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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

#721

Post by esoterica »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #706
logicalmonster wrote: post #596

Personally speaking, this is a blaring neon warning sign of institutional rot within Google where shrieking concerns about DEI have surpassed a focus on quality results. Investors in Google (of which I am NOT one) should consider if this is the mark of a company on the upswing or downslide. If the focus of Google's technology is identity rather than reality, it is inevitable that they will be surpassed.

> If the focus of Google's technology is identity rather than reality, it is inevitable that they will be surpassed. They're trailing 5 or so years behind Disney who also placed DEI over producing quality entertainment and their endless stream of flops reflects that. South Park even mocked them about that ("put a black chick in it and make her lame and gay"). Can't wait for Gemini and Google to flop as well since nob…

[flagged]

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

#722

Post by bitcurious »

sega_sai wrote: post #266

That is certainly embarassing. But in the same time, I think it is a debate worth having. What corrections to the training dataset biases are acceptable. Is it acceptable to correct the answer to the query "Eminent scientist" from 95% men, 5% woment to 50%/50% or to the current ratio of men/women in science ? Should we correct the ratio of black to white people in answering a generic question to average across the gl…

>Is it acceptable to correct the answer to the query "Eminent scientist" from 95% men, 5% woment to 50%/50% or to the current ratio of men/women in science ? Should we correct the ratio of black to white people in answering a generic question to average across the globe or US ?

It’s a great question, and one where you won’t find consensus. I believe we should aim to avoid arrogance. Rather than prescribing a world view, prescribe a default and let the users overwrite. Diversity vs. reality should be a setting, in the users’ control.

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

#723

Post by gnicholas »

pram wrote: post #711
logicalmonster wrote: post #596

Personally speaking, this is a blaring neon warning sign of institutional rot within Google where shrieking concerns about DEI have surpassed a focus on quality results. Investors in Google (of which I am NOT one) should consider if this is the mark of a company on the upswing or downslide. If the focus of Google's technology is identity rather than reality, it is inevitable that they will be surpassed.

As someone who has spent thousands of dollars on the OpenAI API I’m not even bothering with Gemini stuff anymore. It seems to spend more time telling me what it REFUSES to do than actually doing the thing. It’s not worth the trouble. They’re late and the product is worse, and useless in some cases. Not a great look.

I would be pretty annoyed if I were paying for Gemini Pro/Ultra/whatever and it was feeding me historically-inaccurate images and injecting words into my prompts instead of just creating what I asked for. I wouldn't mind a checkbox I could select to make it give diversity-enriched output.

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

#726

Post by mozempthrowaway »

jorvi wrote: post #334
MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" when i was there it was so sad to me that none of the senior leadership in deepmind dared to question this ideology [...] i watched my colleagues at nvidia (like @tunguz), openai (roon), etc. who were literally doing stuff that would get you kicked out of google on a daily basis and couldn't believe how different google is " Aleksa Gordić, https://x.com/gordic_aleksa/status/1760266452475494828

Interestingly enough the same terror of political correctness seems to take center stage at Mozilla. But then it seems much less so at places like Microsoft or Apple. I wonder if there’s a correlation with being a tech company that was founded in direct relation to the internet vs. being founded in relation to personal / enterprise computing, and how that sort of seeds the initial culture.

I’d imagine Google’s culture is more Mao-ist public shaming. Here at Mozilla, we like Stalin. Go against the orthodoxy? You’re disappeared and killed quickly.

We have hour long pronoun training videos for onboarding; have spent millions on DEI consultants from things like Paradigm to boutique law firms; tied part of our corporate bonus to company DEI initiatives.

Not sure why anyone uses FF anymore. We barely do any development on it. You basically just sit here and collect between 150-300k depending on your level as long as you can stomach the bullshit.

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

#727

Post by burningion »

hot_gril wrote: post #714
burningion wrote: post #712

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A high performance team is a chaotic system. You can’t remove a piece of it with predictable results. Remove a piece and the whole system may fall apart. To think the layoffs had no effect on the quality of output from the system seems very naive.

Yes, it has some effect on the company. In my opinion, lots of teams had too many cooks in the kitchen. Work has been less painful post-layoffs. However, it doesn't seem like anyone related to Gemini was laid off, and if so, it really is a no-op for them.

I think you contradict this statement in this very thread:

> Yeah, no way am I beta-testing a product for free then risking my job to give feedback.

An environment of layoffs raises the reputational costs of being a critical voice.

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

#728

Post by UomoNeroNero »

I'm really tired of all this controversy and what the tech scene is becoming. I'm old and I'm speaking like an old man: there wouldn't be the internet as it is now, with everything we now use and enjoy if there hadn't been times of true freedom, of anarchic madness, of hate and love. Personally I HATE that 95% of people focus on this bullshit when we are witnessing one of the most incredible revolutions in the history of computing. As an Italian, as a European, I am astonished and honestly fed up

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

#729

Post by duxup »

anonymoushn wrote: post #269

It's amusing that the diversity-promoting prompt includes native Americans but excludes all other indigenous peoples.

Also the images are almost bizarrely stereotypical in my experence.

The very specific background of each person is pretty clear. There's no 'in-between' or mixed race or background folks. It's so strange to look at.

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

#730

Post by prepend »

duxup wrote: post #694
logicalmonster wrote: post #596

Personally speaking, this is a blaring neon warning sign of institutional rot within Google where shrieking concerns about DEI have surpassed a focus on quality results. Investors in Google (of which I am NOT one) should consider if this is the mark of a company on the upswing or downslide. If the focus of Google's technology is identity rather than reality, it is inevitable that they will be surpassed.

It's very strange that this would leak into a product limitation to me. I played with Gemini for maybe 10 minutes and I could tell there was clearly some very strange ideas about DEI forced into the tool. It seemed there was a clear "hard coded" ratio of various racial / background required as far as the output it showed me. Or maybe more accurately it had to include specific backgrounds based on how people looked, a…

It does seem really strange that the tool refuses specific backgrounds. So if I am trying to make a city scene in Singapore and want all Asians in the background, the tool refuses? On what grounds?

This seems pretty non-functional and while I applaud, I guess, the idea that somehow this is more fair it seems like the legitimate uses for needing specific demographic backgrounds in an image outweigh racists trying to make an uberimage or whatever 1billion:1.

Fortunately, there are competing tools that aren’t poorly built.

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