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Facebook
F8 Conference Demos


        The following product concepts aim to showcase Facebook's work with AI in a way that aligns with their mission—make the world a more connected and open place. The themes we were tasked with focus on were around news, bringing people together and any other relevant applications of our choice.
        This work was to set the foundation for a further 12 demos that would form part of Facebook's AI marketing, with the finale being a live demo at Facebook's F8 conference. These concepts were conceived and researched with a plan for which technology would be used to execute these demos.
        Unfortunately, Facebook canceled the entire project due to internal priorities changing shortly after our initial presentation at their headquarters.

Role
Concept, creative direction, art direction

Team
Artem Sologub, Ericka Nicks, Kristofer Forsell, Michael Hoang

1

Equal Education
        Across the world, especially in rural areas, dropout rate is still a withstanding social issue. One of the reasons that children fail to keep up with their classwork is due to the lack of after-school assistance and personalized support.
        Equal Education is an AI-powered mobile application that gives students around the world access to personal tutoring whenever and however they need it.
Oscar, a fifth-grader is working on his math homework and runs into a tricky question. He takes a photo of the assignment via the AI app and asks it for help. The question is: “Mr. Jenkins wants to save up $1000 by the end of the 2018. Starting July the same year, Mr. Jenkins plans to deposit $56 into the bank every month. Will he reach his goal? Oscar chooses to simplify it and the app transforms the question into something easier to read and understand for Oscar. With Oscar’s input, the question is now updated to: “James puts $56 into the bank every month. How much money does he save after 6 months? Next, the app tries to figure out whether or not Oscar understands the type of problem that he is trying to solve. Oscar recognizes that this is a multiplication problem. The app now asks Oscar to redo his process so far so it can identify where Oscar is stuck. There are 2 ways that a child can learn; either with theory or with seeing examples. The app suggests Oscar two potential ways to learn. Oscar chooses to see an example so he is being shown with a video of how a similar problem can be solved. The app now asks Oscar to re-do the problem and he successfully solves it. The app brings back the final part of the question. Over the time, the app gets better at understanding which education approach works the best for Oscar and will cater its language and teaching techniques to that.

2

Find Your Voice
        Voice is a powerful medium for expressing ideas. Yet, in this day and age, this could be considered a luxury for some. We wanted to find a way to use AI not only to give people a voice (literally), but also to create a common platform for everyone to express themselves creatively regardless of their physical limitations.
        Find Your Voice is an AI-powered mobile application that transforms non-verbal communication into a visual and audible experience for people with speech limitations, allowing both sides of the conversation to contribute to the discussion.
Feng Mian is a speech and hearing impaired woman using Find Your Voice to communicate with her friends and family. She first chooses her language and regional dialect so that the AI can pick up on colloquialisms from her words and what language to speak in. She then builds her voice profile by selecting different personality traits. She can choose to generate her voice by inputting her words via text or sign language and lip reading. In this instance, she chooses to communicate via sign language. Her hand gestures and lip reading will be captured via the front camera on her phone. As she gestures, her unique voice comes to life not only as an actual sound but also as a visual. Feng Mian, who is deaf, cannot hear but she can see the emotion and energy that her voice emits. It helps her gauge her expressions and she can adjust it to teach the AI. Feng Mian calls her friend, Aimee. She shares her excitement about this brand new application, using sign language. On the other end, Aimee hears Feng’s voice of excitement... Feng can see her friend and what her friend is saying in the form of chat bubbles. There are two different ways of delivering information and receiving it, yet it is a single, shared conversation.

3

Facebook Spectrum
        More apparent in recent years than ever, the output of news and informational articles has taken a somewhat polarized turn, turning a discussion from a form of deducing insights into a contest of “being right.” This refrains members of communities from having constructive debates and takes away the collective knowledge required for society to advance.
        With the help of AI, Facebook Spectrum is a web extension that puts a microscope on your daily news/article consumption; flagging out biases as well as persuasion tricks, at the same time, giving you concise and insightful takeaways from both sides of a discussion.
Anna and Viet are having a discussion about their personal diets. Viet is vegan and strongly embraces it, while Anna tries to grasp the idea of going vegan. Anna browses the web to try and understand what this veganism is all about. She starts to read an article on how “avoiding meat and dairy is the single biggest way to reduce your impact on Earth.” This is no regular article being presented, very instance of bias is highlighted and explained to show her how this article uses tactics to steer her toward an opinion. Anna is able to click on each of these biases to understand what they are. In one section, the article uses the perfect solution fallacy; comparing actual things with unrealistic, idealized alternatives. In another, there’s an exaggeration of cause-and-effect statements. At the end of the article, Anna is presented with another article that counters the one she just read. ” Veganism is not the key to sustainable development.” There is bias written all over this one as well. The end of the second reading transitions to a neutral summary. Valid points of both sides are explained, with biases aside. Anna is encouraged to making a sound decision on veganism by balancing the validity of both perspectives.
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