After touting his space tourism mission (now set for 2019) and defending Amazon's work with the US Department of Defense, Jeff Bezos also weighed in on the current state of social media and the internet in general on Monday.

"I think the Internet in its current incarnation is a confirmation bias machine," the Amazon CEO said. "I worry that some of these technologies will be very useful to autocratic regimes to enforce their will."

Bezos, who was interviewed at the Wired 25 conference in San Francisco, California, thinks the problems with social media are worrisome, but similar to other technologies in their early phases.

"Having technology that increases confirmation bias probably isn't good. It is going to lead to more tribalism," he said. "The book was invented and people could write really evil books and lead bad revolutions with them. And create fascists empires with books. It doesn't mean the book is bad. Society develops an immune response eventually to the bad uses of new technology, but it takes time."

In Bezos' view, the current problems with social media — especially the issue of identity politics — will be corrected for over time and are worth the pains of today.

"A bunch of things are going to happen that we aren't going to like that come out of technology but that's not new. That's always been the case. And we will figure it out," he said. "The last thing we'd ever want to do is stop the progress of new technologies."

"Fortnite: Battle Royale" will add a new tournament mode to the in-game events menu, giving players across all platforms a chance to play against each other in a competitive format. According to developer Epic Games, tournaments will be open to all players and will eventually be used to award prizes to top players and help them qualify for future "Fortnite" esports events.

Tournament competition takes place over the course over several days with different formats. Players will be awarded points based on how long they survive, and how many players they eliminate during each battle royale. Teams or individual players with high scores will be placed in matches with other high ranked players for a greater challenge, while those who struggle will be placed alongside beginners. Each tournament will have a target score and players who reach the target will earn an in-game pin to mark the achievement.

Tournaments will pit players from all platforms against each other, from PC to console to mobile devices, regardless of whether they use a regular controller, mouse & keyboard, or touchscreen controls. In the statement announcing in-game tournaments, Epic Games said that players will be on an even playing field regardless of what device or control scheme they prefer.

"We've been observing the performance of controller players in our Summer Skirmish, PAX West, and Fall Skirmish tournaments while playing against mouse and keyboard players at the highest levels of competition," the statement reads. "Competitors such as NickMercs, Ayden, KamoLRF, and AmarCoD have shown that controller players can be successful while competing against some of the best PC players in the world."

Epic says that grouping everyone into a single competition group will increase visibility for the best players and help increase prize pools. They will continue to monitor competitive results and are already considering limiting some esports competitions to specific platforms or control devices in the future. The first in-game tournament will be a event for solo players running from October 16 to October 21, and the second will be a "duos" tournament for partners playing between October 23rd and October 25th.

"Fortnite's" Fall Skirmish event series will culminate at TwitchCon 2018. "Fortnite"/Epic Games

"Fortnite" is also in the middle of its Fall Skirmish event, a series of weekly competitions with $10 million in prize money on the line. Epic invited 500 "Fortnite" players to compete in the event, dividing them into five different teams for the six-week skirmish season. The teams will split $4 million in prize money and players can earn points during skirmish events to improve their team's share. The rest of the $6 million prize pool is awarded to the winners of specific events each week.

The Fall Skirmish will conclude with a pair of in-person tournaments at TwitchCon 2018, held at the end of October. The first will be an open duos competition with a prize pool of more than $1.1 million split between the top 50 teams; the winning team will receive $400,000. The second competition will be an invitational event for 50 Fortnite content creators and 50 random TwitchCon attendees with another $350,000 in prize money.

You can watch the Fall Skirmish events each week on the official Fortnite Twitch channel. Nearly 80 million people played Fortnite during the month of August, and new content was recently released for season 6 of the game. Epic plans to invest $100 million in prize money for the 2018-19 competitive season, which will include the 2019 Fortnite World Cup.

Twilio, the $7.4 billion company that helps apps and websites send texts and make calls, is acquiring SendGrid in an all stock deal valued around $2 billion. The transaction, which was announced Monday, is expected to close in the first half of 2019.

SendGrid, which is based in Denver, sells an email marketing platform that enables its customers to send newsletters, marketing and email confirmations en masse. As of late last year, it sent around 36 billion emails a month on behalf of customers like Uber and Spotify. Indeed, SendGrid is a Twilio partner, helping their mutual customers keep in touch with users.

The company went public in November 2017 and closed its first day of trading with a valuation around just $725 million. At the closing bell on Monday, SendGrid was valued at $1.43 billion.

In a letter to staff filed publicly on Monday, SendGrid CEO Sameer Dholakia confirmed that he will stay in his role, and that SendGrid will function as its own autonomous division of Twilio.

"Joining Twilio will allow us to accelerate our journey toward a shared vision of offering one trusted platform to fuel the future of customer communications," Dholakia said. "Today's announcement will enhance our brand among developers, give us immediate scale, and expand opportunities to cross sell and invest."

Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson highlighted the importance of email tools like SendGrid in Twilio's growth plan.

"Increasingly, our customers are asking us to solve all of their strategic communications challenges - regardless of channel," Lawson said in a statement.

"The two companies share the same vision, the same model, and the same values," he said. "We believe this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to bring together the two leading developer-focused communications platforms to create the unquestioned platform of choice for all companies looking to transform their customer engagement."

Facebook will show British voters which political parties, pressure groups, and other organisations might be paying to influence their vote and opinions through online advertising.

The decision means that, starting on Tuesday, Facebook will show how Labour, the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats and other political parties and groups target voters with advertising.

The social network will on Tuesday release a library of political ads showing who has paid for individual political ads on its main site and on Instagram, approximately how much was spent, and which demographic the ad was aimed at. All ads will appear in the library, no matter how small the target audience is.

It will also label political ads in the News Feed with a "Paid for by" label showing which organisation is behind a paid post.

Any ad that references political figures, parties, elections, and legislation or referenda that are in the news will automatically be classed as a political ad. That means any ads relating to Brexit, next year's local elections, or anything about prime minister Theresa May or Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn would likely be classified as political advertising.

Facebook will use a mix of human moderators and machine learning to categorise ads. It will also rely on users to flag subtler political ads.

While Facebook will indicate spend on particular ads, it won't break down in detail how ads are targeted. For example, Facebook won't show whether a party targeted ads by "interest", which can sometimes indicate more sensitive information like race.

Facebook will add labels to political ads showing who paid for them. Facebook

Articles from British media relating to politics will also appear in the ads library, though under a separate label.

To try and stamp out fake actors posting divisive ads, Facebook will ask anyone who wants to post a political ad on behalf of a party, candidate, or organisation to go through a verification process.

Individuals posting a political ad will need some form of official ID, such as their driving licence, and a valid UK address before they are allowed to post a paid ad. Facebook will post a code to that address, which the individual will need to enter into the site before they can continue posting ads.

There is a grace period until November 7, before which political parties and individuals can self-identify as political advertisers. After that, Facebook will automatically begin categorising ads into its library. It will keep political ads in its searchable archive for 7 years, and that library will be available to anyone with or without a Facebook account.

The new tool was created directly in response to global criticism at Facebook's role in the US presidential election, the UK's Brexit referendum, and other elections around the world. A UK parliamentary committee, led by Conservative MP Damian Collins, wrung a promise from Facebook's chief technology officer Mike Schroepfer that the company would begin labelling political ads before local elections in 2019.

The company has made similar tools available in the US and Brazil.

Facebook's shift towards transparency around online advertising will likely be seen as a welcome first step. For the most part, it is currently hard for voters to see how political parties and other groups target particular individuals or groups through online advertising. A library of ads will allow the media and public to scrutinise political messages and the intent behind them.

Increased transparency may also give political parties pause before they launch highly targeted, divisive ads that are targeted at a small online audience but might normally go unnoticed by the political press. Now every ad will be visible for seven years via Facebook's political ad library, and anything that looks divisive may come back to haunt a candidate or party in later years.

The new transparency tools are not explicitly designed to prevent misinformation campaigns by foreign trolls. Facebook instead has a dedicated team to sniff out what it describes as "inauthentic behaviour." Rather, they allow voters (and rival parties and candidates) to see what messages parties are peddling.

Facebook will allow researchers, journalists, and third-parties access to its ads library data through a set of APIs, the company said.

A spokesman for the UK's election watchdog, the Electoral Commission, told Business Insider: "We welcome any changes that will help voters see who is targeting them with political messages online. This Facebook initiative is an important first step in providing voters with improved transparency. We will be monitoring how these changes are implemented and the impact they have, and we look forward to proposals from other digital advertising platforms in the UK."

A spokesman for the Labour party said: "Labour welcomes efforts to ensure that in the future, campaigning on social media is just as transparent as more traditional campaigning methods."

The Conservatives did not respond to a request for comment.

Thread, the startup that helps men who hate shopping buy clothes, has raised $22 million (£16.7 million) in venture capital backing to expand its technical capabilities and to cement itself as a household name.

Thread has more than a million customers signed up to its service, which takes a few registration details about a user's fashion taste and budget, then uses that information to recommend new outfits.

As customers buy more clothing through the app, Thread's algorithm learns more about what they like and makes new recommendations accordingly. It also learns from clothes customers click on but don't buy, what they scroll past, and what the weather's like.

The idea is that men who hate rifling through racks of clothes in physical stores can still look smart and on-trend by buying through Thread. Well-known brands such as Barbour and Hugo Boss are available through the service.

The startup employs 10 full-time stylists who curate outfits and write personalised messages to customers. But much of the recommendation load is handled by Thread's homegrown machine learning algorithm, much like Spotify's algorithm recommends music.

Chief executive and serial entrepreneur Kieran O'Niell said a quarter of Thread's users buy all their clothing through the service. It's currently only available to male shoppers in the UK, but O'Niell said the plan was to introduce womenswear to the app some time in the future.

It has, he said, taken almost four years to get the machine learning aspect right. "If you use off-the-shelf approaches, you get boring results," he said. "Like if you buy a black T-shirt, you would be recommended a grey T-shirt. So we had to create something that would understand what you like... and factor in individual preferences, plus what the weather is like, and stuff you already own."

One thing the service could do better, he said, was adapt to customers' changing tastes. "What we're not good at is someone who did want [certain] stuff, has changed, and now wants more adventurous stuff. There's more we can do on that side."

O'Neill added that most of Thread's customers were aged between 25 and 45. "I was surprised our customer base is as old as it is," he said. "I would have thought a younger guy would be more fashion-conscious, it turns out lots of guys between 25 and 45 want to dress well [and] don't like shopping."

Thread's latest round was led by new investors Balderton, Forward Partners, Beringea and H&M's investment arm. The round included a small amount of debt financing from Triplepoint Capital. High-profile previous investors include DeepMind cofounders Demis Hassabis and Mustafa Suleyman, and prestigious Silicon Valley bootcamp Y Combinator.

O'Neill also plans to follow a startup trend set by the likes of Monzo and BrewDog: letting customers buy in. The company will open up to crowd investors via Crowdcube in November. The plan is to raise £500,000 to £1 million, though O'Neill said Thread may cap the round.

"From the beginning we we always wanted to hold back part of it so customers can invest," he said. "The main reason we have succeeded is because of loyal customers, and it's just a way of offering them the chance to invest in the business. We're not doing it to raise lots of extra cash."

For years, Senator Elizabeth Warren has touted the fact that she's part Cherokee, expressing pride in her Native heritage.

President Donald Trump has routinely mocked that assertion, using the nickname "Pocahontas" for Warren. In a July rally, Trump even said that if she could prove, based on DNA testing, that she has Native American ancestors, then he would donate $1 million to the charity of Warren's choice.

On Monday, Warren answered that call.

"A famous geneticist analyzed my DNA and concluded that it contains Native American ancestry," Warren wrote on Twitter.

On a webpage connected to her reelection campaign in Massachusetts, she also posted a video and a detailed ancestry report from the lab of Stanford genetics professor and DNA-sequencing expert Carlos Bustamante.

"In the Senator's genome, we did find five segments of Native American ancestry with very high confidence where we believe the error rate is less than 1 in 1,000." Bustamante said in the video posted on Warren's site. He said those results suggest that Warren "absolutely" has a Native American ancestor.

What Warren's test tells us

Senator Warren has not responded to Business Insider's request for information about precisely how she conducted the test, but most genetic tests that US consumers use today rely on cheek swabs. Users collect a bit of saliva that way, then send the spit in for analysis.

Typically, more than half the cells in someone's spit can include viable, intact genomic data about that person. Blood samples tend to have more DNA data, but saliva can be a decent way to extract genomic data with considerably less pain.

The DNA tests that are available to consumers, such as 23andMe or AncestryDNA, zero in on hundreds of thousands of locations on a person's genome. By doing so, they can pinpoint spots that give scientists clues about who a person's relatives could be.

Bustamante's analysis seems to have been done in a similar way. Warren's sample "contained information on 764,958 sites of genetic variation," according to the report. These are the special spots in Warren's genetic code that make her different from everyone else, since most human DNA (about 99.9%) is identical from person to person. That other 0.01% is responsible for our differences, from the color of our eyes to the pigment of our skin, and even our genetic predispositions for disease.

The scientists compared Warren's sample to others from the 1,000 Genomes Project Consortium, which sequenced the genomes of 2,504 people from 26 populations around the world. Warren's DNA was compared to 148 people's fully-sequenced genomes: 37 of those individuals were from Europe, 37 had Sub-Saharan African ancestry, 37 were from the Americas and had Native American ancestry, and 37 came from China.

When scientists compare genomes in this way, they're looking for meaningful patterns: signs that one person's DNA shares certain tell-tale markers with another. That's a sign that the individuals may be distantly related, but it's not proof that one person is necessarily related to another.

Warren's sample had a lot of markers that are common to European ancestry, and a few that are common to what the researchers think could be Native American ancestry. The reason Bustamante thinks Warren probably has a Native American ancestor is that some DNA segments in her sample matched with segments from people native to Mexico, Peru, and Colombia. Those similarities suggest Warren likely had a Native American relative about eight generations ago.

"The largest segment identified as having Native American ancestry is on chromosome 10," the researchers wrote. "This segment is clearly distinct from segments of European ancestry, and is strongly associated with Native American ancestry."

Why genetic testing is not a perfect science

Michaela Rehle/Reuters

Consumer DNA testing is rapidly taking off. Today, more than 12 million people have tested their spit, according to MIT Technology Review.

But the genetic-testing kits that many people are trying don't always give accurate results about their lineage. A 2018 study published in the journal Genetics in Medicine suggested that 40% of the differences in genes reported in direct-to-consumer DNA tests were due to testing errors (false positives).

The tests are also raising concerns about privacy. A study released last week estimates that 60% of white Americans— who are the biggest consumers of DNA testing services— could now be identified up to a "third cousin or closer" using available DNA test data. The authors of the study said that information could implicate more criminals like the Golden State Killer in coming years, if more investigators compare DNA evidence from crime scenes with publicly available genetic information that's tied to people's names. That technique probably couldn't be applied to minority groups, though, because scientists don't have as much data from those groups. In fact, for some ethnic groups like Native Americans, scientists have hardly any data at all.

In Warren's case, the test didn't conclusively say whether her DNA matches that of current Native American tribal populations in the US. The researchers said making that connection wouldn't be possible, since "Native American groups within the US have not chosen to participate in recent population genetics studies."

At least 95% of Warren's DNA is likely of European origin, according to the test.

Should DNA decide who gets to be considered Native American?

In an article published in the Native Voice in 2004, racial politics professor Kim TallBear (a member of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate of South Dakota) and biological anthropologist Deborah Bolnick pointed out that "eligibility for Native American rights is ultimately a political and cultural issue that will never be satisfactorily answered by genetics."

So although Trump may have suggested that Warren should prove her background using a DNA test, native groups certainly didn't ask her to. In fact, the Cherokee Nation sent a statement to the Oklahoman voicing the group's disapproval.

"Current DNA tests do not even distinguish whether a person's ancestors were indigenous to North or South America," Cherokee Nation Secretary of State Chuck Hoskin Jr. said. "It makes a mockery out of DNA tests and its legitimate uses while also dishonoring legitimate tribal governments and their citizens."

Warren is not a tribal citizen, a fact she readily acknowledges on her website. For that, most US tribes require a "blood quantum" of one-quarter, which Warren most likely doesn't have (or purport to have).

Plus, as TallBear has said, nobody should be boiled down to the chromosomes in a spit sample, anyway.

"I worry about the way Native American identity gets represented as this purely racial category by some of the companies marketing these tests," she told New Scientist in 2014. "The story is so much more complicated than that."

For her part, Warren tweeted at Trump on Monday, asking him to send a $1 million check to the National Indigenous Women's Resource Center, a nonprofit that works to curb domestic violence and improve the safety and well-being of native women. A 2007 report from Amnesty International found that Native women were 2.5 times more likely to be the victims of rape or sexual violence than other women in the US, and that nearly 86% of the rapes were committed by non-Native men.

Paul Allen, who cofounded Microsoft with Bill Gates, died Monday afternoon after a battle with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, his family confirmed to Business Insider. He was 65.

Allen, a tech billionaire, was a philanthropist and the owner of the Seattle Seahawks and the Portland Trail Blazers. He operated Vulcan Ventures, a venture-capital fund.

Allen was first diagnosed with the cancer in 2009, and disclosed earlier this month that it had returned after a period of remission. At the time, Allen said that he planned on staying involved with his various business ventures. It was the third time that Allen has been diagnosed with some form of lymphoma. He survived Hodgkin's lymphoma after being diagnosed in the 1980s.

Allen, a Seattle native, and Gates were childhood friends. In 1972, while in high school, the pair launched Traf-o-Data, a software company that tracked and analyzed traffic patterns. When Gates went to Harvard, Allen stayed local and went to Washington State University, though he ended up dropping out.

It was Allen who suggested that the two work together to make a BASIC language interpreter for the then cutting-edge Altair 8800 microcomputer, which became Microsoft's first product. The name "Micro-Soft" for their joint venture was Allen's idea.

This photo of Paul Allen and Bill Gates is on display in the Microsoft Visitors Center at its Redmond headquarters. Below the photos are Gates' and Allen's first-ever Microsoft business cards, circa 1975. Matt Weinberger/Business Insider

Further, Allen was responsible for the key deal that made Microsoft a major player in the PC revolution: When Gates promised IBM in 1980 that Microsoft would supply an operating system for its flagship PC, it was Allen who went and purchased the rights to the "Quick and Dirty Operating System," or QDOS, from developer Tim Paterson. Microsoft rebranded QDOS as MS-DOS, or the Microsoft Disk Operating System, and supplied it to IBM per the deal.

In 1983, Allen stepped aside from day-to-day operations at Microsoft, not long after beginning treatment for his first diagnosis with Hodgkin's lymphoma. He remained on the company's board of directors until 2000.

Allen would later write that his departure was marked by a period of friction with Gates, where they disagreed over the direction of the company. Allen said that Gates tried to buy out his shares in the company, but that he ultimately decided to hang on to his stake — which made Allen his fortune when Microsoft went public in 1986.

Allen was also known as a musician. As a guitarist, he fronted a band called The Underthinkers, and wrote or cowrote every song on their 2013 album. He also founded Seattle's Experience Music Project, or EMP, which was originally a museum devoted to his hero Jimi Hendrix. Allen also started the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame, in the same building as the EMP. The two have since been combined into the Museum of Pop Culture.

Allen's net worth was pegged at $20 billion.

Lymphomas are cancers that attack the lymphatic system. Non-Hodgkin's is more common than Hodgkin's lymphoma.

Jody Allen, Paul's sister, issued the following statement:

My brother was a remarkable individual on every level. While most knew Paul Allen as a technologist and philanthropist, for us he was a much-loved brother and uncle, and an exceptional friend. Paul's family and friends were blessed to experience his wit, warmth, his generosity and deep concern. For all the demands on his schedule, there was always time for family and friends. At this time of loss and grief for us - and so many others - we are profoundly grateful for the care and concern he demonstrated every day.

Paul Allen's contributions to our company, our industry and to our community are indispensable. As co-founder of Microsoft, in his own quiet and persistent way, he created magical products, experiences and institutions, and in doing so, he changed the world. I have learned so much from him - his inquisitiveness, curiosity and push for high standards is something that will continue to inspire me and all of us at Microsoft. Our hearts are with Paul's family and loved ones. Rest in peace.

Bill Hilf, the CEO of Allen's holding company Vulcan Inc., said:

All of us who had the honor of working with Paul feel inexpressible loss today. He possessed a remarkable intellect and a passion to solve some of the world's most difficult problems, with the conviction that creative thinking and new approaches could make profound and lasting impact.

Millions of people were touched by his generosity, his persistence in pursuit of a better world, and his drive to accomplish as much as he could with the time and resources at his disposal.

Paul's life was diverse and lived with gusto. It reflected his myriad interests in technology, music and the arts, biosciences and artificial intelligence, conservation and in the power of shared experience - in a stadium or a neighborhood - to transform individual lives and whole communities.

Paul loved Seattle and the Pacific Northwest. The impact of Paul's efforts can be seen here at every turn. But the true impact of his vision and generosity is evident around the globe.

Paul thoughtfully addressed how the many institutions he founded and supported would continue after he was no longer able to lead them. This isn't the time to deal in those specifics as we focus on Paul's family. We will continue to work on furthering Paul's mission and the projects he entrusted to us. There are no changes imminent for Vulcan, the teams, the research institutes or museums.

Today we mourn our boss, mentor and friend whose 65 years were too short - and acknowledge the honor it has been to work alongside someone whose life transformed the world."

If you sign up to Ashley Madison, you don't have to think about what you're doing as cheating, but "outsourcing your sex life."

"In 2018 we expect our life partners are going to be everything to us — they've got to be my best friend, they've got to be sexually compatible, they have to be great at coparenting," Ruben Buell, Ashley Madison's president and chief technology officer, told Business Insider.

"We have to have the same vision of finances, we have to have the same hobbies, the same interests... There's so much pressure on that one relationship, everything has to be right.

"And sometimes, the vast majority of it is right, but maybe there's something that's not."

This is one of the reasons Ashley Madison currently sees 20,000 new sign ups a year, and over 40,000 affairs happen on the site every day.

Even after the data leak back in 2015, people came back to Ashley Madison. Buell said the company had to focus on the security and privacy in the whole company after what happened, and now it realises how important it is to keep user information as secure as possible.

"It's the upmost importance to us, and I think the firm has done a really great job and really brought itself back to life," he said. "And I think the users see that."

Cheating isn't something that happens once in a blue moon. Shutterstock/ wavebreakmedia

People don't generally cheat because they want to leave their relationship, he claimed, but to outsource their sex life.

Research from sociologist Alicia Walker last year found that women in particular "cheat to stay."

"They very much presented this scenario that their marriages are either completely sexless, or orgasmless — at least for the women themselves," she told Business Insider at the time. "They very much convey that: if I don't do something to address this, I'm going to end up leaving. I'm going to end up breaking up my family, breaking my children's hearts, breaking my husband's heart, and I just don't need that."

A fling isn't worth tearing a family apart, Buell said, so if cheating is going to happen it may as well be in a way that causes the least obvious harm.

He said Ashley Madison's main competitor isn't another website, it's the workplace. But instead of hooking up with a colleague, or meeting someone in a bar, he said Ashley Madison offers discretion.

It also means you're going to meet someone on the same page as you, and in a way, things are more honest from the get go.

"The community at Ashley Madison is a very open minded community, it's also one where you have less risk," Buell said. "It's actually contrary to what you think, because a lot of relationships at Ashley Madison start from a very honest place. So you have two people who really aren't trying to hide anything."

When dating traditionally, you can go out with someone four or five times before you start to show them your true self. But on Ashley Madison, Buell said, the flaws are all visible right off the bat.

"If a person is going to have an affair you should probably have a better type of affair," he said. And plenty of people are looking for something that Ashley Madison can offer, as "it's just human nature."

"We don't operate in 50 different countries and 17 different languages because it's a small thing that happens once in a blue moon," he said.

"I think at some point we learn that life isn't exactly the fairy tale we were told when we were little boys and girls. Life is real. Our average users are in their 30s in their 40s, they've lived life, and they've realised sometimes they've got to do something for themselves."

Amazon admitted this week that it experimented with using machine learning to build a recruitment tool. The trouble is, it didn't exactly produce fantastic results and it was later abandoned.

According to Reuters, Amazon engineers found that besides churning out totally unsuitable candidates, the so-called AI project showed a bias against women.

To Oxford University researcher Dr Sandra Wachter, the news that an artificially intelligent system had taught itself to discriminate against women was nothing new.

"From a technical perspective it's not very surprising, it's what we call 'garbage in and garbage out,'" she told Business Insider.

Garbage in, garbage out

The problem boils down to the data Amazon fed its algorithm, Wachter speculated.

"What you would do is you go back and look at historical data from the past and look at successful candidates and feed the algorithm with that data and try to find patterns or similarities," said Wachter.

"You ask the question who has been the most successful candidates in the past [...] and the common trait will be somebody that is more likely to be a man and white."

Reuters reported that the engineers building the program used résumés from a 10 year period, which were predominantly male. Amazon did not provide Business Insider with the gender split in its engineering department but sent us a link to its diversity pages. Its global gender balance is 60% men, with 74% of managerial roles being held by men.

"So if then somebody applies who doesn't fit that profile, it's likely that that person gets filtered out just because the algorithm learned from historical data," said Wachter. "That happens in recruitment, and that happens in basically everywhere where we use historical data and this data is biased."

Garbage in, garbage out (sometimes abbreviated to "GIGO") just means that bad input will result in bad output, and it's the same with bias. The problem is that it's incredibly difficult to filter out algorithmic bias, because the algorithms we build pick up on human prejudices.

"What is the algorithm supposed to do? It can only learn from our semantics and our data and how we interact with humans, and the moment there is no gender parity yet, unfortunately," said Wachter.

Machine learning can produce self-fulfilling prophecies

This is far from the first time a computer program has displayed human bias. "It's just yet another example of how algorithmic decision-making and AI in general can actually reinforce existing stereotypes that we have in our society," said Wachter.

In 2016, a ProPublica investigation found that a computer program called COMPAS, designed to assess the risk of criminals re-offending, was discriminating against black people. As an example, the program deemed an 18-year old black girl who briefly stole a child's scooter to be more likely to re-offend than a 41-year old white man with two prior convictions for shoplifting power tools.

Wachter points out that COMPAS's software asked questions which led to individuals being judged by their social environment, such as "Was one of your parents ever sent to jail or prison?" or "How many of your friends/acquaintances are taking drugs illegally?"

"This is not about the individual anymore, that is about your social environment, and being judged based on other people," said Wachter. "If you apply that to every single person, that's a self-fulfilling prophecy."

Scanning for bias

That isn't to say there's no use in perfecting our algorithms in the meantime. The first thing we can do is come up with effective methods for spotting bias inside them.

An Amazon warehouse worker. Sean Gallup/Getty Images

"There's been a lot of discussion in the field about trying to come up with standards and testing periods before we deploy those systems," Wachter said. "If you have a very easy to understand algorithm detecting bias will be easier but when it comes to machine learning, a very opaque system, testing for bias and discrimination, or even understanding what's going on in that system, will become more and more difficult."

Wachter has worked closely devising ways to check for bias in machine learning models, and her work has been cited by Google in its "What If" tool, which lets users analyse machine learning models without writing extra code. She believes that before companies can deploy a system, they should be able to pass a standardised test that demonstrates it's not biased.

"Especially when it comes to employment, you should have some statistical evidence that your system isn't biased. And if you can't provide that, maybe you shouldn't use [the system] for making important decisions," she continued.

Amazon said in a statement that its hiring tool "was never used by Amazon recruiters to evaluate candidates." A source told Reuters that Amazon recruiters looked its recommendations, but they never solely relied on it for actual decision-making.

"An algorithm doesn't get grumpy"

Although rooting out algorithmic bias poses a technical challenge, Wachter is confident that using AI properly could actually improve fair decision-making in our society.

"If you look at it from the other perspective, if we play this right and if we work on data providence [...] I actually think algorithms could be a better decision-making tool than humans," she said. "An algorithm cannot lie to you, you cannot force an algorithm, you cannot entice or bribe an algorithm."

She also thinks that algorithmic decision-making could help cancel out a profoundly human quality — moodiness. "Algorithms are more consistent as well. If I sit on an employment panel for eight hours, my mood will swing from time to time. I might get angry, or grumpy, or hungry, so that could influence my judgement," she said. "An algorithm doesn't get grumpy or moody or hungry."

Wachter's not in favour of removing human oversight altogether, rather she believes that humans and AI play to each other's strengths. "I think ideally they would be complementary and cancel out each other's blind spots," she said.

Business Insider

A thumping majority of young people in Britain would vote to cancel Brexit, according to an aggregate of recent Survation polls by the BBC. Alex Lovén is not your usual young person, however.

The 30-year-old is Britain's richest young entrepreneur, boasting a net worth of £55 million. He also happens to be a staunch advocate of the UK leaving the European Union — both for the good of his business and the country.

Lovén revealed his gung-ho views in an interview with Business Insider after he was named one of the UK's most influential people in tech for building his online retailer Net World Sports. He said he wants to get out of the European Union before it is too late and the bloc of 28 countries collapses.

"Brexit was right for the UK," said Lovén. "I firmly believe at some point the EU will cease to exist. Really, if you look at southern Europe, there are so many issues smouldering, whether it be Italy, whether it be somewhere else. If something's going to collapse, it's better to be the first people out than the last people out."

He was referring to Italy's ongoing budget crisis, which has seen its government clash with the European Union over its spending plans. Lovén added that Europe has shrunk as a percentage of the world economy. Some of Net World Sports' biggest customers are outside of the EU and the managing director is relishing the prospect of Britain striking new trade deals.

"We have a natural affinity with the Commonwealth countries yet we can't even strike trade deals with these countries, which we have a history with and that speak English," he said. "It's so short-sighted just to look within the borders of Europe because there's a whole world out there that's moving so quickly."

Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase. Brian Snyder/Reuters

He was critical of other business leaders who have backed Remain for what he sees as selfish reasons. He highlighted JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, who has repeatedly warned that Brexit will mean job losses at the bank. "Of course they [JPMorgan] didn't want to leave the EU. They didn't want anything to change. Change is hard work, for an organisation as big as they have… it's like [turning] a supertanker," he said.

Instead, Lovén identifies more with Dyson founder James Dyson who has supported Britain leaving the EU. "I assimilate with the glass half full of the James Dyson's [of this world], not with the doom and gloom of others," he explained.

And the entrepreneur's arguments were not just economic. He says many people, especially those from poorer backgrounds like himself, have lost a sense of their national identity being in Europe.

"The EU blew it basically. They don't directly collect taxes off anybody and obviously, we pay into Europe, but they don't directly tax anybody [but] how have they manifested in this crazy position where they're so disliked by so many?" he said. "Faceless bureaucrats not making one discernible difference to people's lives apart from telling them things they don't want to hear."

First Lady Melania Trump says she does not always see eye-to-eye with her husband, President Donald Trump, regarding his inflammatory posts on Twitter.

"I don't agree always what he posts, but his action is his action," Trump said during an interview with ABC News. "And I tell him that."

Trump, who is spearheading her "Be Best" initiative to "take responsibility and help our children manage the many issues they are facing today," acknowledged that her husband's rhetoric on Twitter vastly differs from her campaign's theme.

"And I know I will be hit with criticism talking about cyber bullying," Melania said. "But it will not stop me to do what is right."

The president has published a tweet nearly every day after taking office. Frequently, those message are meant to disparage political opponents, which sometimes include derisive nicknames.

Despite the stark contrast between the president's Twitter habits and Melania's anti-bullying initiative, she claimed that he did not try to stop her from launching her campaign.

"He didn't say not to do it, he's very tough on Twitter," Melania said. "But he understands that I want to help next generation and the children."

For her "Be Best" initiative, Melania partnered with the US Agency for International Development and made a solo trip to hospitals in Ghana, elementary schools in Malawi, and an elephant orphanage in Kenya.

"BE BEST will champion the many successful well-being programs that provide children with the tools and skills required for emotional, social, and physical health," a campaign statement said on its website.

"The campaign will also promote established organizations, programs, and people who are helping children overcome some of the issues they face growing up in the modern world."

If you're one of the victims of the recently revealed hack of Facebook, you should be extra careful on the internet — and extra watchful of your other online and offline accounts.

The data hackers gleaned from the social network could be used for identity theft, and to access accounts ranging from those at banks and other financial institutions to online stores. It also could be used in so-called spear phishing attacks, in which hackers use the information they know about particular users to send them personalized messages that convince them to leak their passwords or other critical data.

"Given the scale of this — which was really surprising — and how much information was scraped … people can be legitimately concerned," said Justin Brookman, director of privacy and technology policy at Consumers Union, the publisher of Consumer Reports.

Some 30 million accounts were compromised in the attack, which Facebook first announced two weeks ago. The hackers were able to gain access to names and phones numbers of nearly all of those users as well as personal details such as birth dates, relationship status, gender, and education and work histories for 14 million of them.

The exposure of those kinds of personal details can be particularly dangerous to people who are trying keep a low profile, such as those who have been the victims of domestic abuse or protestors worried about reprisals from their governments. It can also create problems for people who were trying to keep certain parts of their lives private from the wider world, such as their sexual orientation or their religious affiliations.

The data from Facebook could be used to access bank accounts

But it can be risky to everyday users as well. That's because in the hands of malicious actors, this data can be used to hijack accounts on other services besides Facebook.

The password reset feature on many sites asks users to answer certain security questions. Those questions often ask for just the kind of personal details that were revealed in the Facebook hack, Brookman said.

But it's not just online accounts that are at risk. Information such as names and birth dates can also be used to gain access to banking accounts or medical records over the phone, said John Simpson, director of privacy and technology at Consumer Watchdog, a consumer advocacy group. That kind of information "can be tremendously empowering" to hackers, he said.

"They can take that information and definitely parlay it into information that can scam the individual," he said. "Potentially, there's some real damage that can be done to people."

Even the leak of just a phone number can pose a risk. To protect their accounts on various websites, many users have been turning on two-factor authentication, a security technique that often requires users when logging into their accounts to enter a special code in addition to their passwords. Many sites send that code via the SMS text messaging system to users' cell phones.

Security researchers have known for years, though, that the SMS system is vulnerable to hacking attacks. By knowing a user's phone number, a malicious actor could potentially intercept the two-factor authentication code and use it to gain control of the user's account.

It could also be used in targeted email attacks

Another potential danger comes from spear-phishing attacks. Typically in such an attack, a hacker sends an email that induces a user to click on a link to a spoofed site and enter their login information. The malicious actor usually uses what they know about the target — their friends, their family, their life experiences — to convince them that the email is legitimate.

Even seemingly innocuous information about a person can be used in such attacks. The more data a hacker has about someone, the more believable they can make the email lure. One set of data that was exposed in the Facebook hack was the locations where users had checked in using Facebook's app.

A hacker might be able to take that information and purport to be a representative of a target's credit card company, potentially even saying that the company had noticed their card being used on the date and place of the check in, said Michelle Richardson, director of the privacy and data project at the Center for Democracy and Technology, an advocacy group.

"These guys are really crafty," she said.

Because users often reuse passwords on multiple sites, they may find lots of their most sensitive and valuable accounts at risk if they fall victim to such a scam.

There are steps you can take to protect yourself

You can find out whether you were affected by the Facebook attack by logging into your account and going to a security page the company has set up. If you were affected, there are several steps you should take to protect yourself, security and privacy experts say:

Regardless of whether your account was affected, you might also want to consider deleting or deactivating your Facebook account, especially if you don't use it often. If you plan to keep your account, you should also think about limiting what you share on it.

"People share stuff on their Facebook profiles they wouldn't want shared with rest of world," said Brookman. He continued: "There's historical data that's out there about you that could potentially be leveraged against you or used to hack your account or compromise your friends'."

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The deadline for bids on a $10 billion cloud computing contract from the Department of Defense closes on Friday. The deal won't be officially awarded until April 2019, but the process has already drawn plenty of controversy since the bidding process officially began in July.

The deal, called the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract, is winner-take-all, meaning it will only be awarded to a single company. And right now, Amazon Web Services is the runaway favorite to be that winner.

"It's between AWS and Microsoft Azure, to be honest," said Renee Murphy, a principal analyst at Forrester. "AWS is probably in the running to get it. They have the strongest relationship with the top secret levels of the government."

Amazon is considered the frontrunner because of the certifications it already has, and its existing relationship with the government. In 2013, the CIA awarded the company a $600 million contract, and last year, AWS introduced Secret Region, a service designed for the CIA that can handle data classified at the "Secret" level.

IBM and Oracle are still in the running for the contract, along with AWS and Microsoft. Google bowed out of the competition earlier this week, saying it wouldn't align with corporate values, but also because portions of the contract were out of scope with their current government certifications.

Rival tech titans, however, have suggested that the process was flawed from the very start, in such a way that the retailer was the only company that could win.

"When you delve into the nitty gritty [requirements of JEDI], it's clear that some of them are written with one company in mind," said Sam Gordy, General Manager for IBM US Federal, in an interview with Business Insider. Oracle and IBM have both filed formal protests against the Department of Defense over the JEDI contract.

The Department of Defense declined to comment, citing pending litigation. Amazon and Oracle declined to comment. Microsoft and Google did not respond to a request for comment at the time of publication.

The JEDI protests

Several companies have voiced their opposition to the winner-take-all approach, saying that a multi-cloud solution would be stronger and that JEDI's requirements seem aimed at one specific company.

In August, Oracle filed a protest against the Pentagon's decision to award the contract to one company, instead of multiple. On Wednesday, days before bids were due, IBM announced it would also file a protest against the Department of Defense's insistence on using only one cloud, instead of several from different companies. Even Microsoft, which is seen as the other major contender for JEDI, is said to have criticized the process.

"The focus here is ensuring that we do the right thing for national security," said Gordy. "We protest because we believe that's the right thing to do. Businesses are all moving to a multi-cloud environment because of resiliency in their system, flexibility and security."

As for Google: The search giant dropped out saying that the JEDI contract could conflict with its corporate values, just months after employees protested management for the company's involvement in Project Maven — a program with the Pentagon to use artificial intelligence to analyze drone footage. However, the company also chimed in against the notion of relying on a single cloud.

"Had the JEDI contract been open to multiple vendors, we would have submitted a compelling solution for portions of it," a spokesperson said in a statement. "Google Cloud believes that a multi-cloud approach is in the best interest of government agencies, because it allows them to choose the right cloud for the right workload."

IBM CEO Ginni Rometty Business Insider/Julie Bort

Amazon is leading, and Google dropped out

Right now, Amazon is the only company that holds the highest security authorization to handle government data. To work for the Defense Department, companies need additional clearance from the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), which gives out security authorizations from IL-2 to IL-6, with IL-6 handling information rated Top Secret.

According to the JEDI contract requirement, companies should be able to manage IL-5 data. According to a publicly-viewable document from the Department of Defense, Oracle, Microsoft and IBM have received IL-5 authorizations for certain cloud services they offer. Google, which dropped out of the race earlier this week, only holds the IL-2 requirement. On the other hand, Amazon is the only company that holds IL-6 authorization, which applies to its AWS Secret Commercial Cloud Services for government agencies.

"I think frankly, that cybersecurity plan was what led [Google] to withdrawing," said Rick Holgate, senior director and analyst at Gartner. "That's consistent with attitude they've taken with the US federal government. If [its cloud offering is] satisfactory, they don't feel a need or inclination to go beyond that or go further."

Compared to other JEDI competitors, Google is also behind on the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP), a security certification on handling government data. Google was certified in March to handle data at the "moderate" level, while Amazon, Microsoft and Oracle have certifications at the "high" level for their government cloud services.

That's why it makes sense that Google backed off, Murphy says. The process involves not only updating systems to meet federal requirements, but also documentation and hiring third party assessors to scan and hack the system for vulnerabilities.

"The step between moderate and high is extreme," Murphy said. "If you're not in any form of certification process currently, it's going to take you months and months to get into the pipeline. The government isn't going to do business with you if you're not FedRAMP certified."

Besides, it's expensive: Achieving this certification is an expensive process, as it costs $2.25 million to achieve authorization and $1 million annually to maintain it. Google could certainly afford it, but it is a cost.

Catching up to Amazon

Microsoft isn't backing away from the competition, however, and some think that it's just as viable a competitor as Amazon.

On Tuesday, Microsoft said it's on track by early next year to match Amazon and obtain the IL-6 "Top Secret" classified data certification.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella Microsoft

"There's this thinking that it's wired for AWS," Holgate said. "Microsoft is equally valid in this space. Based on their track record, they have the ability to deliver the contract they're looking for. It's a starting point to be a multiple cloud environment for the Department of Defense."

As for the other two companies in the running, IBM previously had a cloud deal with the Army and expects to be able to obtain that IL-6 authorization. IBM currently only has a FedRAMP moderate certification, but it is "confident we can secure all certifications required to support JEDI," an IBM spokesperson said. Oracle also has an active relationship with the Pentagon, as the Department of Defense uses many of the company's databases.

Oracle co-CEO Mark HurdFlicker/Oracle PR

Even if other companies are able to catch up, Amazon has the advantage of already being able to fulfill the top government requirements. If another company were to win the contract, it has a tight timeline to get its authorization in order. It must be able to host classified information within six months, and top-secret information within nine months; Amazon could do it today, in theory.

"There's nothing that would prohibit them from meeting these requirements as long as they're willing to invest," Holgate said. "I think what may have given Oracle and IBM pause with the JEDI solicitation is the scope and magnitude of the services they're looking for. They're requiring services at all levels of classification, which also involves IL-6."

Still, Holgate points out that the government will offer other cloud contracts in the coming years.

"There tends to be this discussion around JEDI on the winner-take-all vehicle," Holgate said. "It's not in any way a winner-take-all vehicle. It's certainly a pretty significant vehicle. Whoever wins it will have a significant contract. There's other cloud contracts out there. The idea that there will be one cloud provider in the Department of Defense forever is misleading."

The recent Facebook hack in which the private information of millions of users was stolen is an unfortunate reminder that our passwords aren't always as safe as we think they are.

This is where two-factor authentication (2FA) comes in. While 2FA likely wouldn't have stopped your data from being stolen from Facebook, it can prevent unwanted people from logging into your accounts, even if they have your password.

You're probably familiar with 2FA in the form of a text message - like when you log in to an account from a new browser or computer, and you're prompted to enter a code that's sent to you via text message. While this method is definitely more secure than simply using a password, it's not the most secure method of 2FA — especially if someone has access to your phone.

If you really want to protect yourself, you need to do what's called "physical" two-factor authentication.

Using a physical security key is one of the safest ways to protect your accounts — and it's not that expensive or complicated. Instead of typing in a passcode from a text message for 2FA, a physical security key needs to be plugged into your device when prompted, which allows you to log in. One of the more well-known security key companies, Yubico, sells security keys for as cheap as $20. You can purchase security keys for both computers and mobile phones, meaning your accounts are safe no matter where you generally access them.

Setting up a security key is pretty simple, and only takes a few minutes. For the purposes of this article, a Yubico Yubikey will be the point of reference.

You don't have to do anything to the actual key to set it up — just take it out of the packaging and it's ready to go. Next, you'll need to choose a service to secure with your key. Social media and email services tend to support physical two-factor authentication, and so do operating systems like Mac OS and Windows. You can also use a security key with password managers that keep track of and fill out your passwords for you.

Here's a list of some services that support physical two-factor authentication, from Yubico:

The above links provide instructions detailing how to set up a security key with each service. For Yubico's full list of websites and services that support physical 2FA, click here.

Once your key is set up, using it is pretty simple. It's important to keep your key with you, such as on a keychain, so you're always able to log in (although if you don't have your key handy, you can also enable additional log-in methods).

When you attempt to log in to your account, the website or service will prompt ask for your security key. All you need to do is plug it in to the device, usually via USB port. On a Yubikey, you'll need to press a small button on the key once it's plugged in.

If you're using a smartphone, you tap the key on the device instead of plugging it in, and the phone authenticates you through a wireless NFC signal.

After that, you're logged in and good to go. The process hardly takes longer than typing your password — but it's much more secure.

Facebook has been hacked, and to put it gently, it's really, really bad.

On Friday, the social network revealed that the hack it first disclosed last week has affected 30 million users, and 14 million of them have had highly personal data including locations, search history, relationship status, gender, and more exposed.

It's a catastrophic lapse in security, exposing potentially compromising user information that could put victims at risk of identify theft — and it could not have come at a worse time for Facebook.

Facebook's terrible year risks sparking regulatory action

In case you hadn't noticed, Facebook's last year or so has been, again gently, not great.

The Silicon Valley company has lurched from scandal to scandal, barely recovering from one until the next one hits. First it was used to spread misinformation and Russian propaganda during the 2016 election. Then it was implicated in fueling genocide by disseminating hate speech in Myanmar. Then political research firm Cambridge Analytica was revealed to have misappropriated 87 million users' data. And so on, and so forth.

Against this backdrop of egregious screw-ups, politicians and regulators are increasingly discussing the possibility of regulation targeting Facebook and other tech giants. Senator Mark Warner (D-VA), known for being outspoken on tech issues, called on Congress to to act.

"With each new, high-profile privacy breach, it's ever-clearer that Congress needs to establish some guardrails for social media platforms to protect consumer data while encouraging American innovation," he told Business Insider in a statement.

At Facebook's F8 conference in April this year, it had looked like the worst was behind the company, and Mark Zuckerberg tried to turn a page. But this recent hack shows Facebook's problems have caught up with it once again — and the odds of its woes turning into the spark that ignites a new wave of regulation have only increased.

Facebook is also already on the decline

But Facebook also faces another, more insidious problem: It's losing its grip on its users.

Growth of Facebook's core app is flatlining in the US, and actually dropping in Europe. In general, the amount of time people spend in the app is declining.

In a recent research note, Cowen analyst John Blackledge highlighted that the average daily time spent on Facebook had dropped noticeably over the past year, even as other apps grow.

Cowen

It's too early to say whether the hack will have any impact on time spent in the core Facebook app, but it seems unlikely to have helped, even as initial reactions to Friday's revelations have been furious.

And it seems probable that the news will further sour attitudes towards Facebook among people who have yet to sign up for the social network, making the possibility of new growth even more difficult.

Facebook's new shining star is Instagram, which is growing in audience (and time spent on platform) even as Facebook declines, and has thus far stayed largely uncontaminated by Facebook's scandals and increasingly radioactive brand.

Will Facebook's recent hack change this? We don't yet know — but it complicates a delicate transition period for the company, especially as Facebook is expected to more closely integrate Instagram following the abrupt departures of its two cofounders following reported clashes with CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

In short: A security breach of this magnitude would be a catastrophe at any company. But for Facebook, it's as if it were trying to turn a corner, only to smack head-first into a brick wall.

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Several of San Francisco's most powerful tech CEOs publicly locked horns on Friday over a measure that would make the city's largest businesses pay a greater share of the bill for homelessness services.

In a series of tweets, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, and the Irish-born CEO of Stripe, Patrick Collison, debated Proposition C, a measure on the ballot for voters in the city in the November election that would raise taxes on large companies to help San Francisco deal with an intractable homelessness problem.

Benioff, who founded and runs the largest company in San Francisco, has endorsed Prop C, though it could ultimately cost Salesforce millions of dollars in city taxes. Benioff has issued a statement on Twitter and bought ads supporting the measure.

The San Francisco Controller's Office estimates that the tax would bring an additional $250 million to $300 million in revenue for the city each year and affect 300 to 400 local businesses; it would apply to those with more than $50 million in San Francisco gross receipts, as well as companies headquartered in the city.

In a tweet on Friday, Dorsey said he disagreed with Benioff's support for Prop C.

"I want to help fix the homeless problem in SF and California. I don't believe this (Prop C) is the best way to do it," Dorsey said, adding that he supported San Francisco Mayor London Breed and California state Sen. Scott Wiener's "commitment to address this the right way."

"Mayor Breed was elected to fix this," Dorsey added. "I trust her."

Collison later voiced support for Dorsey.

The exchange highlights what has become a thorny and embarrassing problem for San Francisco, where the sight of tents, human waste, and indigence is a jarring contrast to scooter-riding techies who work for some of the most valuable companies in the world.

Twitter has been a long-standing target of criticism because several years ago it negotiated a controversial tax break as an incentive for it to remain in San Francisco and move into its Market Street headquarters.

Breed, who was elected in June, has expressed opposition to Prop C. In a statement earlier this month, she said the city should do an audit of what it's already spending on homelessness services "before we double the tax bill overnight."

Benioff responded sharply to Dorsey, suggesting the Twitter CEO was not doing his part to curb homelessness.

"Which homeless programs in our city are you supporting?" Benioff said. "Can you tell me what Twitter and Square & you are in for & at what financial levels? How much have you given to heading home our $37M initiative to get every homeless child off the streets?"

If you've painstakingly tried to get Snapchat filters to apply to your cat without luck, your time has come.

Snapchat just announced the introduction of cat lenses, meaning the app is now able to reliably detect cats' faces. Previously, the lenses were only meant for human faces, but you could get it to work on your pets if you were lucky.

For some reason, Snapchat has chosen to focus specifically on cats, and not other animals.

In a tweet announcing the new feature, Snapchat showed off a few of the filters in action — including a cat with bats flying around its face, and a few cat owners taking selfies with their grumpy-looking, glasses-wearing cats.

Business Insider does not have a cat on hand, and was unable to test the new feature, but we'll report back when we do.