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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

#201

Post by PeterisP »

jjeaff wrote: post #153
yongjik wrote: post #59

This is a much harder problem that it looks to a casual observer. Just imagine what kind of people would type "black girls" to Google search. Not "black girls outfit", not "black girls social bias", just "black girls". I'll bet at least 50% of the searchers are looking for porn. So even if Google had infinite resources, its choices are: (1) act as a moral authority and deny pornographic contents to those who are look…

It seems a given that any search that does not include explicit "pornographic terms" should never return pornographic results.

If data shows that the majority people searching for "xyz" desire to find sexual results with this query, then "xyz" apparently is a sexual term. It's certainly plausible that this might be true for the world "girls" in many contexts.

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

#202

Post by ryandrake »

komali2 wrote: post #174
ryandrake wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I try not to get involved in these kinds of dangerous discussions but i just wanted to highlight your comparison to SafeSearch. Political correctness really does feel like having to walk around with SafeSearch on all my inputs and outputs, programmed to filter out an ever-changing and inscrutable list of wrongthink and wrongspeak from the real world. It’s so true—great comment.

I disagree, because I don't think "Political Correctness" has been sufficiently defined. I think this doubly so because of the extremism used in the OP regarding "AI goggles that block out the words that might hurt us." I see a mockery, there, and it raises my hackles. Perhaps it was unintentional. What is "political correctness?" Are we referring right now to the alt-right manufactured bogeyman? That is my sense.

That’s what makes it so bad: despite it not being sufficiently defined, we are expected to filter our world views and interactions with others through it. Not only is it insufficiently defined, it’s situation-dependent. Political Correctness in a university or a California tech company is a totally different set of filters as Political Correctness in a Deep South Baptist Church or my rural Appalachia home town.

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

#203

Post by ScottBurson »

brighteyes wrote: post #191
treis wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"white girls" returns stuff about the movie white girl "Girls" is the HBO show "Asian girls" is porn lite "Black girls" has no porn for me. Various sites about black girls (black girls code for example)

It depends on your search history, actually. I tried "black girls", "white girls", "asian girls" - and also "asian boys" etc. - in various accounts, some of which were used when browsing porn (i.e., home accounts vs accounts used at work), and in both google and bing. In accounts where porn was browsed in the past, porn results were over 50% for all of the above. In others, porn was absent.

Excellent research! You should post this as a root comment so it has a chance of rising to the top.

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

#204

Post by PeterisP »

jancsika wrote: post #159
Hyva wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 you just observed and described is that technology _is_ unbiased and robotic. The bias is in the…

> What you just observed and described is that technology _is_ unbiased and robotic. Just to get calibrated: what is an example-- real or imagined-- of technology that is biased?

For example, a search algorithm with an override that removes all links of sexual nature for certain hardcoded queries (say, "black girls") could be an example of a biased technology.

If I'd have to make a definition, then it would probably be a technology that somehow encodes an assumption that doesn't match reality. In this context, saying that "black girls" is an innocent search term and users searching for it don't expect to get sexual results is such an assumption - it would be polite, politically correct and possibly socially desirable; but it seems likely this is simply not true in the reality we live in.

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

#206

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

venuur wrote: post #100

Apologies for being slightly off topic. While trying to read to article, my browser (Safari on iPhone) was redirected to a scammy looking amazon gift card website. Did anyone else have this problem? I am trying to figure out if it is a problem with Time.com or my phone.

Likely your phone, given that no-one else has complained.

Sometimes I miss the HN of 2011-12, where literally 80% of the comments were about the design of the site, and how it didn't work on Safari/IE/Firefox/Chrome/Lynx.

Not often, though.

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

#207

Post by bcheung »

Seems like the algorithms just surface already existing patterns in society. They have no inherit bias of their own, they are merely reporting the reality it sees.

Is introducing an anti-bias at the search engine level the appropriate solution? It seems a bit too much like Western medicine alleviating the symptoms without addressing the root cause. An anti-bias is just masking it.

Also, if the author is a feminist, why she writing for a magazine called "Bitch"?

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

#208

Post by komali2 »

tanilama wrote: post #195
narrator wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The proof that a group has been marginalized is that their numbers are not representative of their presence in the population. Thus, we pretend that the ideal world exists by adjusting those numbers in situations where merit selection is the criteria in the hopes that the numbers will converge by themselves. We don't interview each participant to ask them how they were traumatized, we only look at the statistics. Peo…

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/08/why-me... Statistics show that man are the new minority in the campus. But it is surely will be frown upon by some AA activists if a that program is extended to cover male. If AA is said to what it is trying to accomplish, then that shouldn't be controversial at all.

>But it is surely will be frown upon

I think this is presumptuous. We can try to find out, why not?

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

#210

Post by komali2 »

ryandrake wrote: post #202
komali2 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, because I don't think "Political Correctness" has been sufficiently defined. I think this doubly so because of the extremism used in the OP regarding "AI goggles that block out the words that might hurt us." I see a mockery, there, and it raises my hackles. Perhaps it was unintentional. What is "political correctness?" Are we referring right now to the alt-right manufactured bogeyman? That is my sense.

That’s what makes it so bad: despite it not being sufficiently defined, we are expected to filter our world views and interactions with others through it. Not only is it insufficiently defined, it’s situation-dependent. Political Correctness in a university or a California tech company is a totally different set of filters as Political Correctness in a Deep South Baptist Church or my rural Appalachia home town.

>we are expected to filter our world views and interactions through it

I am replying in the following manner only because I believe the discourse around this subject is usually poorly defined. It is not an attack of you or yours, but my attempt to help us all better understand what we're talking about:

By saying "filter through it," what do you mean by "it?" What are the rules of the filter you are applying?

When you say "expected," who is expecting this of you? What has indicated to you that there is this expectation, and what are the consequences of bucking that expectation?

What are the filters in California? What are the filters in the deep south? Is there any federally legal relevance? For example, you could face legal issues if you make sexually connotative comments to a female coworker, and though you are more likely to be pursued and charged in California than in the Deep South for it, is that how things should be? Shouldn't women feel comfortable with their coworkers regardless of local culture?

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