"Google Is Teaching Their Ad Bots to Recognize 'Objectionable' Content"

Via Instapundit: If you're a big name advertiser, it stands to reason that you don't want to taint your brand by having it associated with racists or other vile people who populate so much of the internet. For Google, the largest internet advertising provider, this has been a serious problem. Now, they're trying to address it in order to put advertisers at ease...

Google engineers, product managers and policy wonks are trying to train computers to grasp the nuances of what makes certain videos objectionable. Advertisers may tolerate use of a racial epithet in a hip-hop video, for example, but may be horrified to see it used in a video from a racist skinhead group...

It's a justified concern for those brands. Unfortunately, it raises concerns in a different direction.

For example, a large portion of the criticism of President Obama was labeled as racist. How will that come into play? Will these computers be able to tell the difference between a video of a commentator who takes issue with affirmative action and a video of a Klan member railing against interracial marriage?

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