Article Excerpt: The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has awarded a contract worth $224,864 (£172,000) to S-3 Research, a startup spun out of the University of California, San Diego, to build machine-learning software capable of sniffing out opioid peddlers on social media. Timothy Mackey, CEO of S-3 Research and an assistant professor at the university, told The Register on Tuesday the upstart’s software roams platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, Reddit, Tumblr, and YouTube looking for opioid ads – such as specific keywords, or hashtags of misspelled drugs. Once these posts are detected, the text is analyzed by AI algorithms to determine whether the poster intends to sell illicit substances.
Full Article: https://tinyurl.com/qvrpw3u
Article Source: The Register