Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facebook apology as AI labels black men 'primates'

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 291 posts

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

#221

Post by SllX »

jessaustin wrote: post #172
handmodel wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think Google is having someone go through the tens of thousands of street names? Or do you think they had a team (on a completely different project or perhaps company) write a text to speech function that wasn't well suited for directions. Streets have lots of numbers after all. People frequently have numbers in their name.

I could see that for Google Maps v1.0. I think we're past that point now. There's no reason they should still be using libraries suited to parsing the names of forgotten European monarchs.

They’re neither forgotten, unused, nor is it a nomenclature used exclusively by Royals; nor are all the Royals that use this fashion dead or out of power.

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

#222

Post by [deleted] »

ntSean wrote: post #45
exporectomy wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's interesting. It may have done the same with white people the same amount but nobody called the BBC to whine, or the BBC didn't care about that.

If it had tagged all humans in all photos as primates; this wouldn't be newsworthy- but it didn’t do that. It only tagged black people. Which if you can empathise with others, is understandably offensive.

[deleted]

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

#223

Post by silisili »

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...

Is it inexcusable that if I search 'Japan' to look for pics from my trip to Japan, it shows me pictures containing any Asian person at all? If I search Japan today, I get mostly pics of my not Japanese wife. But I guess we don't complain enough for anyone to care.

https://i.ibb.co/Mf6rVdf/Screenshot-20210907-002516-Photos.j...

Nobody who has traveled at all would mistake my wife and child as Japanese. And doing so is especially insidious considering the Bataan death march.

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

#224

Post by User23 »

jpollock wrote: post #196
jazzyjackson wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Did the geo team get moved from Seattle?

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

#225

Post by dd444fgdfg »

wpietri wrote: post #60
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...

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:/…

google maps is made in Australia, and the diversity there is different

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

#226

Post by strken »

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…

The short answer is that tech companies run diversity programs for three reasons: they believe in righting wrongs, they don't want to be sued for biased hiring practices, and they don't want bad PR. All three require under-represented minorities.

Turning it back on you, what should the point of a diversity program be? What's meant to be achieved outside those three goals?

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

#227

Post by Cycl0ps »

pen2l wrote: post #139
Cycl0ps wrote: post #88

I don't like these stories. It always trends towards the most inflammatory arguments, those being inherint bias and unconscious racism put upon our technology. Real issues in those topics aside, are any articles like this doing anything but feeding flames and generating ad revenue? Instead, I want to talk about pareidolia. Humans are social creatures. We have evolved to identify others of our kind and read their expr…

Something grotesque was put forth by a technology made by an entity that is comically monied. A mistake was similarly made by another monied entity only months ago, so it should have dedicated considerable effort to prevent such things. This is the way this works, we hold higher expectations out of the ones who have resources. Please do not trivialize acts that have the potential to cut humans so deep with handwavy s…

By the sound of it this is a problem that neither entities nor their moniedness can solve. I'm sure these companies watch each other, and when one steps on a metaphorical rake the others are likely taking notes on how to avoid it on their future attempt. And yet rakes are still being stepped on.

When you have an automated system that has irregular behavior to a given input, we call that a bug. Bugs exist in all software, not always unique, but always present. This software is no different than any other. It will have errors. Because the software is categorizing faces, its errors will result in miscategorizing them. The only relevant questions to this are how frequent these errors are and how disparate they are across racial lines.

Another reference: this one is a Tool-Assisted Speedrun of a game that relies on basic image recognition software. While not entirely related, it does show how error-prone these algorithms can be. It's also fun to watch. https://youtu.be/mSFHKAvTGNk

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

#228

Post by belltaco »

ummonk wrote: post #154
belltaco wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Tagging black people as monkeys is not a showstopper bug? If so it makes them look even worse than if it was an overlooked bug.

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

#229

Post by hattmall »

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…

There is literally no right answer, the very nature of modern diversity is that it will always be a moving target. That is until we get over the entire concept of diversity which is racist / discriminatory at it's core.
Post reply on HN