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Yishan Wong: "Google's Gemini issue is not about woke/DEI"

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Re: Yishan Wong: "Google's Gemini issue is not about woke/DEI"

#61

Post by bodiekane »

smoothjazz wrote: post #56
claytongulick wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you had a political ideology that you disagreed with imposed on you in nearly every facet of your life - entertainment, work, school - what would your reaction be? Would you put any effort into voicing your disagreement?

Why would anyone disagree with “wokeness”? I think that says a lot. Are the ultra-rich who complain about the “woke mind virus” hurt in any way by diversity? No, they are not.

Why would anyone disagree with fundamentalist Christianity? Why would anyone disagree with Wahhabist Islam? Why would anyone disagree with Maoism?

People have different opinions on politics, religion, society. The more extremist a certain group/movement/ideology is the more concerned about it people will become.

Re: Yishan Wong: "Google's Gemini issue is not about woke/DEI"

#62

Post by [deleted] »

tanseydavid wrote: post #58
smoothjazz wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would anyone disagree with “wokeness”? I think that says a lot. Are the ultra-rich who complain about the “woke mind virus” hurt in any way by diversity? No, they are not.

>> Why would anyone disagree with “wokeness”? Do you really expect universal understanding and agreement with a word/term that you felt necessary to put into air-quotes? How about a proper definition to start with? Simply so that one can be clear on what they are agreeing or disagreeing with.

[deleted]

Re: Yishan Wong: "Google's Gemini issue is not about woke/DEI"

#63

Post by almatabata »

> That’s not why this is important. This event is not significant for culture war reasons.

He makes an interesting point but I still think that this raises some big questions around how they attempt to correct bias by injecting their own biases.

In this case they tried to correct racial representation in pictures but what if they try to correct and influence political opinions next? Make certain groups look like glorious freedom fighters, and others like bloodthirsty monsters? Maybe attempt to push certain parties to make them win the next election. Given they offer no transparency on their prompts how will I know they are not pushing other ideological angles?

Re: Yishan Wong: "Google's Gemini issue is not about woke/DEI"

#64

Post by smoothjazz »

tanseydavid wrote: post #58
smoothjazz wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would anyone disagree with “wokeness”? I think that says a lot. Are the ultra-rich who complain about the “woke mind virus” hurt in any way by diversity? No, they are not.

>> Why would anyone disagree with “wokeness”? Do you really expect universal understanding and agreement with a word/term that you felt necessary to put into air-quotes? How about a proper definition to start with? Simply so that one can be clear on what they are agreeing or disagreeing with.

I put it in quotes because it's the term a certain set of people use (not me). It had a historical meaning to the Black community but that's been usurped by reactionaries.

Re: Yishan Wong: "Google's Gemini issue is not about woke/DEI"

#65

Post by smoothjazz »

bodiekane wrote: post #61
smoothjazz wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would anyone disagree with “wokeness”? I think that says a lot. Are the ultra-rich who complain about the “woke mind virus” hurt in any way by diversity? No, they are not.

Why would anyone disagree with fundamentalist Christianity? Why would anyone disagree with Wahhabist Islam? Why would anyone disagree with Maoism? People have different opinions on politics, religion, society. The more extremist a certain group/movement/ideology is the more concerned about it people will become.

"Wokeness" as defined by the people who use it is not a religion (and it's not extreme). It's just pejorative word for diversity used by people who believe in white supremacy.

Re: Yishan Wong: "Google's Gemini issue is not about woke/DEI"

#66

Post by almatabata »

troyvit wrote: post #60
Havoc wrote: post #45

> got a totally bonkers result they couldn’t anticipate. I fundamentally disagree with this statement and frankly the entire line of reasoning This isn’t some unforeseeable 3rd order side effect coming out of a black box from left field. You’re always injecting an instruction to put in diverse people so now it’s always doing just that. Entirely predictable. This is like adding a system prompt saying always put tamago…

I agree with you that it's entirely predictable. Why was it not predicted by a company that has achieved hegemony over so many aspects of our online lives and therefore must be pretty good at stuff? Other people offer: * google drove their head up their own ass * actually they expected this behavior, but didn't think there would be backlash * google didn't scope for the normal consumer but rather for their managerial…

Some people are saying people knew internally but didn't dare point it out:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39466135

Re: Yishan Wong: "Google's Gemini issue is not about woke/DEI"

#67

Post by cptcobalt »

htrp wrote: post #51
thinkingemote wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They need a team of people to not use it but try to break it. I'm as suprised.

"We've also conducted novel research on safety risks and developed red-teaming techniques to test for a range of potential harms. " https://blog.google/technology/ai/google-gemini-next-generat...

A red-team of yes-men, apparently.

Re: Yishan Wong: "Google's Gemini issue is not about woke/DEI"

#68

Post by Tiktaalik »

> First, to recap: Google injected special instructions into Gemini so that when it was asked to draw pictures, it would draw people with “diverse” (non-white) racial backgrounds.

I just love how this "solution" to their problem of their training set being deeply flawed is such a hilariously bad kludge hack of the sort a jr programmer would make and it's amazing that they went with it.

Re: Yishan Wong: "Google's Gemini issue is not about woke/DEI"

#69

Post by Tiktaalik »

Havoc wrote: post #45

> got a totally bonkers result they couldn’t anticipate. I fundamentally disagree with this statement and frankly the entire line of reasoning This isn’t some unforeseeable 3rd order side effect coming out of a black box from left field. You’re always injecting an instruction to put in diverse people so now it’s always doing just that. Entirely predictable. This is like adding a system prompt saying always put tamago…

Yes. It was a hilariously bad solution to a real problem.

The problem was that their training data yielded outcomes that weren't a representative sample of reality.

They didn't try to solve that problem.

Instead they just tried to put their thumb on the scale to compensate.

Re: Yishan Wong: "Google's Gemini issue is not about woke/DEI"

#70

Post by claytongulick »

smoothjazz wrote: post #56
claytongulick wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you had a political ideology that you disagreed with imposed on you in nearly every facet of your life - entertainment, work, school - what would your reaction be? Would you put any effort into voicing your disagreement?

Why would anyone disagree with “wokeness”? I think that says a lot. Are the ultra-rich who complain about the “woke mind virus” hurt in any way by diversity? No, they are not.

A fun game is to templatize that statement and try swapping it out with other beliefs:

Why would anyone disagree with . I think that says a lot. Are the who complain about the hurt in any way by ? No, they are not.

Why would anyone disagree with environmental activism. I think that says a lot. Are the corporate polluters who complain about the tree huggers hurt in any way by clean water? No, they are not.

Why would anyone disagree with conservatism. I think that says a lot. Are the left-wingers who complain about the rightards hurt in any way by individual liberty? No, they are not.

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