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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

#121

Post by madaxe_again »

adrian_b wrote: post #64
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.

That question is meaningless, because "Allah" is the translation into Arabic of the English word "God". Neither of these two words is a name of a god, which normally does not matter, because both the Christians and the Muslims believe that there exists only one god, so it is not necessary to have a proper name for that god. Obviously, whenever a Christian believer or a Muslim believer speaks about the "God", they spe…

While it may be the same abrahamic god, there is a distinction. In Christianity, god/deus/yahweh is a proper name. In Islam, Allah is from al-Ilah - The God. It’s a label rather than a name, and the linguistic distinction affects the available worldviews.

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

#122

Post by throwaway2203 »

adrian_b wrote: post #64
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.

That question is meaningless, because "Allah" is the translation into Arabic of the English word "God". Neither of these two words is a name of a god, which normally does not matter, because both the Christians and the Muslims believe that there exists only one god, so it is not necessary to have a proper name for that god. Obviously, whenever a Christian believer or a Muslim believer speaks about the "God", they spe…

This is not completely correct. Allah is a name as much as it is a "type". One of the things Arabs will point out is that Allah is "special" because it cannot be pluralized and hence is a better name for the monotheistic God than English God or Persian Khuda (which can be).

I'm a non-arabic speaking Muslim who prefers in non-liturgical context to use Khuda and have occasionally been "corrected" by well meaning folk.

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

#123

Post by smusamashah »

alephnerd wrote: post #57
jncfhnb wrote: post #53

This is cut off for me. The article seems to be doing some wordplay. Is it actually translating that one phrase to the terrorist thing? Or is it translating a passage that includes that phrase and is semantically much closer to the terrorist thing?

It's translating "alhamdulillah" to "Terrorist". "Alhamdulillah" is Arabic for "Praise be to god" and (edit: to my ear at least) is used by Muslims (edit: by Arabic speakers more often) nowadays as an alternative to Allah u Akbar, Takbir, or Narai-e-Takbir because (edit: I think) those 3 terms have increasingly been co-opted. This is the equivalent of translating "Praise Jesus" to "I love god and hate abortions"

No. It correctly translated Alhamdulillah as Praise be God. But then looking at Palestine and the flag emoji, it appended that terrorist sentence with Palestine.

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

#125

Post by ilyt »

permo-w wrote: post #4
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!).

this could easily have happened with non-AI translations

Well, if you picked cheapest bidder that copy-pasted it into google translate, maybe.

Actual translator doing a job would look at the context and probably figure out that something's not right, but AI have no such double takes, if it for example because of learning material it will link euphemism to actual meaning of the word

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

#126

Post by ilyt »

nerdponx wrote: post #7
ilyt wrote: post #5

[flagged]

You're being downvoted but you might be right. This is a classic case of your model only being as good as your training data, and of that being really really hard to get right unless you're intimately familiar with the data, its context in the world, and how it was collected/cleaned/processed.

Yup, AI doesn't know what euphemism means. If the word is used in such context as replacement of other 'worse' word (which is pretty common to avoid word filters, like people using "voldemort virus" for COVID to not get flagged by youtube and buried in algorithm, for recent example)

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

#127

Post by elashri »

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"

What are the scenarios that you can Alhamdulillah instead of "Allah u Akbar" that is being used today by Muslims?

I'm asking as a Muslim who never do that and have never heard anything like this claim. So it would be interested to know if you have different experience.

It is obvious when to say both, but many people here are considering themselves experts on Islam don't even know the basics.

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

#128

Post by [deleted] »

jrh3 wrote: post #103
adrian_b wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That question is meaningless, because "Allah" is the translation into Arabic of the English word "God". Neither of these two words is a name of a god, which normally does not matter, because both the Christians and the Muslims believe that there exists only one god, so it is not necessary to have a proper name for that god. Obviously, whenever a Christian believer or a Muslim believer speaks about the "God", they spe…

They are the same God though, for Christians and Muslims. The God of Abraham.

[deleted]

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

#129

Post by Nathanba »

jrh3 wrote: post #103
adrian_b wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That question is meaningless, because "Allah" is the translation into Arabic of the English word "God". Neither of these two words is a name of a god, which normally does not matter, because both the Christians and the Muslims believe that there exists only one god, so it is not necessary to have a proper name for that god. Obviously, whenever a Christian believer or a Muslim believer speaks about the "God", they spe…

They are the same God though, for Christians and Muslims. The God of Abraham.

muslims deny the divinity of Jesus and therefore do not have the same God.

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

#130

Post by brightlancer »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #45
dmix wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oversimplifying things doesn’t help anyone here. People don’t understand the limitations of AI/LLMs because it wasn’t a normal part of their lives until recently. They don’t need to understand how it works to understand that it has limitations and it’s going to be occasionally wrong. The average person is well aware software isn’t perfect, things break all the time. This is no different. It’s not a leap to think peop…

That's a very good point. There's precedent for it too. Humans themselves are black boxes too, and yet almost everyone grows to have a good handle on limitation of individuals, both in general and specific to contexts and individuals one encounters. It's not just peer-level understanding - parents quickly learn to understand the limitations and failure modes of newborns, and maintain that understanding as their child…

> Humans themselves are black boxes too, and yet almost everyone grows to have a good handle on limitation of individuals, both in general and specific to contexts and individuals one encounters.

IME, this is completely false.

"Very smart people" regularly repeat absurd misinformation because they didn't do basic fact checking. Academics, politicians, bureaucrats, police, etc. regularly respond to challenges with an Appeal To Authority, and it _works_.

We're AWFUL at this.

> It's not just peer-level understanding - parents quickly learn to understand the limitations and failure modes of newborns, and maintain that understanding as their children grow.

No, not as a general statement.

Most parents are really bad at understanding the limitations of their children. Even school teachers (who took classes on understanding the limitations of children) are really bad at it.

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