Have you heard about the latest scandal that’s taking the technology sector by storm? Technology behemoth Facebook (NASDAQ:$FB) has apologized after Israeli police arrested a Palestinian man for a post saying “good morning” that its automatic-translation service wrongly translated as “hurt them” in English and “attack them” in Hebrew, reports Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
So, what happened? The Palestinian man is a construction worker near Jerusalem, reports The Guardian, and he posted a photo of himself last week in which he was resting against a bulldozer with the caption “yusbihuhum,” which translates as “good morning.”
After police were notified about the post, they arrested the man as there were worried he was planning a vehicle attack with the bulldozer. However, after the police realized the mistake, the man was released several hours later. According to Haaretz, before the man’s arrest, no Arabic-speaking office had read the Facebook post.
Currently, Facebook is looking into the issue and Necip Fazil Ayan, who is an engineering manager in the company’s language technologies group, said to Gizmodo that although mistakes happen, Facebook’s translations are getting better each and every day. “Unfortunately, our translation systems made an error last week that misinterpreted what this individual posted. We apologize to him and his family for the mistake and the disruption this caused.”
For those who don’t know, Facebook’s translations are powered by AI, and roughly 4.5 billion translations are made each day across the network.
Featured Image: depositphotos/Mactrunk
