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Facebook apology as AI labels black men 'primates'

bbc.com

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

#191

Post by 3grdlurker »

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…

Couldn’t you apply the same way of thinking to finding a cure for AIDS, or doing interstellar travel, or P = NP, or pretty much any problem that we haven’t solved yet? Just because we can’t solve a problem within our lifetime doesn’t mean it’s not solvable at all. This is one of the most basic principles by which knowledge, and therefore, technology, progresses.

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

#192

Post by gibolt »

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #182
jessaustin wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

You mean Louis 'Ziv', according to Google

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

#193

Post by zizee »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #155
IncRnd wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, all engineers are white .

Or how about this one: Yes, all black engineers on the maps team live in New York.

Truth is that it is just an example one of the thousands of edge-cases that exist in these types of complex products, and some of them will look like they have some sinister basis.

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

#194

Post by SilverRed »

silisili wrote: post #184
SilverRed wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 whe…

Regardless, it is still far beyond a "failed idea" since it provides genuine value and achieves at a higher level than the average human for many topics. It isn't as you say better than an expert but the fact that for free I get something that works well is remarkable to me considering this is cutting edge technology.

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

#195

Post by throwaway675309 »

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.

Oh for Pete's sake, absolute bloody conspiracy level nonsense, NOBODY sat there twirling their villainous mustache and programmed an exception to hardcode pronouncing X as 10, it's simply a matter of the training and sample data having access to some type of corpus that contained a great deal of Roman numerals.

(Leave the software engineering to the software engineers)

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

#196

Post by jpollock »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #155
IncRnd wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Or that Google Maps is primarily developed in Australia for a worldwide market.

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

#197

Post by 0x426577617265 »

SilverRed wrote: post #185
0x426577617265 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The article I saw with the screenshot was from NYTimes:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/03/technology/facebook-ai-ra...

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

#198

Post by scrollaway »

gibolt wrote: post #192
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You mean Louis 'Ziv', according to Google

Putting Louis XIV in Google translate, I get the correct "Louis the Fourteenth" and "Louis Quatorze" pronounciations in English and French, respectively. However, it has to be uppercased, otherwise it spells the letters.

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

#199

Post by silisili »

SilverRed wrote: post #194
silisili wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 whe…

Regardless, it is still far beyond a "failed idea" since it provides genuine value and achieves at a higher level than the average human for many topics. It isn't as you say better than an expert but the fact that for free I get something that works well is remarkable to me considering this is cutting edge technology.

Please read my premise again. I only called it a failed idea in the sense it could act as well as a human brain.

I said it's not a waste. Not at all, I use it in a lot of the ways you describe.

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

#200

Post by crooked-v »

ALittleLight wrote: post #49

The video features white and black men. It seems like concluding the algorithm is calling black men primates is the same kind of error people are accusing the algorithm/Facebook of. i.e. The reason you think it's racist is because you assume it's talking about black people specifically suggesting you think the word is more apt to describe black people. Primates and humans are similar labels. This was almost certainly…

> The reason you think it's racist is because you assume it's talking about black people specifically suggesting you think the word is more apt to describe black people.

No, I think it's racist because racists have a long history of calling black people primates, and because an automated system doesn't get to escape scrutiny and critique just because someone didn't specifically put in a line of code that emulates the actions of racists.

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