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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

#231

Post by oneplane »

danso wrote: post #188
Kequc wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 responsib…

Of course those systems 'discriminate', that is what they are designed for. The problems aren't with the system, but with how they were set up, implemented or tested.

Say you make a sensor that is supposed to tell the difference between blue, green and purple, but you only test with one shade of blue and maybe two shades of green, you are going to have trouble actually matching your design goals.

In the case of the face detection system: they didn't specify and/or test is well enough, which can be due to a number of factors, but will most likely lie with the employees of the company that did the development. If they only have the classic 'pasty white guys' to work with, then it's going to be crap at actually doing face detections for all humans. On one hand you could setup a proper test protocol, on the other hand they shouldn't have taken broad or vague terms when developing/presenting the technology. If you don't have a broad selection of faces to test with, you shouldn't claim you have 'face detection', since you merely have 'detection of faces of the people that work on the project plus anyone who looks like them'.

This would be a completely different story if someone writing the face matching code specifically programmed code or wrote configuration data that targets skin tone or geometry of specific groups of people.

Some people would like to extend this type of technological issue into the area of HRM and race/gender-bias in society in general, but that is not a technology-only discussion and hardly something the people involved are qualified to argue about.

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

It says that society is imperfect, and that certain levels of xenophobia, bias and true racism exist. Doesn't say much about technology though.

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

#232

Post by troupe »

If you do a search for "three black teenagers" you now see all the top results are screenshots of the mug shots that people saw when they previously searched for the term. So basically the discussion around it makes it more prominent not less. Not saying this is right or wrong, just pointing out the results are basically being reinforced.

Now when you do a search for "three white teenagers" you mostly get mug shots of black teens.

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

#233

Post by mirimir »

danso wrote: post #225
mirimir wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I'd like some search service that shows me what's accurately out there. If there's content out there about somebody being a "miserable failure" or Holocaust denial, I want to see it. I mean, what good is a search service that doesn't show what's there? If I don't want to see whatever results are useless or offensive, I'll do my own filtering. But then, I grew up on searching the scientific literature using Scie…

> I'd like some search service that shows me what's accurately out there What does that mean, to accurately depict what's "out there"? That could be as nonsensical and unproductive as completely killing the spam filter in your email. Do you feel that that GMail and other modern-spam-detecting solutions have given you an inaccurate view of the "real" mail you are getting? By the late 2000s, content farms such as Deman…

I don't like spam filters. Because I've been burned too many times, missing important messages that got flagged as spam. So I end up having to look through all the spam anyway.

I did hate the Demand Media bullshit, however. But as I've said, I'd rather that Google flagged that stuff, and let me filter it out. I mean, maybe I'm researching an article about Demand Media. How could I do it if Google is suppressing it? Could Google perhaps have an "expert" option? Analogous to "family friendly" or whatever it's called.

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

#234

Post by tyingq »

Searching for "Asian girls" or "Mexican girls", etc, produces similar results.

I can see the rationale for altering the algorithm for words like "girls".

It's also interesting that, for example, the results for "swedish girls" are much tamer. Even though that's sort of a long standing phrase that was very sexual.

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

#235

Post by brighteyes »

shawndrost wrote: post #222
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…

Your second paragraph explains why Google, the search tool, has a striking history of bias against black women, by stating "search is a reflection of [..] how terrible we are". Your third paragraph explains that Google, the company, spends time and money on correcting bias. I don't think that's news to the author, or a refutation. She says tech companies produce tools in environments of racism/sexism, without proper…

I didn't see that comment as excusing anything.

I think we all agree Google should do as much as possible to improve results. But at the same time, if Google gets it right 99 times out of 100, the 100th is what will get an article like this written on it. That doesn't excuse that, it explains why it happens.

> Your second paragraph explains why Google, the search tool, has a striking history of bias against black women

The article says "Google has a striking history of racism", which you interpret as "Google results have included things which are strikingly racist." That's one interpretation, but it seems equally valid to interpret "Google has a striking history of racism" with "Google has been very racist" (after all, if I said, "Bob has a striking history of racism" you'd be right to assume I think Bob is a racist).

I think some of the controversy around this article stems from these interpretations, one of which is a far worse accusation than the other.

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

#236

Post by danso »

naasking wrote: post #229
danso wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I'd think the author would argue that these racist biases should and could have been caught before going into production I think people who believe this significantly underestimate the difficulty of solving these problems.

I think that's likely. But the people tasked to solve these problems aren't always given the right priorities. Detecting/classifying the faces of dark-skinned humans is inextricably more complicated than it is with light-skinned humans. It requires significantly more training data, more computational power, and more testing time to reach the same accuracy as a light-skin-only camera and classifier.

We would deride Uber's self-driving vehicles if it turns out their systems can't tell the difference between harmless (plastic bags) and dangerous (jaywalkers, wildlife) objects on the road. Likewise, we can judge a company for releasing a general consumer webcam that fails to fully function for 10-15% of the American population.

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

#237

Post by ucaetano »

tux1968 wrote: post #223
ucaetano wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Doing it manually as you suggest is likely hopeless and more politically fraught. Yes, but, sadly, necessary.

Disagree that there is any necessity at all -- the supposed cure will be worse than the disease.

Not necessarily, look at the "black girls" example.

Anyway, that's Google's call to make.

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

#238

Post by sheepmullet »

komali2 wrote: post #210
ryandrake wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Shouldn't women feel comfortable with their coworkers regardless of local culture?

The problem is what makes a woman feel uncomfortable is culturally driven - when you have such a mix of cultures at work people are bound to make innocent mis-steps.

Californian companies have a tendency of looking at it by race and gender identity. Do you assume the best of people or do you assume the worst?

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

#239

Post by s73v3r_ »

naasking wrote: post #229
danso wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I'd think the author would argue that these racist biases should and could have been caught before going into production I think people who believe this significantly underestimate the difficulty of solving these problems.

I think it's more that we think that they're not even bothering to test those things, because they're not thinking about it.

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

#240

Post by tux1968 »

ucaetano wrote: post #237
tux1968 wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree that there is any necessity at all -- the supposed cure will be worse than the disease.

Not necessarily, look at the "black girls" example. Anyway, that's Google's call to make.

You're trying to advocate for Google to make a certain decision by asserting that it is "necessary". I'm doing the same by asserting that it is decidedly "not necessary".
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