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Facebook apology as AI labels black men 'primates'

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

#181

Post by dshpala »

firefoxd wrote: post #145

This happens because there are no black people of consequence in the ML pipeline. In my previous company Everytime we built a new model, a bunch of us would test it. Being the only black person in the company, I often found some very odd things and we would correct it before shipping. I understand that fb is a much bigger scale, but all the reason to have a much more diverse set of eyes to test their models before th…

"Hire more black people" - isn't that what FAANG desperately been trying to do for some time now?

I guess first step might be to "hire more black QA people".

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

#182

Post by helsinkiandrew »

jessaustin wrote: post #160
oreilles wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There’s a Louis XIV Street in New Orleans (and I imagine elsewhere).

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

#183

Post by giancarlostoro »

elmomle wrote: post #171
oreilles wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The implication is that a black person would be more likely to recognize the inherent flaw in automatically interpreting "X" as "10", and in all honestly that's probably true. It isn't a matter of testing, it's a matter of having people with a diverse set of cultural perspectives in the room when decisions like that are made to begin with.

Diversity doesnt guarantee you automatically catch or account for edge cases. As a minority I am disturbed by some of the odd takes people have about diversity. Theres thousands upon thousands of roads. Unless you have a QA team test directions to every road in the country you wont ever catch the issue with a road named Malcom X. You don’t even have to be ‘diverse’ to know who that is.

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

#184

Post by silisili »

SilverRed wrote: post #178
silisili wrote: post #170

I've been trying to avoid controversy lately, but hey, here's one to downvote. Have we considered AI and ML as a general brain replacement is a failed idea? That we humans feel we are so smart we can recreate or exceed millions of year evolution of a human brain? I'd never call AI a waste, it's not. But getting it to do human things just may be. Even a child can tell the difference between a human of any color and an…

No it isn't a failed idea at all. The products out today are remarkably useful even if not perfect. I have tested out the google lens thing on google photos and it is astounding. I took a photo of the water pump from a car windscreen wiper and google was able to correctly identify what it was. I took a photo of a generic PCB which showed the back of a driver board for an LCD and google was able to bring up the exact…

The problems it solved for you are immensely useful to you, but not remarkable IMO.

The problem it's solving is that it can do things that somebody with zero experience cannot. If you had an auto parts pro, or an EE, they probably could have done the same for you.

So, in general, AI is helpful because it has a much larger breadth of knowledge. Granted.

But I want examples of it doing depth, too.

My wife uses Lens when we fish. It's way, way worse than a fisherman with any experience at all.

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

#185

Post by SilverRed »

0x426577617265 wrote: post #37
exporectomy wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gorillas have black and human-like faces. I think they're just quite similar so AI can more easily confuse them.

I’m fairly certain if you showed pictures of both groups to a toddler they’d be able to sort them correctly. It’s really not hard for a human to tell the difference. Which tells me that FB’s AI isn’t really that great.

I saw another article which included a screenshot of the mistake on facebook. The photo is blurry, and contains a side view of the person and iirc the backdrop is in nature. The main indicator that it was a person was the fact they were wearing clothing. Clearly the AI is not good enough, but I will admit that the data it was working on is tricky to achieve perfect accuracy.

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

#186

Post by scrollaway »

jessaustin wrote: post #177
scrollaway wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"(name) (Roman numeral)" is a much more commong occurence than "(name) (Single letter spelled out)". So to answer your question, this one. This universe. And no, nobody "programmed this". I don't know how anyone of decent technical competence can think that. The workaround has likely been hardcoded in some way, if anything. How can you possibly think that someone at google decided it would be funny to program, on pur…

Is it sometimes a challenge to navigate in areas where streets like e.g. "Louis XXII" and "Louis XXIII" are near each other?

I wouldn't know, no such king exists. Also, i don't have a car.

I would put money on the US having several streets named after European monarchs though. Maybe ask your GPS these questions instead.

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

#187

Post by SilverRed »

jdavis703 wrote: post #29
exporectomy wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Got a source for that?

I’m not an expert in this field. What are the likely root causes for this happening?

The most obvious answer that no one wants to mention is that there just genuinely is some similarity between the two categories which is stronger than the similarity between others.

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

#188

Post by SilverRed »

not2b wrote: post #47
exporectomy wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Got a source for that?

While I don't have a source, it seems clear that with sufficient training data they could do better at avoiding this mistake. This should not be hard.

If Google and Facebook have both failed with the billions they have spent on the problem, I think we can say yes, it is that hard.

Obviously the people at google had thought of having more training data.

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

#189

Post by crooked-v »

root_axis wrote: post #173
ipaddr wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> it embarrassing or an expected mistake to be learned from. I would say it's both. It's embarrassing for Facebook because it looks racist even though it really isn't. The system might be emotionless but the people who interact with it aren't, and we don't expect them to be.

> it looks racist even though it really isn't

It absolutely is racist. Racist outcomes are still racist regardless of whether there's a guy in Klansmen robes at the steering wheel or not.

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