RacismX

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  @Hacktech 2020

Inspiration

Due to the recent CoronaVirus outbreaks, there have been various occasions where racist comments associated with the fear of the virus made targeted at innocent people based on their race. Though we cannot eliminate physical comments made by a person face to face, we could attempt to eliminate or at least suppress the comments made online.

What it does

We designed this function with the help of Google Cloud's natural language API to detect racist language. After tracing signs of negative language, we attempt to issue a warning to the user that made the racist comments, warning them that this will provide a negative impact on society. This could further lead to a safer and more user-friendly social network.

How I built it

We used Google Cloud's natural language API to detect foul language and train an AI model to identify it, and after doing so, we have the program issue a warning to the user. We also used React to design a simple webpage for the user to input a sentence for the program to detect whether or not there were hints of racism.

Challenges I ran into

We spent some time working on the API configurations. After getting stuck on that, the most time-consuming part of the project was the connection between the front and back ends.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Due to the virus, we had only two people on our team and not enough time to work out everything we planned to do. But, we spent most of our time problem solving and came up with a solution to construct what we planned to in the time frame given.

What's next for racismX

The functions implemented into the webpage can be used as an API to detect foul and inappropriate language. With more time at hand, we can train more and have the program identify much more than racism. This could lead to a safer online user environment where people would be exposed to less racial discrimination.

Built With

• github
• google-cloud
• machine-learning
• natural-language-processing
• python
• react
• vcs