Yahoo Management Judgment: Email and Porn Filters
October 7, 2016
Yahoo, under the unsteady hand of Xoogler Marissa Mayer, caught my attention again. I was going to point to the articles suggesting that Yahoo’s security breach permitted some fine folks to snag one billion users’ credentials.
Small fish.
I read “Yahoo, Reluctant to Disturb Users, Set Them Up for Huge Data Breach.” As I understand it, security was less important than protecting user credentials. I thought the Office of Personnel Management and Sony were all thumbs. Yahoo may be assembled from thumbs, purple ones at that.
Then I saw in one of my newsreaders this gem: “Yahoo Open-Sources a Deep Learning Model for Classifying Pornographic Images.” I understand classifying images. I also understand processing those classified as “pornography” as items to be filtered. Why release this example of Yahoo technology to open source now? I circled in passionate pink this statement:
Yahoo today announced its latest open-source release: a model that can figure out if images are specifically pornographic in nature.
The system uses a type of artificial intelligence called deep learning, which involves training artificial neural networks on lots of data (like dirty images) and getting them to make inferences about new data. The model that’s now available on GitHub under a BSD 2-Clause license comes pre-trained, so users only have to fine-tune it if they so choose. The model works with the widely used Caffe open source deep learning framework. The team trained the model using its now open source CaffeOnSpark system.
The new model could be interesting to look at for developers maintaining applications like Instagram and Pinterest that are keen to minimize smut. Search engine operators like Google and Microsoft might also want to check out what’s under the hood here.
“To the best of our knowledge, there is no open source model or algorithm for identifying NSFW images,” Yahoo research engineer Jay Mahadeokar and senior director of product management Gerry Pesavento wrote in a blog post.
These are two examples of Yahoo’s interesting approach to its priorities. Pushing security aside to keep Yahoo zippy and putting flawed code into open source for others to fix.
Nifty judgment. Yahoo cannot do security, and it appears it cannot code “smart” software.
Yahooooo! or Yahoot.
Stephen E Arnold, October 7, 2016
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