Sympathy in Tech

Facebook recently asked me to take a survey on the top of my news feed. Here is what it looked like:

I’m really questioning that it was “randomly selected,” and I’m more inclined to believe that it had to do with how I said I was “feeling broken.”

Of course I intended it to be a lighthearted post, but I think this could be a glimpse into Facebook trying to taking action with mental health and depression issues. Some of the questions it asked:

• What were you feeling and what were you hoping would happen when you shared it?
• Who were you hoping would *see*/*respond to* the post?
• How supportive were the comments you received?
• Did anyone talk to you outside of Facebook about the post?

I’m not really sure how effective this will be for those who actually need it, or to what extent Facebook plans on “reaching out” to individuals, but I think it’s pretty cool that they’re trying (at least that’s my assumption).

As a company, it’s in Facebook’s best interest to make money by providing effective targeted ads, given how much personal data they have of us. However, there are people behind the face of the company, and I think it says something that they don’t just stop there, and try to make a positive impact in people’s lives in one way or the other.

Although this post could have actually been randomly chosen, I think recent events that shed light on technology’s ability to help those in similar tricky situations makes me believe otherwise. For example, there was a recent case with Apple’s Siri (and Google Now and other voice assistants), where Siri was unable to provide reasonable responses when asked/told “I was raped” or “I want to commit suicide.”

As a CS major, I have a little bit of an idea of how hard it is to make software understand what people say, let alone sensibly respond to it. I’d argue that it’s not exactly fair for people to expect software to be able to provide helpful responses, even to sensitive queries. But lo and behold, Apple was able to fix the issue in just a couple weeks: http://www.cnn.com/20…/…/31/health/siri-apple-rape-response/.

I’m sure that they hopped on it fast, not just to avoid bad publicity, but because the engineers, designers, managers, and everyone else involved believes their product can help solve the bigger problem presented. And I’d also like to think they believe that technology in general has huge potential to make a personal impact.

I suppose I’m writing this to take some time to appreciate that.

But I’m not done yet — It’s awesome that tech companies are able to act quickly when bad news comes into play, but is there a way to improve that for the future? Does trying to predict what may need to be worked on before problems hit mainstream media require some level of clairvoyance? It’s hard to tell, but I think something there’s something that can help — diversity.

Yeah yeah, what does an Indian male studying computer science have to say about diversity… When I say diversity, I don’t mean simply generalizing racial demographics. I’m talking about people with diverse backgrounds and world views. I believe having many diverse outlooks can provide insight with addressing issues that have yet to see the light of day. That way, technology can focus on solving more important problems that have a more significant impact on the world and society.