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Google Photos AI still can't label gorillas after racist errors

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Re: Google Photos AI still can't label gorillas after racist errors

#31

Post by jmull »

version_five wrote: post #2

I agree that blocking the feature is the smartest thing to do if people are going to get offended. It's idiotic to call it "racist", it's a shitty classifier, and it's incredibly irresponsible (and probably racist) as well as dismissive of actual racism to pretend that's racist. At the same time, I'm surprised they can't get this classifier to work. It doesn't seem like a very challenging problem (I'd consider myself…

> It's idiotic to call it "racist", it's a shitty classifier, and it's incredibly irresponsible (and probably racist) as well as dismissive of actual racism to pretend that's racist.

It might be useful to understand why it's offensive... Likening black people to apes/gorillas/monkeys is a racist trope with a long history. It's part of casting black people as less than human, which has been used to justify their enslavement and denial of human rights.

I think it's very likely the classifier was not constructed to be racist, but once you see that it is producing racist tropes, it is racist to continue to let it do so.

Re: Google Photos AI still can't label gorillas after racist errors

#32

Post by xeromal »

lisasays wrote: post #26
edgyquant wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that racist? Because you’re projecting a racist comment onto it, a classifier? That does not make sense to me

If a system consistently misclassifies persons black persons far more than white persons -- and does so in a way that's obviously provocative and offensive -- then by definition it's racist in its effect (regardless of intent). The fact that the smartest company in the world cannot seem to get a handle on this problem after 8 years is also not unreasonable grounds to suspect that something's up. Like that they don't…

These are dangerous grounds to discuss, but I don't think it's racist (colloquially) at all. If gorillas were like yetis and covered in white fur and it started labeling anglos as gorillas, it's not racist either. Racism (colloquially) comes from bad people's intentions. Who would've thought that a creature that is very similar to us humans and has a color that matches some humans would accidentally classify something poorly.

What would be racist from this outcome is if it kept doing this and no one did anything. Clearly it hurts people's feelings and that is a very valid issue. Googles option to just nuke it is a great start until they can hammer out the kinks.

Re: Google Photos AI still can't label gorillas after racist errors

#33

Post by giraffe_lady »

atonse wrote: post #19
giraffe_lady wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Racism isn't an objective order existing in the universe separate from us. It's part of human experience and exists where humans experience it. Given the recent history of equating black people with non-human primates, and using that to deny them rights & full participation in society, making this error is going to be experienced as racist. It's not a matter of individual malice or taxonomic classification, but of hi…

I think we can all agree that the classifier is horribly broken. But it seems like if nobody is working on this, how will we ever fix this gaping hole in image classifiers? And don't we want to fix it? And to fix it, research will continue to get it wrong until they get it less wrong and more right, but can only iterate without a massive backlash. It seems like being stuck between a rock and a hard place. I am rhetor…

I'm simply answering the question of how it is racist, not currently trying to tackle the appropriateness of fixing the racism or the technical hurdles involved in that. It's outside my expertise and not particularly relevant to the comment I was responding to.

Re: Google Photos AI still can't label gorillas after racist errors

#34

Post by gadders »

syrrim wrote: post #10
jjevanoorschot wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm on board with assuming that the intent of Google / the engineers who built the classifier is not racist. However the outcome — labelling a black person as a gorilla — certainly is racist. What makes you think otherwise?

Presumably, the GP considers intent to be the only relevant factor in determining if something is racist.

Leaving the current situation aside, it's an interesting philosophical point. In law you have the concept of "mens rea" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_rea

Re: Google Photos AI still can't label gorillas after racist errors

#36

Post by throwawaysleep »

Larrikin wrote: post #30
throwawaysleep wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder if they're over-reacting There doesn't seem to be any benefit to solving this problem, so how is it an overreaction given the negative press?

There's no benefit to you personally maybe? I'm sure there's a lot of black people who would like to be correctly identified instead of being labeled gorillas.

They aren't labelled gorillas. Google's API won't label gorillas.

Re: Google Photos AI still can't label gorillas after racist errors

#38

Post by brabel »

Larrikin wrote: post #30
throwawaysleep wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder if they're over-reacting There doesn't seem to be any benefit to solving this problem, so how is it an overreaction given the negative press?

There's no benefit to you personally maybe? I'm sure there's a lot of black people who would like to be correctly identified instead of being labeled gorillas.

They mean there's no benefit to correctly labelling gorillas so they keep that turned off completetly.

Re: Google Photos AI still can't label gorillas after racist errors

#39

Post by Spivak »

edgyquant wrote: post #7
jjevanoorschot wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm on board with assuming that the intent of Google / the engineers who built the classifier is not racist. However the outcome — labelling a black person as a gorilla — certainly is racist. What makes you think otherwise?

How is that racist? Because you’re projecting a racist comment onto it, a classifier? That does not make sense to me

Because racism is about harm, not an estimation of a thing's motivations and prejudices -- which it's why it's still racist even if you didn't mean it or didn't know. It doesn't actually require a mind at all. Anything that confers, amplifies, or perpetuates harmful stereotypes or negative associations with people of a specific race is racist.

The thing you're calling racism is actually hate speech as it's typically defined in law.

Re: Google Photos AI still can't label gorillas after racist errors

#40

Post by noirbot »

rjh29 wrote: post #25
noirbot wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would at least be an over-specific class though, as most colonialists are people . The issue here is that it's often not seeing people as people, and identifying them as animals. It would be more like if it ID'd white folks as cows or such.

White folks = cows isn't a fair comparison, there is a strong racist history of comparing black people to monkeys/gorillas that increases the social harm.

Sure. There's not a good comparison. But even if we're just talking about differences in training model issues, a portion of the underlying issue is that the classification is so wrong that it doesn't see some people as even being human.

The fact that it's specifically gorillas is a level on top of that, but it would probably still be bad/a problem if it had the other common computer vision issue where it just doesn't see people with darker skin tones at all.

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