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AI Company Accused of Using Humans to Fake Its AI

sixthtone.com

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Re: AI Company Accused of Using Humans to Fake Its AI

#21

Post by paradite »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #16

Off topic, but SixthTone is an interesting publication. It is actually controlled by the CPC in an attempt to create news that westerners would actually read [1], as opposed to Chinadaily and Globaltimes that are too obviously propaganda. In this case, they go with China-critical articles and then try to direct the message to a pro-government position from that perspective. This is actually how wumaos are supposed to…

> China, Explained

> BY BETHANY ALLEN-EBRAHIMIAN

Wow. That's an incredible title to use on a subject that is so narrow in scope.

Let's look at her other articles:

https://foreignpolicy.com/author/bethany-allen-ebrahimian/

Seems pretty one-sided.

And her twitter:

https://twitter.com/BethanyAllenEbr

Seems pretty one-sided as well.

Just to be clear, I don't intend to personally attack her. Just pointing out the bias in her reporting while we are on this topic of "wumao".

I am also not targeting Foreign Policy as a news media, as Foreign Policy itself doesn't seem to suffer from bias against China as a whole, as there are other authors that are either more neutral or biased towards China:

https://foreignpolicy.com/tag/tea-leaf-nation/

https://foreignpolicy.com/author/melissa-chan/

https://foreignpolicy.com/author/ran-jijun/

Edit: Attempt to remove personal attacks in the comment.

Edit 2: Remove the section about myself.

Re: AI Company Accused of Using Humans to Fake Its AI

#23

Post by phreeza »

yters wrote: post #4

Makes sense. Law of information non-growth proves AI cannot create mutual information. Only source we know of is people. This fake AI is the future of the industry.

I guess you are talking about the second law of thermodynamics? Even humans don't violate that, the have to get the energy for generating information from somewhere, and that increases entropy.

Re: AI Company Accused of Using Humans to Fake Its AI

#24

Post by agibsonccc »

I was a speaker at a conference they were doing live annotation for. (http://waic2018.com/index-en.html) See slide deck here for proof: https://www.slideshare.net/agibsonccc/world-artificial-intel...

Beyond that, commenting on the translation a bit. They did live translation the first day of WAIC for the headline speakers. There were 2 screens, 1 was baidu and the other was iflytek. Neither were that good on the english side (it was ok..but could barely keep up with the speakers)

They claim they are still working on english. The grammar output wasn't coherent. IFlytek itself has some neat hardware they sell that is pretty good.

Beyond that, it seems like they are mainly collecting data right now. I would not be surprised they were doing this just for marketing visibility. It is easy to fake.

Happy to answer questions about the experience there if people would find it useful.

Re: AI Company Accused of Using Humans to Fake Its AI

#25

Post by seanmcdirmid »

paradite wrote: post #21
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #16

Off topic, but SixthTone is an interesting publication. It is actually controlled by the CPC in an attempt to create news that westerners would actually read [1], as opposed to Chinadaily and Globaltimes that are too obviously propaganda. In this case, they go with China-critical articles and then try to direct the message to a pro-government position from that perspective. This is actually how wumaos are supposed to…

> China, Explained > BY BETHANY ALLEN-EBRAHIMIAN Wow. That's an incredible title to use on a subject that is so narrow in scope. Let's look at her other articles: https://foreignpolicy.com/author/bethany-allen-ebrahimian/ Seems pretty one-sided. And her twitter: https://twitter.com/BethanyAllenEbr Seems pretty one-sided as well. Just to be clear, I don't intend to personally attack her. Just pointing out the bias in…

Those are pretty stereotypical ad hominems, actually. Anytime you attack the author and not the content, it is pretty much an ad hominem. These get used heavily in the Chinese press as well, so I assume there isn’t the taboo against using ad hominems (and other red herrings) in Chinese culture as there is in western culture.

Wumao is basically someone who is paid by the Chinese government to subvert online public opinion. If you are just pro China and being called a womao, the term is being misapplied. Anyone who says anything critical of China is called biased against China, even if it’s just a thing or two. Few people are actually completely biased against China on everything, but in Chinese thought, there seems to be no room for nuance.

Re: AI Company Accused of Using Humans to Fake Its AI

#26

Post by kkarakk »

paradite wrote: post #21
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #16

Off topic, but SixthTone is an interesting publication. It is actually controlled by the CPC in an attempt to create news that westerners would actually read [1], as opposed to Chinadaily and Globaltimes that are too obviously propaganda. In this case, they go with China-critical articles and then try to direct the message to a pro-government position from that perspective. This is actually how wumaos are supposed to…

> China, Explained > BY BETHANY ALLEN-EBRAHIMIAN Wow. That's an incredible title to use on a subject that is so narrow in scope. Let's look at her other articles: https://foreignpolicy.com/author/bethany-allen-ebrahimian/ Seems pretty one-sided. And her twitter: https://twitter.com/BethanyAllenEbr Seems pretty one-sided as well. Just to be clear, I don't intend to personally attack her. Just pointing out the bias in…

start out with an overtly critical almost "ad hominem attack" position, include your own stance in the course of your argument and redirect sentiment-in this case trying to garner sympathy for yourself for being attacked as a wumao.

you're either actually a wumao or are too afraid to actually take a reasoned stance. i had never heard of the term before this thread but makes sense, i'm reading a lot more content like this nowadays wondering what exactly the author is arguing about

Re: AI Company Accused of Using Humans to Fake Its AI

#27

Post by Radim »

tabbott wrote: post #8

A poorly-kept secret in Silicon Valley is that many "AI startups" started over the last few years are actually using humans, with a long-term plan to slowly decrease the amount of work the humans do using algorithms (generally based on machine learning, but not always) as well as more basic automation. In some cases they don't actually do any "AI" work for the company's first few years, and if they do, it's more like…

Very frustrating for companies who actually do use machine learning to solve a problem!

Hard to rise above the background "AI noise" of well-funded marketing.

And people are already fed up with all the AI marketing bullshit; "ebbing tide sinks all boats".

One way is to offer real-time results via APIs or demos, which cannot be faked with humans due to sheer latency / volume. Another is to be active in the ML community (open source etc) to build a reputation. But there the audience is different (technical), and may not overlap with the business case much.

Re: AI Company Accused of Using Humans to Fake Its AI

#28

Post by ytch »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #16

Off topic, but SixthTone is an interesting publication. It is actually controlled by the CPC in an attempt to create news that westerners would actually read [1], as opposed to Chinadaily and Globaltimes that are too obviously propaganda. In this case, they go with China-critical articles and then try to direct the message to a pro-government position from that perspective. This is actually how wumaos are supposed to…

I am also curious about this site, too. But right now, it is still one of the fastest English site to report scandal from China, another example is this[1] one I submitted before. I've tried to read some China news about this scandal in Chinese and I thought most of the content in the report is basically the same (BTW, I get this scandal in Chinese first, then try to find some article about this in English for submitting here and find this news by Google).

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16544058

Re: AI Company Accused of Using Humans to Fake Its AI

#29

Post by abenedic »

paradite wrote: post #21
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #16

Off topic, but SixthTone is an interesting publication. It is actually controlled by the CPC in an attempt to create news that westerners would actually read [1], as opposed to Chinadaily and Globaltimes that are too obviously propaganda. In this case, they go with China-critical articles and then try to direct the message to a pro-government position from that perspective. This is actually how wumaos are supposed to…

> China, Explained > BY BETHANY ALLEN-EBRAHIMIAN Wow. That's an incredible title to use on a subject that is so narrow in scope. Let's look at her other articles: https://foreignpolicy.com/author/bethany-allen-ebrahimian/ Seems pretty one-sided. And her twitter: https://twitter.com/BethanyAllenEbr Seems pretty one-sided as well. Just to be clear, I don't intend to personally attack her. Just pointing out the bias in…

I think it a little funny that you are attacked for this. Personally I have a hate for China due to nationalistic reasons, perhaps unreasonably. But it is good to question the source of information. After all that is the idea of a free press, no? Should we not all question the source of the information to find bias? For myself overall, I would say fuck China.

Re: AI Company Accused of Using Humans to Fake Its AI

#30

Post by paradite »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #25
paradite wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> China, Explained > BY BETHANY ALLEN-EBRAHIMIAN Wow. That's an incredible title to use on a subject that is so narrow in scope. Let's look at her other articles: https://foreignpolicy.com/author/bethany-allen-ebrahimian/ Seems pretty one-sided. And her twitter: https://twitter.com/BethanyAllenEbr Seems pretty one-sided as well. Just to be clear, I don't intend to personally attack her. Just pointing out the bias in…

Those are pretty stereotypical ad hominems, actually. Anytime you attack the author and not the content, it is pretty much an ad hominem. These get used heavily in the Chinese press as well, so I assume there isn’t the taboo against using ad hominems (and other red herrings) in Chinese culture as there is in western culture. Wumao is basically someone who is paid by the Chinese government to subvert online public opi…

Thanks for the reply. I have edited my comment so that it is less personal. Is that enough to remove the ad hominems?

Also, there's plenty of room for nuance to judge the bias, like the other authors on FT that I pointed out in my comment. Her bias is quite clear in my own opinion, given that there are many articles by her on China in FT, and most of the content (at least first few pages) is critical of China (not just one or two).

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