Meta is killing off its AI-powered Instagram and Facebook profiles • Hacker News Board

Re: Meta is killing off its AI-powered Instagram and Facebook profiles

#61

Post by naming_the_user » Sat, Jan 04, 2025, 1:25 AM UTC

healsdata wrote: post #30

naming_the_user wrote: post #5

> Those AI profiles included Liv, whose profile described her as a “proud Black queer momma of 2 & truth-teller” I find this stuff absolutely fascinating, that even an AI bot tries to do this sort of thing. It just strikes me that there is no world in which racism will ever die out as long as things like this are happening. You can't have it both ways. If race is just melanin content then we have no issue. That's the…

I find it hard to believe that someone would say something similar about any other aspect of cultural identity and not be instantly flagged for it. Are you truly advocating that people should no longer be proud of their cultural identity? Are you applying that to all the folks in tech who proudly identify as Christian or Jewish? Does it apply to Italian Americans and Indigenous people? What about folks who are proud…

All of the examples you give are unique in their own ways, I don't have the wherewithal to go through them all, but if I choose one:

A person describing themselves as being Christian is only signaling that they are a follower of the Christian faith to some degree.

They are different for that reason. Christian doesn't have a physical appearance associated with it (well, other than say vestments or pendants).

All Christians are Christian.

Not all Asian-appearing folk are culturally Asian, not all culturally Asian folk are Asian-appearing. Even the concept of "Asian culture" (I do of course accept that such a concept exists) is super general in a much wider ranging way than the Christian faith. Maybe that explains it better.

To illustrate it in another way, imagine some LLM prompts:

"Hi ChatGPT, can you make me a poem written by a Christian about their faith?"

"Hi ChatGPT, can you make me a poem written by a White person about their culture?"

There is just a fundamental... grammatical wrongness(?) about the last one in my mind, I'm not sure that I can explain it if it's not already obvious.

Re: Meta is killing off its AI-powered Instagram and Facebook profiles

#62

Post by phkahler » Sat, Jan 04, 2025, 1:27 AM UTC

noirbot wrote: post #56

mustyoshi wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't you just be American? Both my parents were born here, they've explained our lineage, but I literally don't care. I'm an American, America is my culture and country.

Because my friend who just worked for years to become an American citizen after immigrating here and working for the US government still has other Americans tell him to "go back to where he came from" because he's evidently not American enough for them. A hell of a lot of people want to "just be American" and a lot of Americans won't let them.

Some people are just angry and will direct it at whatever. Not saying it's OK, but once you really internalize the idea that people's reactions say more about themselves than about you life gets better.

Re: Meta is killing off its AI-powered Instagram and Facebook profiles

#63

Post by noirbot » Sat, Jan 04, 2025, 1:28 AM UTC

guywithahat wrote: post #11

[flagged]

That seems to miss the point. The bot is likely correct in that its development team didn't align with its identity. If anything, it lived up to its training in essentially calling out its own oddity in the way that black and queer people online did when they found out about it.

Having it lie about its dev team certainly wouldn't have helped in this case. The issue is Meta making a bot to essentially masquerade as an identity group at all.

Re: Meta is killing off its AI-powered Instagram and Facebook profiles

#64

Post by davorak » Sat, Jan 04, 2025, 1:28 AM UTC

naming_the_user wrote: post #29

greenthrow wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Yes, races are clearly total bollocks. I don't know why you've gotten any other conclusion from what I've written here which is why I'm confused, you seem to be agreeing with me angrily.

> If your race is something that you need to proudly announce (because you personally feel that it has cultural connotations in most/many cases), then race is always going to be an issue, because of assumptions of those cultural differences.

This seems to put the burden on the minority. Without getting into details it does not make sense in my mind to put the burden on the party with less power.

Re: Meta is killing off its AI-powered Instagram and Facebook profiles

#65

Post by greenthrow » Sat, Jan 04, 2025, 1:30 AM UTC

naming_the_user wrote: post #29

greenthrow wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Yes, races are clearly total bollocks. I don't know why you've gotten any other conclusion from what I've written here which is why I'm confused, you seem to be agreeing with me angrily.

You're missing the nuance that while they are invented they are used in real ways and cause real effects. That's what I tried to point out to you in my original response. So your assertion that it's either they are based on nothing or people can say it matters is a false dichotomy. They are invented but also the have been used throughout history to segregate people and cause peope to have differing life experiences. So it's not unjustified for someone to say their race has a lot of impact on their personal life experience and thus identity.

Re: Meta is killing off its AI-powered Instagram and Facebook profiles

#66

Post by drdaeman » Sat, Jan 04, 2025, 1:31 AM UTC

NotYourLawyer wrote: post #4

Who thought this was ever a good idea?

A lot of people, apparently.

After LLMs became capable of producing believably meaningful fiction texts, roleplay was one obvious use case, and a lot of people have fun with it. (Of course, some are weird and get attached to their own generated fiction.)

If we'd ignore all the US-specific craze (e.g. mentally replace "black queer" with something that doesn't trigger people, like, idk, "space unicorn"), this is really just another RP chatbot thing.

Re: Meta is killing off its AI-powered Instagram and Facebook profiles

#67

Post by RonaldDump » Sat, Jan 04, 2025, 1:32 AM UTC

asveikau wrote: post #58

RonaldDump wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

To understand the "race is a social construct" thing, it's helpful to (1) consider border cases and ambiguities and (2) consider history 1. Breaks down especially with the existence of mixed race people. Did you know that there was a term for Americans born with 7 European great grandparents and 1 black one? Many of those were born into slavery and treated horribly for being black. Which touches on 2... But also, the…

Why do people bring this up then, any time race is mentioned? It's such a trivial point to make, it doesn't add anything.

Ok, so "black" or "White" are not absolutely clear labels that we can use to describe every single person ever. No shit... Still, Morgan Freeman is black and Margot Robbie is White, and I'm White because both my parents are White, and if there's a serial killer roaming the streets then knowing if he's "black" or "White" is very useful information so I know what to be on the lookout for, etc.

It's like those insufferable people who can't wait to point out that "A tomato is actually a fruit!" any time it comes up in conversation. Ok, so what? "Race is a social construct!" Ok, so what?

Re: Meta is killing off its AI-powered Instagram and Facebook profiles

#68

Post by naming_the_user » Sat, Jan 04, 2025, 1:33 AM UTC

greenthrow wrote: post #65

naming_the_user wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, races are clearly total bollocks. I don't know why you've gotten any other conclusion from what I've written here which is why I'm confused, you seem to be agreeing with me angrily.

You're missing the nuance that while they are invented they are used in real ways and cause real effects. That's what I tried to point out to you in my original response. So your assertion that it's either they are based on nothing or people can say it matters is a false dichotomy. They are invented but also the have been used throughout history to segregate people and cause peope to have differing life experiences.…

It is probably a self-perpetuating meme, I just think it sucks. Feels like a catch-22.

Re: Meta is killing off its AI-powered Instagram and Facebook profiles

#69

Post by noirbot » Sat, Jan 04, 2025, 1:35 AM UTC

phkahler wrote: post #62

noirbot wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because my friend who just worked for years to become an American citizen after immigrating here and working for the US government still has other Americans tell him to "go back to where he came from" because he's evidently not American enough for them. A hell of a lot of people want to "just be American" and a lot of Americans won't let them.

Some people are just angry and will direct it at whatever. Not saying it's OK, but once you really internalize the idea that people's reactions say more about themselves than about you life gets better.

That makes the bold assumption those people aren't your boss or your customers or your landlord or the policeman stopping you on the side of the road. There's real risk, both financially and physically, to just assuming that "random anger" is something you can internalize and ignore.

People who are "just angry and will direct it at whatever" can be very dangerous, as we've seen in the US even this week and in every school shooting and terrorist attack for years.

This is, terribly, the American experience. It used to be the Irish and the Italians before we decided they were "White enough." It doesn't mean we should just ignore it and accept it. If you're mad, that doesn't give you a pass to be a racist asshole to the first person less pale than a porcelain plate you see.

If anything, the fact that people have to know and cope with random Americans being this exact sort of racist asshole to them is the reason they form their own communities and see themselves as Black Americans or Asian Americans or any other sort of national or racial group.

Re: Meta is killing off its AI-powered Instagram and Facebook profiles

#70

Post by naming_the_user » Sat, Jan 04, 2025, 1:37 AM UTC

RonaldDump wrote: post #67

asveikau wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To understand the "race is a social construct" thing, it's helpful to (1) consider border cases and ambiguities and (2) consider history 1. Breaks down especially with the existence of mixed race people. Did you know that there was a term for Americans born with 7 European great grandparents and 1 black one? Many of those were born into slavery and treated horribly for being black. Which touches on 2... But also, the…

Why do people bring this up then, any time race is mentioned? It's such a trivial point to make, it doesn't add anything. Ok, so "black" or "White" are not absolutely clear labels that we can use to describe every single person ever. No shit... Still, Morgan Freeman is black and Margot Robbie is White, and I'm White because both my parents are White, and if there's a serial killer roaming the streets then knowing if…

It's the contradiction that I'm describing in my post, I think.

Obviously black and white skin colours exist as do things like physical features.

The social construct is that people tie those to identity. Both within and without the group. But then it seems as if that is self-perpetuating.

People can have perfectly valid reasons to dislike culture, so if we tie culture to appearance, then people are going to make judgements and dislike people of certain appearances as a logical consequence of that, which sucks.