DEV Community

Cover image for How Facebook Uses Machine Learning “Amazingly”!
Piyush Bagani
Piyush Bagani

Posted on

How Facebook Uses Machine Learning “Amazingly”!

Machine Learning : The Technology of today!

Let’s Here It from Pioneers Of Technology

“It Is The Field of study that gives computers the capability to learn without being explicitly programmed” — Arthur Samuel

Machine learning is a core, transformative way by which we’re rethinking how we’re doing everything. — Sundar Pichai, Google CEO
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Machine Learning aims to extend accuracy of Computer Learning. There is an increase of 270% in the number of companies embracing ML over the last four years. Most of MNC(s) are using this technology to attract as many customers as possible by providing personalized customer experiences.

So it is obvious that Facebook uses Machine Learning in the working of all its aspects with plans on enhancing it even further.
Alt Text

Facebook is currently having one of the best machine learning algorithms in place, much stronger and sturdier driven to provide the best user experience to its millions of users. They use it almost everywhere on their platform, whether it is News feed or Finding friends and much more.

So here’s a couple of specific use cases where ML is used to gain value and help Facebook achieve its goals of providing greater convenience to users.

  1. Facial Recognition.

Have you noticed that Facebook has developed an uncanny ability to recognize your friends in your photographs? In the old days, Facebook used to make you to tag your friends in photos by clicking on them and typing in their name. Now as soon as you upload a photo, Facebook tags everyone for you like magic:
alt text
Facebook can recognize faces with 98% accuracy which is pretty much as good as humans can do!

Facebook uses a Deep Learning Application called DeepFace to teach it to recognize people in photos.

It is one of the most advanced image recognition tool available on the globe. It recognizes whether two different images are of the same person or not very successfully.

  1. Textual analysis alt text A large proportion of the data shared on Facebook is still text. Facebook uses a tool it developed itself called DeepText to extract meaning from words we post by learning to analyze them contextually. At present the tool is used to direct people towards products they may want to purchase based on conversations they are having — this video gives an example of how it decides whether providing a user with a shopping link is appropriate or not, depending on the context. Link: https://www.facebook.com/Engineering/videos/10154132641047200/
  2. Targeted advertising alt text Did you ever searched about Machine Learning and then saw their ads regarding ML course on Facebook. It is because of Machine Learning. Facebook uses deep neural networks — the foundation stones of deep learning — to decide which adverts to show to which users. These algorithms analyse your age,gender,location,page likes, and even your mobile data to gather and then show ads which are specifically targeted.
  3. News Feed

alt text
Different Posts show up in your personal Facebook News Feed according to a ranking system.
The Rank is decided on 3 factors. Your Friends, Family ,Public figures or businesses that you interact with a lot are given the top most priority.
The more you visit a friend’s profile on Facebook, or your close friends, or even the pages you visit on Facebook, the more their news or posts appear at the top of your feed.

  1. Facebook Opensource
    alt text
    Facebook is a strong supporter of Open Source and makes most of the work of its AI labs Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research (FAIR) freely available for anyone to use or modify however they like.
    It has even open sourced the design of its graphics processor unit (GPU)-driven AI hardware — super-fast computers optimized for carrying out Deep Learning tasks.
    In future Deep Learning is likely to continue to play a key part in the future development of Facebook.
    Let’s hear it from Andrew Ng:

    Deep Learning is a superpower. With it you can make a computer see,synthesize novel art, translate languages, render a medical diagnosis, or build pieces of a car that can drive itself.

In the long-run work of well-resourced AI and Deep Learning labs is likely to provide benefit to countless other organizations too.

🎇🎇Bonus:
🎇How Instagram Uses Machine Learning?
alt text

Instagram launched text filtering for bullying in last May, but that could have just pushed trolls to attacks people through images. Now, its bullying classifier can identify harassment in photos including insults to a person’s character, appearance etc.

🎇How Uber Uses Machine Learning?
alt text
Based on historical data, Uber predicts the time and areas of demand. The system uses these predictions to alert drivers of the areas with upcoming demand. This is how enough cabs are available in predicted areas of demand. Demand prediction helps in Increasing profits.

Finally, Thanks For Reading….
Happy Machine Learning😊

Top comments (0)