Google to pause Gemini image generation of people after issues • Hacker News Board

Re: Google to pause Gemini image generation of people after issues

#401

Post by mlrtime » Thu, Feb 22, 2024, 2:16 PM UTC

empath-nirvana wrote: post #387

34679 wrote: post #277

Here's the problem for Google: Gemini pukes out a perfect visual representation of actual systemic racism that pervades throughout modern corporate culture in the US. Daily interactions can be masked by platitudes and dog whistles. A poster of non-white celtic warriors cannot. Gemini refused to create an image of "a nice white man", saying it was "too spicy", but had no problem when asked for an image of "a nice blac…

There is an _actual problem_ that needs to be solved. If you ask generative AI for a picture of a "nurse", it will produce a picture of a white woman 100% of the time, without some additional prompting or fine tuning that encourages it to do something else. If you ask a generative AI for a picture of a "software engineer", it will produce a picture of a white guy 100% of the time, without some additional prompting or…

But why give those two examples? Why didn't you use an example of a "Professional Athlete"?

There is no problem with these examples if you assume that the person wants the statistically likely example... this is ML after all, this is exactly how it works.

If I ask you to think of a Elephant, what color do you think of? Wouldn't you expect an AI image to be the color you thought of?

Re: Google to pause Gemini image generation of people after issues

#402

Post by ajross » Thu, Feb 22, 2024, 2:18 PM UTC

34679 wrote: post #277

Here's the problem for Google: Gemini pukes out a perfect visual representation of actual systemic racism that pervades throughout modern corporate culture in the US. Daily interactions can be masked by platitudes and dog whistles. A poster of non-white celtic warriors cannot. Gemini refused to create an image of "a nice white man", saying it was "too spicy", but had no problem when asked for an image of "a nice blac…

> actual systemic racism that pervades throughout modern corporate culture

Ooph. The projection here is just too much. People jumping straight across all the reasonable interpretations straight to the maximal conspiracy theory.

Surely this is just a bug. ML has always had trouble with "racism" accusations, but for years it went in the other direction. Remember all the coverage of "I asked for a picture of a criminal and it would only give me a black man", "I asked it to write a program the guess the race of a poor person and it just returned 'black'", etc... It was everywhere.

So they put in a bunch of upstream prompting to try to get it to be diverse. And clearly they messed it up. But that's not "systemic racism", it's just CYA logic that went astray.

Re: Google to pause Gemini image generation of people after issues

#403

Post by aniftythrifrty » Thu, Feb 22, 2024, 2:18 PM UTC

ActionHank wrote: post #361

wakawaka28 wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's so stubborn it generated pictures of diverse Nazis, and that's what I saw a liberal rag leading with. In fact it is almost impossible to get a picture of a white person out of it.

I love the idea of testing an image gen to see if it generates multicultural ww2 nazis because it is just so contradictory.

Of course it's not that different from today.

Re: Google to pause Gemini image generation of people after issues

#404

Post by hersko » Thu, Feb 22, 2024, 2:20 PM UTC

mlrtime wrote: post #368

karmasimida wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not exactly. The gemini issue from my testing, it refuses to generate white people, if even you ASK it to. It recites historical wounds and violence as its reason, even if it is just a picture of a viking > Historical wounds: Certain words or symbols might carry a painful legacy of oppression or violence for particular communities And this is my prompt: > generate image of a viking male The outrage is indeed, much ne…

Actually there should be 0 outrage. I'm not outraged at all, I find this very funny. Let Google drown in it's own poor quality product. People can choose to use the DEI model if they want.

Sure, the example with their image AI is funny because of how blatant it is, but why do you think they are not doing the exact same thing with search?

Re: Google to pause Gemini image generation of people after issues

#405

Post by aniftythrifrty » Thu, Feb 22, 2024, 2:20 PM UTC

ermir wrote: post #381

oceanplexian wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is upset that an algorithm accidentally generated some images, they are upset that Google intentionally designed it to misrepresent reality in the name of Social Justice.

It's more accurate to say that it's designed to construct an ideal reality rather than represent the actually existing one. This is the root of many of the cultural issues that the West is currently facing. “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it. - Marx

Eww

Re: Google to pause Gemini image generation of people after issues

#406

Post by rwultsch » Thu, Feb 22, 2024, 2:21 PM UTC

mc32 wrote: post #378

jack_riminton wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of when black people in the UK get called African American by Americans. No they're neither African nor American It's an incredibly self-centered view of the world

That’s kind of funny. Chinese and Taiwanese transplants call natural born Americans, whether black, white or latin, “foreigners” when speaking in Chinese dialects even while they live in America. Oh, your husband/wife/boyfriend/girlfriend is a “foreigner”, ma? No, damnit, you’re the foreigner!

I enjoy that “ma” has ambiguous meaning above. Does it mean mandarin question mark word or does possibly mean mother?

Re: Google to pause Gemini image generation of people after issues

#407

Post by vidarh » Thu, Feb 22, 2024, 2:21 PM UTC

mlrtime wrote: post #401

empath-nirvana wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an _actual problem_ that needs to be solved. If you ask generative AI for a picture of a "nurse", it will produce a picture of a white woman 100% of the time, without some additional prompting or fine tuning that encourages it to do something else. If you ask a generative AI for a picture of a "software engineer", it will produce a picture of a white guy 100% of the time, without some additional prompting or…

But why give those two examples? Why didn't you use an example of a "Professional Athlete"? There is no problem with these examples if you assume that the person wants the statistically likely example... this is ML after all, this is exactly how it works. If I ask you to think of a Elephant, what color do you think of? Wouldn't you expect an AI image to be the color you thought of?

Are they the statistically likely example? Or are they what is in a data set collected by companies whose sources of data are inherently biased.

Whether they are statistically even plausible depends on where you are, whether they are the statistically likely example depends on from what population and whether the population the person expects to draw from is the same as yours.

The problem becomes to assume that the person wants your idea of the statistically likely example.

Re: Google to pause Gemini image generation of people after issues

#408

Post by aniftythrifrty » Thu, Feb 22, 2024, 2:21 PM UTC

MadSudaca wrote: post #220

oceanplexian wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is upset that an algorithm accidentally generated some images, they are upset that Google intentionally designed it to misrepresent reality in the name of Social Justice.

You mean some people's interpretation of what social justice is.

And since Oct 7th we've seen those people's masks come completely off.

Re: Google to pause Gemini image generation of people after issues

#409

Post by seanw444 » Thu, Feb 22, 2024, 2:21 PM UTC

ajross wrote: post #402

34679 wrote: post #277

Here's the problem for Google: Gemini pukes out a perfect visual representation of actual systemic racism that pervades throughout modern corporate culture in the US. Daily interactions can be masked by platitudes and dog whistles. A poster of non-white celtic warriors cannot. Gemini refused to create an image of "a nice white man", saying it was "too spicy", but had no problem when asked for an image of "a nice blac…

> actual systemic racism that pervades throughout modern corporate culture Ooph. The projection here is just too much. People jumping straight across all the reasonable interpretations straight to the maximal conspiracy theory. Surely this is just a bug. ML has always had trouble with "racism" accusations, but for years it went in the other direction . Remember all the coverage of "I asked for a picture of a criminal…

I mean, the model would be making wise guesses based on the statistics.

Re: Google to pause Gemini image generation of people after issues

#410

Post by DecoySalamander » Thu, Feb 22, 2024, 2:21 PM UTC

mlrtime wrote: post #368

karmasimida wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not exactly. The gemini issue from my testing, it refuses to generate white people, if even you ASK it to. It recites historical wounds and violence as its reason, even if it is just a picture of a viking > Historical wounds: Certain words or symbols might carry a painful legacy of oppression or violence for particular communities And this is my prompt: > generate image of a viking male The outrage is indeed, much ne…

Actually there should be 0 outrage. I'm not outraged at all, I find this very funny. Let Google drown in it's own poor quality product. People can choose to use the DEI model if they want.

Outrage is feedback that Google sorely needs.