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Google to pause Gemini image generation of people after issues

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

#461

We humans haven't even figured out how to discuss race, sex, or gender without it devolving into a tribal political fight. We shouldn't be surprised that algorithms we create and train on our own content will similarly be confused. Its the exact same reason we won't solve the alignment problem and have basically given up on it. We can't align humans with ourselves, we'll absolutely never define some magic ruleset tha…

So, what's the tribal political consensus on how many Asian women were present in the German army in 1943?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39465250

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

#462
post #398

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…

> 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 fine tuning that encourages it to do something el…

This is a hard problem because those answers vary so much regionally. For example, according to this survey about 80% of RNs are white and the next largest group is Asian — but since I live in DC, most of the nurses we’ve seen are black.

https://onlinenursing.cn.edu/news/nursing-by-the-numbers

I think the downside of leaving people out is worse than having ratios be off, and a good mitigation tactic is making sure that results are presented as groups rather than trying to have every single image be perfectly aligned with some local demographic ratio. If a Mexican kid in California sees only white people in photos of professional jobs and people who look like their family only show up in pictures of domestic and construction workers, that reinforces negative stereotypes they’re unfortunately going to hear elsewhere throughout their life (example picked because I went to CA public schools and it was … noticeable … to see which of my classmates were steered towards 4H and auto shop). Having pictures of doctors include someone who looks like their aunt is going to benefit them, and it won’t hurt a white kid at all to have fractionally less reinforcement since they’re still going to see pictures of people like them everywhere, so if you type “nurse” into an image generator I’d want to see a bunch of images by default and have them more broadly ranged over age/race/gender/weight/attractiveness/etc. rather than trying to precisely match local demographics, especially since the UI for all of these things needs to allow for iterative tuning in any case.

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

#463

OpenAI already experienced this backlash when it was injecting words for diversity into prompts (hilariously if you asked for your prompt back it would include the words, and supposedly you could get it to render the extra words onto signs within the image). How could Google have made the same mistake but worse ?

Allowing a political agenda to drive the programming of the algorithm instead of engineering.

It a product that the company has to take responsibility for. Managing that is a no brainer. Tf they don't they suffer endless headlines damaging their brand.

The only political agenda present is yours. You see everything through the kaleidoscope of your own political grievances.

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

#464
post #260

There's definitely human intervention in the model. Gemini is not true AI, it has too much human intervention in its results.

You're speaking as if LLMs are some naturally occurring phenomena that people are Google have tampered with. There's obviously always human intervention as AI systems are built by humans.

Nonsense, I picked my LLM ripe off the vine today, covered in the morning dew.

It was delicious.

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

#465
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…

Are you seriously claiming that the actual systemic racism in our society is discrimination against white people? I just struggle to imagine someone holding this belief in good faith.

Luckily for you, you don't have to imagine it. There are groups of people that absolutely believe that modern society has become anti-white. Unfortunately, they have found a megaphone with internet/social platforms. However, just because someone believes something doesn't make it true. Take flat Earthers as a less hate filled example.

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

#466
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

tbh i think it's less a political issue than a technical/product management one what does a "board member" look like? probably you can benefit by offering more than 50 year old white man in suit. if that's what an ai trained on all human knowledge thinks, maybe we can do some adjustment what does a samurai warrior look like? probably is a little more race-related

> what does a samurai warrior look like? probably is a little more race-related If you ask Hollywood, it looks like Tom Cruise with a beard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Last_Samurai.jpg

Tom Cruise isn't the last samurai though

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

#467

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…

> 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 fine tuning that encourages it to do something el…

> Neither of these statements is true, and you can verify it by prompting any of the major generative AI platforms more than a couple times.

Were the statements true at one point? Have the outputs changed? (Due to either changes in training, algorithm, or guardrails?)

A new problem is not having the versions of the software or the guardrails be transparent.

Try something that may not have guardrails up yet: Try and get an output of a "Jamaican man" that isn't black. Even adding blonde hair, the output will still be a black man.

Edit: similarly, try asking ChatGPT for a "Canadian" and see if you get anything other than a white person.

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

#469
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…

>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

Why is this a "problem"? If you want an image of a nurse of a different ethnicity, ask for it.

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

#470

Google has similar issue as when you search for images of "white couple" - half of results are not a white couple. https://www.google.com/search?q=white+couple&tbm=isch

WTF that's disgusting, they're actively manipulating information.

If you write "black couple" you only get actual black couples.

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