed stakeholders at X Corp., formerly known as Twitter, that they could raise advertiser revenue by 1.85% by implementing a partially automated hate speech indicator.
Harris 鈥 a graduate student in 好色先生TV鈥檚 where she studies in the 鈥 wasn鈥檛 presenting to stakeholders at X. Rather, she was competing in , a hybrid policy and tech hackathon co-sponsored by five organizations across Duquesne University, the University of Pittsburgh and CMU. Harris鈥 proposal won runner-up in the policy category.
鈥淗acking4Humanity uniquely allows college students across Pittsburgh to learn, imagine and create new policies and technologies to combat online hate,鈥 said John Slattery, director of Grefenstette Center for Ethics at Duquesne, which co-sponsored the competition. 鈥淭he collaborative nature across all three universities ensures a wide reach, strong competition, and a unified spirit of innovation and change.鈥
Sienna Watkins, manager for the Center for Informed Democracy and Social - cybersecurity (IDeaS), another co-sponsor for the hackathon, said Pittsburgh was the right place for this kind of collaboration.
鈥淎ll these schools are identifying online hate as an emerging issue that we need to pay attention to and study,鈥 Watkins said. 鈥淪tudents are the early adopters of these kinds of technology. They鈥檙e on the forefront of being able to identify some of the weak spots in these platforms where hate can spread.鈥
Individuals and teams at the event to reduce bias in AI-generated images, combat doxxing and filter out hate speech using AI. Several presentations tackled the issue of hate speech in online gaming.
鈥淲e are exploring online hate in esports and gaming platforms. We鈥檙e looking at the types of racist, misogynistic and homophobic dialogue that occurs in these communications platforms. It鈥檚 very hurtful and detracts from people wanting to engage in these games,鈥 said Susan Baida, the executive director of the Collaboratory Against Hate, a joint research and action center of Pitt and CMU and event co-sponsor. 鈥淭his age group of students is very active online. And so they came up with some really incredible novel solutions.鈥
One student team from Carnegie Mellon presented 鈥淢ellon Talk,鈥 a program that uses AI and speech detection to automatically filter out profane or hateful speech in online gaming communities. The team comprised Lucia Han, a first-year student studying ; Andy Lee, a sophomore studying statistics and data science; and Chris Song, a first-year student studying information systems.
鈥淲e want to help provide a safe space for people to really enjoy gaming as a hobby and not worry about hateful speech and biases,鈥 Lee said.聽
The Mellon Talk team: Lucia Han, a first-year student studying electrical and computer engineering; Andy Lee, a sophomore studying statistics and data science; and Chris Song, a first-year student studying information systems.
Slattery said that Annie Newman, director of digital strategy for Gov. Josh Shapiro and one of the judges for this year鈥檚 Hacking4Humanity, invited the winners of the hackathon to Harrisburg in March to present their projects to members of the governor鈥檚 staff.
鈥満蒙壬鶷V is one of the top technology universities in the country. And Pittsburgh is an incredible tech hub, a go-to place for all things innovative,鈥 Baida said. 鈥淪o it absolutely makes sense that this is the place to fight hate.鈥澛