Scientists to combat anti-Semitism with artificial intelligence

An international team of scientists says it has joined forces to combat the spread of anti-Semitism online with the help of artificial intelligence.

The project Decoding Anti-Semitism includes discourse analysts, computational linguists and historians who will develop a “highly complex, AI-driven approach to identifying online anti-Semitism,” the Alfred Landecker Foundation, which supports the project, says in a statement.

“In order to prevent more and more users from becoming radicalized on the web, it is important to identify the real dimensions of anti-Semitism — also taking into account the implicit forms that might become more explicit over time,” says Matthias Becker, a linguist and project leader from the Technical University of Berlin.

Illustrative: Typing on a laptop (golubovy; iStock by Getty Images)

The team also includes researchers from King’s College in London and other scientific institutions in Europe and Israel.

Computers will help run through vast amounts of data and images that humans would not be able to assess because of their sheer quantity, the foundation said.

— AP