It seems like the problem is woke/dei.
Don't piss on my leg, and tell me its raining.
Occams razor.
Yishan Wong: "Google's Gemini issue is not about woke/DEI"
91–100 of 137 posts
Re: Yishan Wong: "Google's Gemini issue is not about woke/DEI"
#92> 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.
> their problem of their training set being deeply flawed The world is deeply flawed. If you do an unbiased search [0] of the real pictures of people in such-and-such profession, you get a vague approximation of the people actually in that profession. This does not approximate what Google or anyone else wants the demographic to be — it’s the demographic of people matching the query, times the expected number of times…
I think the problem here, well before even getting to this notion that Google is trying to engineer some favoured alternative reality outcome of theirs, is that it's not clear that the model, relying on the data set available, is even creating a correct representative version of reality prior to Google putting their thumb on the scale.
Re: Yishan Wong: "Google's Gemini issue is not about woke/DEI"
#93[flagged]
Re: Yishan Wong: "Google's Gemini issue is not about woke/DEI"
#94Sounds like algowashing, a.k.a. plausible deniability for the results of their models. Because it's a statistical model and not lines of code, they could go to the public and say "This model is sO cOmPlIcAtEd that not even we could have foreseen these results!" when their thumbs are on scales all over the place. I fear what happens when AI criminal profiling models flag undesirables as definitely psychotic serial kil…
It's frankly closest to the over burdensome regulations OCP loaded RoboCop up with in RC2, that drove him insane
Re: Yishan Wong: "Google's Gemini issue is not about woke/DEI"
#95Yishan did this same sleight of hand trick with twitter before Elon bought it[1]. Then his point was that twitter doesn't have a bias, it's simply a normal moderation problem (noise-signal ratio). Now that twitter is owned by Elon, everyone can see it obviously moved right. What normies are fairly noticing in these corps is moderating not by the overton window of the normal consumer, but by the overton window of the…
Wouldn’t Twitter be an unambiguously more successful business if Elon’s moderation moves brought it more in line with “the normal consumer?” Seems to me he simultaneously put out a dogwhistle for one audience (far right commentators agree on this) and was openly hostile both to individuals and standard sensibilities among another audience (e.g. it’s distasteful to treat employees of your newly acquired company the wa…
You'd have to isolate the political bias changes from all of the other changes, including loudly antagonizing advertisers.
Re: Yishan Wong: "Google's Gemini issue is not about woke/DEI"
#96Yishan did this same sleight of hand trick with twitter before Elon bought it[1]. Then his point was that twitter doesn't have a bias, it's simply a normal moderation problem (noise-signal ratio). Now that twitter is owned by Elon, everyone can see it obviously moved right. What normies are fairly noticing in these corps is moderating not by the overton window of the normal consumer, but by the overton window of the…
Wouldn’t Twitter be an unambiguously more successful business if Elon’s moderation moves brought it more in line with “the normal consumer?” Seems to me he simultaneously put out a dogwhistle for one audience (far right commentators agree on this) and was openly hostile both to individuals and standard sensibilities among another audience (e.g. it’s distasteful to treat employees of your newly acquired company the wa…
> Wouldn’t Twitter be an unambiguously more successful business if Elon’s moderation moves brought it more in line with “the normal consumer?”
Purely for revenue maximization, I think it would be optimal to give each user a view through their own personal Overton window. However, people in positions of power often find additional goals beyond merely maximizing revenue. Such as "moving" that Overton window.
Re: Yishan Wong: "Google's Gemini issue is not about woke/DEI"
#97Xoogler here: pointing out such things internally is incompatible with continued employment at Google (see eg Damore’s “echo chamber” essay, the echo chamber got even more airtight since then). So the end result is quite predictable. Moreover, this will continue, and i don’t see how they get out of this hole without firing a bunch of internal “activists” who spend their entire days stirring the pot on Memegen rather…
Which group/area did you work in? For context.
I mean I'm sure in a company of 140,000 people there's probably many cohesive groups of 100 people that will be super right-leaning. Like, most of the crew at the Jackson County, AL or Montgomery County, TN or Mayes County, OK datacenters. I'm sure there's areas of Google where you can express very right-wing opinions to your team and adjacent teams and still get promotions. Heck it's likely that being openly left-leaning in some groups will get you canned.
Re: Yishan Wong: "Google's Gemini issue is not about woke/DEI"
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
The woke results were by design. This was not a mistake or unpredictable.
Are you contending that the black Wehrmacht soldiers, or black British kings eating watermelon, were anticipated or desired by Google staff? Even if you model them as the most extreme conceivable woke boogeymen, surely they wouldn't want a scenario where the diversity programming produced a result that they would consider more insulting to minorities than the one that would have been produced without it.
> want a scenario where the diversity programming produced a result that they would consider more insulting to minorities
They're trolls. They don't care about minorities. They just use diversity to wind people up because then they can press the 'white fragility' button when people complain and segue into another level of trolling. If minorities get offended they'll attack them with 'uncle tom' and 'oreo' type insults.
You are not dealing with people operating in good faith, it's obvious. Expecting their actions to make sense is pointless. They just love drama. Performance artists. Theater kids. Somehow they've got in there and have formed a little nucleus of toxicity which is why the company's headed downhill so fast.
Someone alludes to it here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39485537
And I've seen this happen. You hire one, they get some leverage to hire their buddies, before you know it they've set up their own little clown show and nobody wants to go anywhere near them. Then the wrecking starts.
Re: Yishan Wong: "Google's Gemini issue is not about woke/DEI"
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wouldn’t Twitter be an unambiguously more successful business if Elon’s moderation moves brought it more in line with “the normal consumer?” Seems to me he simultaneously put out a dogwhistle for one audience (far right commentators agree on this) and was openly hostile both to individuals and standard sensibilities among another audience (e.g. it’s distasteful to treat employees of your newly acquired company the wa…
You'd have to isolate the political bias changes from all of the other changes, including loudly antagonizing advertisers.
But that was part of “the shift” that GP is crediting for moving toward broader appeal.
Agreed on the general point, this stuff can’t really be disaggregated in a meaningful way, but of course it doesn’t need to be disaggregated: the overall set of Musk’s decisions have been extremely destructive to the company (so far).
Re: Yishan Wong: "Google's Gemini issue is not about woke/DEI"
#100Xoogler here: pointing out such things internally is incompatible with continued employment at Google (see eg Damore’s “echo chamber” essay, the echo chamber got even more airtight since then). So the end result is quite predictable. Moreover, this will continue, and i don’t see how they get out of this hole without firing a bunch of internal “activists” who spend their entire days stirring the pot on Memegen rather…
Which group/area did you work in? For context. I mean I'm sure in a company of 140,000 people there's probably many cohesive groups of 100 people that will be super right-leaning. Like, most of the crew at the Jackson County, AL or Montgomery County, TN or Mayes County, OK datacenters. I'm sure there's areas of Google where you can express very right-wing opinions to your team and adjacent teams and still get promoti…
In data centers maybe, but in software even moderate conservative positions are inadvisable. I don’t consider myself to be in any way “right leaning” by the way. I’m in favor of universal healthcare and gay marriage yet against allowing biological males in female sports, for example. Don’t like it? Not much I can do about that, I’ll stick to my guns no matter what derogatory label you assign. I’m not overly attached to fat paychecks either.