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Google Has a Striking History of Bias Against Black Girls

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Re: Google Has a Striking History of Bias Against Black Girls

#181

Post by kolpa »

dnomad wrote: post #69
savanaly wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It seems like the main crux of the argument is that being reflective of the culture is also reinforcing it I believe expecting Google to change its search results to match an ideological agenda (I'm not using "ideological" in a derogatory sense here) is a case of shooting the messenger. It's the job of humans to make society in the image they desire and the job of the search engine to efficiently and accurately give…

I don't know if this isn't blindingly obvious by now... but Google already changes its search results to match an ideological agenda. The days of naive algorithms ended with the 2016 election. These days malicious actors will deliberately game any naive algorithm to push their malicious ideological agenda (eg [1]) and the only reasonable thing to do is to push back. (Or I suppose you could let malicious actors overru…

black-hat SEO and anti-black-hat-SEO goes back way before 2016

Re: Google Has a Striking History of Bias Against Black Girls

#182

Post by [deleted] »

labster wrote: post #147

I think the thesis is wrong here. Google has a striking history of removing bias against black women. People make content for the web. People are racist, and make lots of racist assumptions in their writing. Society is racist. This results in Google's algorithms reflecting the corpus they scanned, and the searches that are made. But the search is just a reflection of us, and how terrible we all are. Google gets embar…

[deleted]

Re: Google Has a Striking History of Bias Against Black Girls

#183

Post by danso »

labster wrote: post #147

I think the thesis is wrong here. Google has a striking history of removing bias against black women. People make content for the web. People are racist, and make lots of racist assumptions in their writing. Society is racist. This results in Google's algorithms reflecting the corpus they scanned, and the searches that are made. But the search is just a reflection of us, and how terrible we all are. Google gets embar…

I agree that there's too much blame-the-algorithm sentiment here, but if I had to guess, I'd think the author would argue that these racist biases should and could have been caught before going into production -- i.e. it doesn't have to be an inevitable cycle of ad hoc public shaming and repentance. These biases could be identified just as other SERP problems are identified before each algorithm update.

Just like the HP "racist" webcams [0] might have been caught had the CV trainers been more aware of what is/isn't in the training data, and/or if HP had a few more testers of darker complexion.

And perhaps Facebook's "Year in Review" rare tendency to be "cruel" [1] would have been mitigated with a broader group of devs and testers.

[0] http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/12/22/hp.webcams/index.html

[1] https://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2014/12/24/inadvertent-al...

Re: Google Has a Striking History of Bias Against Black Girls

#184

Post by rayiner »

mlazos wrote: post #32

I’m always amazed how often the “surprise” that digital technology is in fact not unbiased and robotic in nature keeps getting written about. Algorithms that optimize for click through rate for ads and search relevancy will inevitably be a reflection of ourselves and all of the shitty things various people believe. >> What we know about Google’s responses to racial stereotyping in its products is that it typically de…

It shouldn’t be surprising. Engineers routinely talk about how it would be great if we removed the human element and replaced it with algorithmic decision making. But see how sentencing algorithms give longer prison terms to black people. Yes, the technical explanation is that it’s just reflecting society’s racism. But the point is that, contrary to the bill of sale, using algorithms doesn’t actually remove the human element. Indeed, there is a good argument (as the author of this piece makes elsewhere) that it ossifies the human biases that exist at one moment in time.

Re: Google Has a Striking History of Bias Against Black Girls

#186

Post by brighteyes »

rayiner wrote: post #173
labster wrote: post #147

I think the thesis is wrong here. Google has a striking history of removing bias against black women. People make content for the web. People are racist, and make lots of racist assumptions in their writing. Society is racist. This results in Google's algorithms reflecting the corpus they scanned, and the searches that are made. But the search is just a reflection of us, and how terrible we all are. Google gets embar…

You’re missing the point, which is that you’re dealing with a coupled system (in the physics sense). Google reflects our racism, but exposure to that racism on the first page of results makes us more racist. Google concentrates it and reflects it back to us. (Google does this with everything else as well. What do people think of the new MacBook Pro? Searching for reviews will immediately spit back a concentrated and…

You raise an interesting point, but the comment was about the article itself and the thesis in the article.

Re: Google Has a Striking History of Bias Against Black Girls

#188

Post by danso »

Kequc wrote: post #67
oneplane wrote: post #63

It's interesting how the article tries to 'blame' an algorithm while it's basically just working fine and simply reflecting the output of culture/country/people. It's not that the software decided that one thing should be the results, and others should not, it just takes what we feed it, and gives it back to us.

I find the concept fascinating that anyone would think an algorithm is "racist". More or less begging human interference with the algorithm in order to make it less racist, anything anyone does can then be viewed as racist.

"Racism" involves prejudice and discrimination predicated on the belief that one race is superior/inferior to another. If a face-detection algorithm fails to easily recognize black or Asian faces, such that people of that ethnicity/race have to go through a more manual/friction-laden process (think manual pat-downs and searches from TSA) to be verified as "human" or "citizen", then how is that algorithm not responsible for discriminatory treatment?

I do agree, though, that it is wrong to infer that the algorithms themselves are evil or malicious -- it's possible to be racist without having negative intentions.

But what does it say about a society if it continues to optimize algorithms (and related infrastructure) for one group over another?

Re: Google Has a Striking History of Bias Against Black Girls

#189

Post by fipple »

labster wrote: post #147

I think the thesis is wrong here. Google has a striking history of removing bias against black women. People make content for the web. People are racist, and make lots of racist assumptions in their writing. Society is racist. This results in Google's algorithms reflecting the corpus they scanned, and the searches that are made. But the search is just a reflection of us, and how terrible we all are. Google gets embar…

Google can amplify the result though. Just like a population that votes 51% Republican and 49% Democrat can have a 100% Republican legislature if divided into equally representative districts, Google can amplify society’s latent racism by making a model that is more racist than the training data.

Re: Google Has a Striking History of Bias Against Black Girls

#190

Post by johnhess »

labster wrote: post #147

I think the thesis is wrong here. Google has a striking history of removing bias against black women. People make content for the web. People are racist, and make lots of racist assumptions in their writing. Society is racist. This results in Google's algorithms reflecting the corpus they scanned, and the searches that are made. But the search is just a reflection of us, and how terrible we all are. Google gets embar…

> Google likely spends more money on editorial control for issues of racism than for any other thing that doesn't make money.

Is there evidence to this effect? There are a lot of things Google spends money on.

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