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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

#921

Post by wakawaka28 »

spixy wrote: post #809
pocket_cheese wrote: post #799

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Investors in Google should consider Google's financial performance as part of their decision. 41% increase YOY in net income doesn't seem to align with the "go woke or go broke" investment strategy.

well Google is lucky it has a monopoly in ads, so there will be no "go broke" part

Yes there is. They could fall out of favor. MySpace did, Yahoo did, Digg did, etc. The leadership at Google should focus on making things that users actually want instead of telling them what they should want.

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

#922

Post by gitaarik »

pocket_cheese wrote: post #765
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #706

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Fortune 500s are laughably insincere and hamfisted in how they do DEI. But these types of comments feel like schadenfreude towards the "woke moralist mind-virus" But lets be real here ... DEI is a good thing when done well. How are you going to talk to the customer when they are speaking a different cultural language. Even form a purely capitalist perspective, having a diverse workforce means you can target more mark…

So we need commercial insentive to be diversity accepting? I think it should just not matter where you are from, what your background is. We should be treated to our skills. If your skills are not required, people shouldn't have to hire you because of DEI reasons.

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

#923

Post by wakawaka28 »

feoren wrote: post #882
multicast wrote: post #501

We live in times were non-problems are turned into problems. Simple responses should be generated truthfully. Truth which is present in today's data. Most software engineers and CEOs are white and male, almost all US rappers are black and male, most childminder and nurses are female from all kinds of races. If you want the person to be of another race or sex, add it to the prompt. If you want a software engineer from…

> We live in times were non-problems are turned into problems. This is exactly what everyone who benefits from the status quo always says. > Most software engineers and CEOs are white and male 55% of Software Engineers are white; 80% are male.[1] So somewhere around 44% of software engineers are white and male. That's not "most". You think it's perfectly fine if 100% of generated images for "Software Engineer" are wh…

>55% of Software Engineers are white; 80% are male.[1] So somewhere around 44% of software engineers are white and male. That's not "most".

Actually, white women are less likely than women of other races to pursue engineering. So there could be closer to 50% white men. Obviously this is in the US. In China, 99.9% of software engineers would be Han Chinese lol. Would it be wrong to show them a group of Chinese engineers? How about showing them 100% non-Chinese when they explicitly ask for Chinese? That's how messed up Gemini is.

Anyway, this is all a stupid argument. Talking about numbers like that in a field as diverse as software engineering is a bad idea, because it has no bearing on the problem. Let the AI generate what it wants to by default, and let people fine-tune to get other ethnicities in there if they want to. If I ask for 5 people with one white, one asian, one black, one Mexican, and one albino, the AI should be able to do that. Focus on correctness and leave judgement to the people consuming the output. I think proportions are only a problem with Gemini because it produces 0% images of white people, even in contexts that demand at least some white presence to not be absurd.

I expect Gemini to still be biased against white people after it's fixed. It will just be more subtle.

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

#924

Post by wakawaka28 »

andy_xor_andrew wrote: post #766
aliasxneo wrote: post #544

Quite the cultural flame war in this thread. For me, the whole incident points to the critical importance of open models. A bit of speculation, but if AI is eventually intended to play a role in education, this sort of control would be a dream for historical revisionists. The classic battle of the thought police is now being extended to AI.

> Quite the cultural flame war in this thread. It's kind of the perfect storm, because both sides of the argument include a mixture of reasonable well-intentioned people, and crazy extremists. However you choose to be upset about this, you always have someone crazy to point at.

Well, it's not crazy extremist to say that there is a woke cult out there that hates white people, and wants to systematically suppress them. The same people ironically claim to be oppressed by white people as every major corporation and liberal politician lines up to do their bidding.

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

#925

Post by gitaarik »

janalsncm wrote: post #815
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.

Isn’t the fact that Google considers this a bug evidence against exactly what you’re saying? If DEI was really the cause, and not a more broad concern about becoming the next Tay, they would’ve kept it as-is. Weird refusals and paternalistic concerns about harm are not desirable behavior. You can consider it a bug, just like the ChatGPT decoding bug the other day.

It's not a bug, it's a feature! A bug is when something unintentionally doesn't work or misbehaves. The DEI algorithm is intentionally added as a feature. It just has some output that seems buggy, but is actually because of this "feature". Whether it's a good feature is another discussion though ;).

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

#926

Post by wakawaka28 »

Intralexical wrote: post #851
andy_xor_andrew wrote: post #766

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Quite the cultural flame war in this thread. It's kind of the perfect storm, because both sides of the argument include a mixture of reasonable well-intentioned people, and crazy extremists. However you choose to be upset about this, you always have someone crazy to point at.

> However you choose to be upset about this, you always have someone crazy to point at. Scary! I hope nobody finds a way to exploit this dynamic for profit.

Why do you think the elites love this woke shit? Because it divides people.

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

#927

Post by gitaarik »

raydev wrote: post #858
multicast wrote: post #501

We live in times were non-problems are turned into problems. Simple responses should be generated truthfully. Truth which is present in today's data. Most software engineers and CEOs are white and male, almost all US rappers are black and male, most childminder and nurses are female from all kinds of races. If you want the person to be of another race or sex, add it to the prompt. If you want a software engineer from…

> Simple responses should be generated truthfully. Truth which is present in today's data. Why would you rely on current LLM and -adjacent tech image generation to give you this? The whole point is to be creative and provide useful hallucinations. We have existing sources that provide accurate and correct info in a deterministic way.

Creative doesn't mean to consequently manipulate output to match a certain ideology.

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

#928

Post by gitaarik »

yongjik wrote: post #797
multicast wrote: post #501

We live in times were non-problems are turned into problems. Simple responses should be generated truthfully. Truth which is present in today's data. Most software engineers and CEOs are white and male, almost all US rappers are black and male, most childminder and nurses are female from all kinds of races. If you want the person to be of another race or sex, add it to the prompt. If you want a software engineer from…

> Most software engineers and CEOs are white and male Fine, you walk up to Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella, and Lisa Su and say those words. I'll watch.

What, do you think they will be insulted? Why would they?

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

#929

Post by skinkestek »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #779
skinkestek wrote: post #680

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No need to go to that extreme I think. Just letting ordinary employees experiment with it and leave honest feedback on it knowing they were safe and not risking the boot could have exposed most of these problems. But Google couldn't even manage to not fire that bloke who very politely mentioned that women and men think differently. I think a lot of people realized there and then that if they wanted to keep their jobs…

Why would any employee believe that "honest feedback" was safe after James Demore?

Exactly.

I don't know how they can get there. But if they could somehow manage to restore trust they wouldn't need to approach the weirdest/craziest part of the internet to learn that their image generation was awful.

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

#930

Post by imetatroll »

prepend wrote: post #730
duxup wrote: post #694

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

It isn't "fair" when it is a misrepresentation of what the user asks for.
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