Live data from Hacker News

A YouTube chat about chess got flagged for hate speech

wired.com

41–50 of 461 posts

Re: A YouTube chat about chess got flagged for hate speech

#41
post #21

We need a word or phrase for this phenomenon, where we attempt to substitute human pattern recognition with algorithms that just aren't up to the job. Facebook moderation, Tesla Full Self Driving, the War Games movie, arrests for mistaken facial identification. It's becoming an increasingly dystopic force in our lives and will likely get much worse before getting even worse. So it needs a label. Maybe there's a ten s…

Artificial Intelligibility.

We are often reduced to mere conformity to what the artificial intelligence can make sense of.

Captcha: "Are you human?"

Human:

Re: A YouTube chat about chess got flagged for hate speech

#42
post #32

Oh no. Please. Not chess. Can’t we just leave this one alone?

No. Everything must be examined critically through the lenses of social justice. Chess is a Eurocentric and thus colonial game only valued because of its expression of whiteness. Dominance of an opponent of another color reenforces normative racism and the white pieces going first internalizes white supremacy to Black, brown, and indigenous peoples. I won’t even go into the obvious sexism and misogyny of the emotiona…

Ugh, I'm so screwed up. Your comment would be taken as dead serious in some circles and as parody in others. Based on the HN demographic I'm guessing the latter but I'm not sure.

Re: A YouTube chat about chess got flagged for hate speech

#43
post #21

We need a word or phrase for this phenomenon, where we attempt to substitute human pattern recognition with algorithms that just aren't up to the job. Facebook moderation, Tesla Full Self Driving, the War Games movie, arrests for mistaken facial identification. It's becoming an increasingly dystopic force in our lives and will likely get much worse before getting even worse. So it needs a label. Maybe there's a ten s…

Artificial Intelligence

Re: A YouTube chat about chess got flagged for hate speech

#45
post #6

I honestly wouldn't be surprised if someone makes the argument that this automated flagging is an indicator that chess's language is inadvertently racially charged. And think about the concept of "white goes first." All it takes is a few viral tweets, and suddenly the game of chess is in the crosshairs.

Yes, not too dissimilar to Github changing the branch "master". Is there a list of things like this that match this pattern that would be easy for people to go after given a few viral tweets? I feel like if there is such a list, it'd be less shocking when the inevitable happens.

Re: A YouTube chat about chess got flagged for hate speech

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion, that might be a sign that the idea of drawing abstract connections between words and concepts, that are several layers of indirection apart, may be going too far. Yeah using language that upsets people is bad, but if you allow enough layers between words and concepts, _everything_ can be argued to be offensive for one reason or another. Or will be soon once something else becomes a hot button issue.

> using language that upsets people is bad Shouldn't be. Intent should be the grounds for upset, intent only. Otherwise you get a Euphemism Treadmill, and that's a goddamn fucking waste of time.

It reminds me of all the synonyms and symbols, homophones and homographs Chinese use when referring to mr Xi on Weibo, etc., including the now censored Winnie the Pooh. To get around the censorship which blocks mentioning of me Xi in unflattering light. It’s ever evolving to keep ahead of the censors.

Re: A YouTube chat about chess got flagged for hate speech

#47
post #18
post #6

I honestly wouldn't be surprised if someone makes the argument that this automated flagging is an indicator that chess's language is inadvertently racially charged. And think about the concept of "white goes first." All it takes is a few viral tweets, and suddenly the game of chess is in the crosshairs.

Or cooler heads prevail like at the Académie Française who recognize that sexual genders are completely unrelated to grammatical genders despite what activists try to say. So we may just get some people who push back and tell people that chess isn’t racist and it’s people who are injecting race where it doesn’t exist (such as here in chess) who are the problem.

Have cooler heads prevailed in this regard? “Progressive” Americans degendering Spanish by referring to Latino people as “Latinx” seems to be going as strong as ever, despite the protests of actual native Spanish speakers. In their haste to appear progressive, people who say “Latinx” are ironically engaging in linguistic colonialism, as it were.

Re: A YouTube chat about chess got flagged for hate speech

#48
post #6

I honestly wouldn't be surprised if someone makes the argument that this automated flagging is an indicator that chess's language is inadvertently racially charged. And think about the concept of "white goes first." All it takes is a few viral tweets, and suddenly the game of chess is in the crosshairs.

In my opinion, that might be a sign that the idea of drawing abstract connections between words and concepts, that are several layers of indirection apart, may be going too far. Yeah using language that upsets people is bad, but if you allow enough layers between words and concepts, _everything_ can be argued to be offensive for one reason or another. Or will be soon once something else becomes a hot button issue.

You know that many people are advocating for replacing the terms whitelist and blacklist, right?

I don't see how chess is any different.

Re: A YouTube chat about chess got flagged for hate speech

#49
I'm actually starting to think we only see these stories about absurd censorship to make the more commonplace and pernicious stuff seem legitimate by comparison. "Oh, hahah, our totally legitimate censorship ML that uses language models to isolate people from each other based on predictions of patterns in their thinking made a funny goof! Gee whiz, you got us that time!"

Anyway, Google will be fine. Lots of tech companies have managed to re-brand after getting on board with idealists, just look at Hollerith.

Post reply on HN