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Please note: The reports in this section are not product reviews or tests; they're meant to spotlight options for you to consider, as well as milestones in children's online-safety technology development. Comments from readers on their own experiences with these products and services are most welcome - and, with your permission, we publish them. Do email us your own product reviews anytime!
Hybrid filtering with artificial intelligence: Exotrope's BAIR Filtering System (Feb. 4, '00)
[Since our report on BAIR in February, Wired News tested the service and found serious problems, which Exotrope says it's fixing. Before you sign up, we suggest you read Wired's report.]
In a nutshell, using artificial intelligence to filter Internet content is what sets Exotrope's "BAIR Filtering System" apart ("BAIR" for "Basic Artificial Intelligence Routine" - whew!). As you know, we've been following the development of "hybrid" filtering services. The two we've reported on so far - ClickChoice and BrowseSafe - blend human intelligence, client-based software (lives on the customer's computer), and server-based software (lives on the ISP's server). For Exotrope, swap out the human intelligence part and insert artificial intelligence.
In theory, the service's potential for user convenience and for keeping up with Web growth is enormous, because artificial intelligence "reasons," "remembers," and "learns." For example, the software might detect an image with a high percentage of flesh tones in it. Once it "decides" that the image represents sexually explicit nudity and must therefore be blocked (the image actually is blocked until the software's made its decision), it "remembers" the percentages for the next time. It remembers lots of other things, too, like the number of bytes in the page and its address. The software also blocks text - it detects, blocks, and remembers words in context. The result: filtering "on the fly," as the company puts it - filtering that is applied to Web sites as users download them and that blocks only the images or text it deems objectionable. Whole Web pages aren't blocked unless everything on them is objectionable. Criteria for what is objectionable are not disclosed, unfortunately, but the company says it has no political or religious agenda and basically applies standards used by the US's public media.
The only way people can get the BAIR filtering system right now is through an Internet service provider (as with BrowseSafe's service) and the system is new, so it's not yet widely available. When ISP customers type in a Web page's URL, the request goes through the ISP's server as well as through Exotrope's Cray supercomputer. Parts of BAIR's AI software reside on both. Also on that supercomputer are Exotrope's ever-growing "Block & Go" databases - lists of sites BAIR deems both objectionable and good. BAIR checks each requested site against those lists first, before it "thinks," so as to save Internet bandwidth and its own time and energy. ISPs can provide their customers with filtering maturity levels - child through adult. Among Exotrope's first ISPs are A1 Internet Services and Catholicwebs.com. BAIR currently filters in 14 languages now, 27 by the end of the year, Exotrope says, and they're working with ISPs in Europe, Australia, and China as well as in the US. The National Coalition for the Protection of Children & Families recently added this filtering system to the list of tools it endorses (it doesn't yet appear on the solutions page of their Web site).
Teachers, do you already know about another service of Exotrope's - EdNext? If not, you might find this growing, searchable database of 60,000+ educator-screened Web sites useful. The sites are ranked by grade level. There is a fee for using this system. If you use this resource, do email us what you think of it.
[Please see a correction we ran in the following issue (bottom of the page) - about how users can obtain this new filtering system.]
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