How Leo’s use of artificial intelligence exposes acts of cyberbullying on Twitter
Primary or post-primary, it is the time of year when thousands of pupils are beavering away on science or technology projects to satisfy their curiosity and, perhaps, in their Eureka moment, provide a breakthrough that contributes to positive change in the world. And all the time building their critical thinking skills.
In Letterkenny, Co Donegal, 15-year-old Leo Camacho has been using artificial intelligence (AI) to tackle the scourge of cyberbullying and harassment.
The third year student from St Eunan’s College has created an Anti-Bullying Robot (ABUR) that can automatically scan for abusive tweets and expose them when found.
Leo is among 10,000 post-primary students who entered SciFest 2018, and will be one of 64 presenting a total of 37 projects at the national final at Marino Institute of Education, Dublin, on Friday.
He already knows that he wants to study data science at third level, and his keen interest in harnessing the power of technology led to his exploring the use of AI and wondering about useful ways in which it could be applied.
As a teen, he is all too conscious of the problem of bullying on social media and also learned from his research that targets of the bullies tend not to tell anyone.
He describes ABUR as “a robot that runs on Twitter and uses artificial intelligence to decide whether a certain tweet is bullying or not.”
Leo acknowledges that “there is no one way to say what is a bullying tweet and what is not”, and says that ABUR takes in thousands of tweets and, from those, learns the characteristics of what is a bullying tweet.
While he is testing his design on Twitter, Leo believes that it could apply across other social media platforms such as Facebook and Reddit.
Whoever is selected as Scifest national champion will represent Ireland at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) 2019 in the US next May.
ISEF is a one-week science fair and the world’s largest pre-college science competition, held annually in the USA since 1950.
Ireland has been entering since 2012, typically competing among
It is a robot that uses artificial intelligence to decide whether a certain tweet is bullying or not
1,800 students from about 75 countries, regions and territories. In seven years, Irish students have won an impressive nine major awards.
Last year’s SciFest champion, Aaron Hannon, St Muredach’s College, Ballina, Co Mayo, went on to win his category, Embedded Systems, at ISEF 2018, with a device designed to assist people with limited hand dexterity to shave. The project was inspired by Aaron’s late grandfather who had suffered a stroke.
SciFest is funded primarily by Science Foundation Ireland (SFI), Boston Scientific and Intel Ireland.