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Instagram apologizes for inserting 'terrorist' into Palestinian bio translations

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Re: Instagram apologizes for inserting 'terrorist' into Palestinian bio translations

#71

Post by OfSanguineFire »

alephnerd wrote: post #66
OfSanguineFire wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alhamdulillah is not some recently coined alternative, it has been one of Arabic’s stock expressions for centuries and centuries. It is what Arabic-speaking people (and not just Muslims) have always said after something good happens. It is what Muslims customarily say as they get up from eating a meal, or oddly enough, after they sneeze.

> is not some recently coined alternative, it has been one of Arabic’s stock expressions for centuries and centuries Yep! But a lot of people nowadays will use Alhamdulillah in scenarios where you could just as well use "Allah u Akbar" now. There definitely was a linguistic shift over the past few decades. I also don't hear people saying "Inshallah" as much anymore. > after they sneeze "Bless you"

This site[0] claims that the use of Alhamdulillah after sneezing goes back to, among others, a Hadith tradition that Allah likes sneezing and dislikes yawning. So, rather different from the Christian use of “bless you”, and I think that a lot of people outside Islam would still agree with the “oddly enough”.

I’m surprised that you hear inshallah less nowadays. It would be interesting to get some hard data on that. Inshallah is the one phrase that has never left even my Arab acquaintances who are proudly atheist.

[0] https://islamqa.info/en/answers/2750/why-do-muslims-say-al-h...

Re: Instagram apologizes for inserting 'terrorist' into Palestinian bio translations

#73

Post by zogrodea »

greenie_beans wrote: post #29

I asked ChatGPT what the Great March of Return was: > The Great March of Return was a series of Palestinian protests organized by various groups, including Hamas, to demand the right of Palestinian refugees and their descendants to return to their ancestral homes in what is now Israel. The protests took place along the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel and were intended to draw attention to the Palestinian ref…

How did it know the answer when the cutoff date is meant to January 2022? (I just found another instance at [0] so maybe "cutoff" doesn't mean exactly what it seems.)

https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/11iv2uc/theres_no_...

Re: Instagram apologizes for inserting 'terrorist' into Palestinian bio translations

#74

Post by oij331 »

elil17 wrote: post #3

This is the sort of thing that could cause people to lose friends or jobs. This is exactly the sort of thing we should be worried about with AI. I feel like machine translations like those on Instagram should come with a disclaimer (in bold, not fine print!).

Maybe this sort of thing will make us less pearl clutch-y and gate-keepy over arbitrary syntax and focus more on people's real needs.

Despite the amount of people claiming lack of belief in deities rocketing up the last couple decades, prior experiences get wedged in our memory, alter our DNA.

The elders belief in hallucination, nonsense semantics are alive and well in the form of conviction in American Civic Life as we've been experiencing it the last 2-3 decades. Look at Doctorow bleat that life is no longer like the 2000s for him. Trump and the Reaganite cabal as they generationally churn out freaking out.

Reciting correct association of meaning to context is the exact kind of police state 1984 was talking to. Here we have social media via screens to remind us every day how the words must fit together.

Re: Instagram apologizes for inserting 'terrorist' into Palestinian bio translations

#75

Post by dylan604 »

zogrodea wrote: post #68
elil17 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a human translator translated "Praise god" as "Palestinian terrorists are fighting for their freedom" I'm pretty sure they'd be fired immediately. In contrast, Instagram is not going to be taking down their machine translation tool.

I have a couple of things to say about this comment. 1. Instagram (and Facebook) are well known to suppress pro-Palestine voices (can pull up many examples but [0] should work because of that person being named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world, clearly having some influence though I don't know her), so this seems like something consistent with what the company is known to do. 2.…

>(It's known that machine learning on human language reproduces the humans' biases in the AI.)

just like being raised by your parents to have similar political/religious biases. just like going to the same school will mean you have similar educational biases.

Re: Instagram apologizes for inserting 'terrorist' into Palestinian bio translations

#76

Post by O1111OOO »

_a9 wrote: post #56
O1111OOO wrote: post #38

Performed a quick search for ex-cia working at instagram and came up with a ton of hits related to general information about ex-government agents working in key positions at many tech firms. https://start.duckduckgo.com/?q=ex+cia+working+at+instagram&... I'm not saying this translation error is related to that. I'm also not saying it isn't.

After the twitter files I just assume the government has their grimy little fingers in every company that has access to a large amount of eyes, prime for manipulation

> After the twitter files I just assume the government has their grimy little fingers in every company...

Yes... twitter, Yahoo emails, telephone companies... the rabbit hole is deep and well-documented. So much of it illegal and unconstitutional. All we can seem to do is scream into the wind and at best... get downvoted.

Re: Instagram apologizes for inserting 'terrorist' into Palestinian bio translations

#77

Post by triceratops »

gotoeleven wrote: post #43
TeMPOraL wrote: post #41

On a tangent to the main point, I like the subtle acknowledgement of our new reality - or at least of the one of many sudden shifts in common software tooling: > Google Translate translates the phrase to “Praise be to God.” ChatGPT translates it to "Praise be to Allah" or "All praise is due to Allah." LLMs turned out to be pretty good at translating, and ChatGPT (especially GPT-4) went straight into competing toe-to-…

I like it when arabic phrases are changed to be more palatable to western know-nothings. Ask the guy saying "alhamdulillah" if he means Allah or if he means God.

> Ask the guy saying "alhamdulillah" if he means Allah or if he means God.

It's like asking whether someone means cake or gateau. Islam is an Abrahamic religion which means they worship the same deity as Jews and Christians.

Re: Instagram apologizes for inserting 'terrorist' into Palestinian bio translations

#79

Post by bilalq »

alephnerd wrote: post #59
gotoeleven wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like it when arabic phrases are changed to be more palatable to western know-nothings. Ask the guy saying "alhamdulillah" if he means Allah or if he means God.

"Alhamdulillah" is Arabic for "Praise be to god" and is used by Muslims nowadays as an alternative to Allah u Akbar, Takbir, or Narai-e-Takbir because those 3 terms have been co-opted by Jihadists. This is the equivalent of translating "Praise Jesus" to "I love god and hate abortions" Also, Allah to Arabic native speakers can be used to mean "The Lord" in general. Levantine Christians and even some older Mizrahis wil…

This comment was posted elsewhere in this thread, but I feel like the incorrect portion here begs correcting again.

> "Alhamdulillah" [...] is used by Muslims nowadays as an alternative to Allah u Akbar, Takbir, or Narai-e-Takbir because those 3 terms have been co-opted by Jihadists.

That's just flat-out false. Allahuakbar is a phrase of critical religious significance and tied to one of the pillars of Islam (Salat). Alhamduillah has always been a common phrase. Both are used daily by Muslims globally, even those who are not religious. They are far too deeply rooted in the creed and traditions of Islam to be able to be co-opted.

Re: Instagram apologizes for inserting 'terrorist' into Palestinian bio translations

#80

Post by BiteCode_dev »

slibhb wrote: post #67
elil17 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a human translator translated "Praise god" as "Palestinian terrorists are fighting for their freedom" I'm pretty sure they'd be fired immediately. In contrast, Instagram is not going to be taking down their machine translation tool.

What's wrong with that? The AI tool did a bad job and they should try to make it better. But I don't understand the relevance of the comparison to a human translator. The alternative to translating this stuff via AI is not hiring humans, it's not translating it at all.

The difference is skin in the game.

And that's a big difference.

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