Facebook apology as AI labels black men 'primates'

Post by gumboshoes » Tue, Sep 07, 2021, 2:04 AM UTC

simonw wrote: post #15

This happened to both Google Photos and Flickr too. Which makes it an inexcusable mistake to make in 2021 - how are you not testing for this? Google Photos in 2015: https://www.wired.com/story/when-it-comes-to-gorillas-google... Flickr in 2015: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/ne...

Post by exporectomy » Tue, Sep 07, 2021, 2:07 AM UTC

mastazi wrote: post #20

exporectomy wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how language works. We're also all animals but not animals at the same time. Context and culture affect the meaning of words.

Parent's point is not irrelevant though, did the AI label only people of one specific racial background as primates? The article doesn't really provide any details as it's only a few lines long. The word "primate" in itself is not a slur but it can be used as a slur, as you said, depending on the context, however not much context was given in the article.

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Sep 07, 2021, 2:07 AM UTC

not2b wrote: post #11

scotty79 wrote: post #5

Is that a result of a skewed training set or are people really hard to tell apart from gorillas if there are no obvious tells like large difference in brightness of different areas of the face?

Skewed training set, very few dark skinned human faces.

Post by tomrod » Tue, Sep 07, 2021, 2:08 AM UTC

civilized wrote: post #14

scotty79 wrote: post #5

Is that a result of a skewed training set or are people really hard to tell apart from gorillas if there are no obvious tells like large difference in brightness of different areas of the face?

Deep learning, for all its recent glories, still suffers from relatively crude, slow-converging training algorithms compared to other areas of ML and statistics. Maybe to your typical SGD-type algorithm, working off a dataset filled with mostly light skin toned people, skin tone just looks like a real solid first-order way to distinguish humans and primates, and picking up the black people / primate distinction seems…

Post by hnick » Tue, Sep 07, 2021, 2:09 AM UTC

exporectomy wrote: post #12

scotty79 wrote: post #5

Is that a result of a skewed training set or are people really hard to tell apart from gorillas if there are no obvious tells like large difference in brightness of different areas of the face?

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