Facebook apology as AI labels black men 'primates' • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook apology as AI labels black men 'primates'

#151

Post by IncRnd » Tue, Sep 07, 2021, 3:10 AM UTC

MattGaiser wrote: post #133

IncRnd wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is that humans are generally excellent at these sorts of pattern recognition, but these networks aren't nearly as good. Even in rigorously trained networks that operate surprisingly well, mistakes will appear that if made by a human would be treated as due to carelessness or stupidity. So, this is going to happen.

> The thing is that humans are generally excellent at these sorts of pattern recognition Humans with a lot of experience are. Would kids be? I once referred to firefighter as robots as a kid.

I would say that most kids would not make the same sort of mistake as this network is reported to have made.

Re: Facebook apology as AI labels black men 'primates'

#152

Post by ummonk » Tue, Sep 07, 2021, 3:10 AM UTC

throwcommonsns wrote: post #141

wpietri wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of a favorite tweet from 2013: "Then Google Maps was like, 'turn right on Malcolm Ten Boulevard' and I knew there were no black engineers working there" -- https://twitter.com/alliebland/status/402990270402543616 Facebook, like a lot of tech companies, has long had problems with diversity in engineering. Here's an article from April that discusses specific incidents and the broader background: https:/…

This is a contrarian take that may get me downvoted and unfairly labeled, but I encourage critical thinking instead: I've struggled with people telling me that these FAANG companies have "diversity problems," as a person of color myself. A majority of software engineers are female and male immigrants from East Asia and South Asia. These population centers are some of the most diverse regions of the world. The enginee…

South / East Asia has more than half the world’s population yet doesn’t count towards diversity.

Re: Facebook apology as AI labels black men 'primates'

#153

Post by silisili » Tue, Sep 07, 2021, 3:11 AM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #25

mycodesucks wrote: post #3

I mean... It's not wrong, we're all primates.

We are, and when it labels both black and white people that, perhaps we can consider that a fair point.

Can we be certain that it didn't label any white people this way? I feel like if it did, they likely wouldn't care. This isn't a comment about whether or not the problem is racist, or what it means, which I care not to discuss.

Remember that nearly every cartoonist compared GWB to a chimp. In fairness, he kinda resembled one. Doing so to Obama would have been immediately flagged as racist.

I don't need a history lesson, or to be explained to why it's so different... I'm simply making an observation and asking a question.

If anyone can answer the initial question with certainty, then it is clear there is much work to do as they didn't train anything right.

Re: Facebook apology as AI labels black men 'primates'

#154

Post by ummonk » Tue, Sep 07, 2021, 3:12 AM UTC

belltaco wrote: post #65

IncRnd wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's sort of obvious. How do you know that wasn't attempted?

That makes it sound even worse that they knowingly released it without fixing it.

Are you saying an ML system should never be released if it doesn’t have perfect accuracy?

Re: Facebook apology as AI labels black men 'primates'

#155

Post by jazzyjackson » Tue, Sep 07, 2021, 3:12 AM UTC

IncRnd wrote: post #124

wpietri wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of a favorite tweet from 2013: "Then Google Maps was like, 'turn right on Malcolm Ten Boulevard' and I knew there were no black engineers working there" -- https://twitter.com/alliebland/status/402990270402543616 Facebook, like a lot of tech companies, has long had problems with diversity in engineering. Here's an article from April that discusses specific incidents and the broader background: https:/…

Your comment implies black engineers will check that Malcom X Boulevard is pronounced correctly. That's awfully specious.

Alternatively it just implies white engineers never have their GPS taking them through Harlem.

Re: Facebook apology as AI labels black men 'primates'

#156

Post by ineedasername » Tue, Sep 07, 2021, 3:12 AM UTC

MattGaiser wrote: post #133

IncRnd wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is that humans are generally excellent at these sorts of pattern recognition, but these networks aren't nearly as good. Even in rigorously trained networks that operate surprisingly well, mistakes will appear that if made by a human would be treated as due to carelessness or stupidity. So, this is going to happen.

> The thing is that humans are generally excellent at these sorts of pattern recognition Humans with a lot of experience are. Would kids be? I once referred to firefighter as robots as a kid.

Our ability for pattern recognition w/ human faces developed over the course of many thousands of years. People in modern fire fighting gear weren't present through that process. A kid thinking a firefighter is a robot is not the same class of problem. Even kids are good at the type of tasks we're talking about.

Re: Facebook apology as AI labels black men 'primates'

#157

Post by esyir » Tue, Sep 07, 2021, 3:13 AM UTC

sinyug wrote: post #100

wpietri wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of a favorite tweet from 2013: "Then Google Maps was like, 'turn right on Malcolm Ten Boulevard' and I knew there were no black engineers working there" -- https://twitter.com/alliebland/status/402990270402543616 Facebook, like a lot of tech companies, has long had problems with diversity in engineering. Here's an article from April that discusses specific incidents and the broader background: https:/…

> Facebook, like a lot of tech companies, has long had problems with diversity in engineering. If that is the case, why is it that Google voice nav routinely butchers the names of places and roads in India in spite of having thousands of Indian engineers on staff? Could we blame the intractability of the problem, or just plain old incompetence, before we blame every single problem in the world on racism and lack of '…

Strong agreement here. The impulse to attribute any mishap on anything race-adjacent to racism is one of the most destructive memes at the moment.

It forces a worldview where malice is the default assumption and encourages the "enemies all around us" mindset.

Re: Facebook apology as AI labels black men 'primates'

#158

Post by ipaddr » Tue, Sep 07, 2021, 3:13 AM UTC

root_axis wrote: post #149

I think the negative reaction is reasonable. Clearly, if a human did this it would a problem, so why should it be acceptable for an automated system to do the same thing? The fact that it is unintentional doesn't negate the fact that it's an embarrassing mistake. On the other hand, imagine a world where these labels were applied by a massive team of humans instead of a deep learning algorithm. At Facebook's scale, wo…

That raises the question, is it embarrassing or an expected mistake to be learned from. Many things are mislabel many things are labelled properly but we never say AI must feel pride at the good labeling job why would we give emotions to an emotionless system?

Re: Facebook apology as AI labels black men 'primates'

#159

Post by IncRnd » Tue, Sep 07, 2021, 3:13 AM UTC

ummonk wrote: post #150

sinyug wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Facebook, like a lot of tech companies, has long had problems with diversity in engineering. If that is the case, why is it that Google voice nav routinely butchers the names of places and roads in India in spite of having thousands of Indian engineers on staff? Could we blame the intractability of the problem, or just plain old incompetence, before we blame every single problem in the world on racism and lack of '…

Another example: Apple Maps pronounces “Jai Ho” as “high hoe”. Apparently Apple has too many Latino engineers and not enough Indian engineers?

Maybe, but in the particular case you mentioned there is a specific word, "jai", that is pronounced as "high". See Jai Alai, which has been absorbed into English.

Re: Facebook apology as AI labels black men 'primates'

#160

Post by jessaustin » Tue, Sep 07, 2021, 3:14 AM UTC

oreilles wrote: post #75

wpietri wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of a favorite tweet from 2013: "Then Google Maps was like, 'turn right on Malcolm Ten Boulevard' and I knew there were no black engineers working there" -- https://twitter.com/alliebland/status/402990270402543616 Facebook, like a lot of tech companies, has long had problems with diversity in engineering. Here's an article from April that discusses specific incidents and the broader background: https:/…

This isn't a problem with diversity. Everybody knows how to pronounce Malcom X. And it's not like just because a google engineer was black that he was like "oh, let's try and see if Malcom X is pronounced correctly because he's black and I'm black too". This only happens in white people's brain.

In what universe is "Ten" a more common pronunciation of "X" than "X"? You might have an argument for "II" or "III", but I'll be shocked if any street in USA is named after the tenth generation of really unimaginative namers.