Google to pause Gemini image generation of people after issues • Hacker News Board

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

#981

Post by proxyon » Sat, Feb 24, 2024, 2:56 AM UTC

numpad0 wrote: post #778

sotasota wrote: post #759

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you ever wondered what it was like to live during the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, well, we are living in the Western version of that right now. You don't speak out during the revolution for fear of being ostracized, fired, and forced into a struggle session where your character and reputation is publicly destroyed to send a clear message to everyone else. Shut Up Or Else. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go…

I'd put blame on App Store policy and its highly effective enforcement through iOS. Apple did not even aimed to be a neutral third party but was always an opinionated censor. The world shouldn't have given it power, and these types of powers needs to be removed ASAP.

This is a very good point and prescient. Apple, Visa/MC/Amex/Discover, Google Play Store, and even internet backbones are extreme monopolies and now that corporate America has been seeded with social justice crusaders they are abusing their power. Most recently the people who own the pipes of the internet as a utility have been waging war on websites like kiwifarms and straight up banning it off of the clearnet for being "transphobic." This is dark stuff.

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

#982

Post by faeriechangling » Sat, Feb 24, 2024, 3:41 AM UTC

gnicholas wrote: post #723

pram wrote: post #711

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I can shrug off Google's racism if it lets me disable it. If I can't use their products without mandatory racism than lol no.

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

#983

Post by faeriechangling » Sat, Feb 24, 2024, 3:54 AM UTC

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #979

mort96 wrote: post #674

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe this to be a symptom of a much, much deeper problem than "DEI gone too far". I'm sure that without whatever systems is preventing Gemini from producing pictures of white people, it would be extremely biased towards generating pictures of white people, presumably due to an incredibly biased training data set. I don't remember which one, but there was some image generation AI which was caught pretty much just…

> I'm sure that without whatever systems is preventing Gemini from producing pictures of white people, it would be extremely biased towards generating pictures of white people, presumably due to an incredibly biased training data set. I think the fundamental problem, though, is saying a training set is "incredibly biased" has come to mean two different things, and the way Google is trying to "fix" things shows essent…

>Google might have good intentions

Don't be evil

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

#984

Post by faeriechangling » Sat, Feb 24, 2024, 3:56 AM UTC

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #969

janalsncm wrote: post #844

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here’s a simpler explanation. Google is getting their butt kicked by OpenAI and rushed out an imperfect product. This is one of probably 50 known issues with Gemini but it got enough attention that they had to step in and disable a part of the product.

That's a simpler explanation but one that I think misses the point completely. A huge reason "Google is getting their butt kicked by OpenAI" in the first place is because they had lots of people internally who acted as nothing but "vetoers", demanding the pace of AI slow down less it accidentally show too many white people. And this outcome is wholly unsurprising given that Google's second most important AI principle…

Well they succeeded at their second principle, by using "fair" bias.

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

#985

Post by faeriechangling » Sat, Feb 24, 2024, 3:59 AM UTC

MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #217

MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" a friend at google said he knew gemini was this bad...but couldn't say anything until today (he DMs me every few days). lots of ppl in google knew. but no one really forced the issue obv and said what needed to be said google is broken " Razib Khan, https://twitter.com/razibkhan/status/1760545472681267521

" 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

Must be why, despite the fact that I can recognise OpenAI's product does have clear biases against affluent groups, it seems well intentioned and proportionate. It's clear the internet is bias not just towards the data of the affluent, but also the viewpoints and prejudices, so a reasonable person can recognise there is some unfairness and a bit of a problem. Also that any solution to this problem will be imperfect.

Whereas with Google, I just have to imagine they let some bigot go wild, and everybody was afraid to say anything about how fucking bad the product was due to the optics, so nothing kept them in check.

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

#986

Post by morgtheborg » Sat, Feb 24, 2024, 8:47 AM UTC

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…

I can see why someone would be like wtf if their "viking" input produced less than 90% white people results, but there should be an equal wtf if "CEO" produced 90% men.

One is a historical fact that is never going to change, the other is a job in society where the demographics can and will change --- at least partially as our expectations of what "normal" looks like for that role are updated. By perpetuating the current (or historical) norm for a given role the biases of what person we naturally consider appropriate for that role remain unchallenged.

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

#987

Post by thinkingemote » Sat, Feb 24, 2024, 8:55 AM UTC

morgtheborg wrote: post #986

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…

I can see why someone would be like wtf if their "viking" input produced less than 90% white people results, but there should be an equal wtf if "CEO" produced 90% men. One is a historical fact that is never going to change, the other is a job in society where the demographics can and will change --- at least partially as our expectations of what "normal" looks like for that role are updated. By perpetuating the curr…

The debate then is should an AI lie about reality if we tell it to? (Even and particularly when the lie is a good thing)

I think most people on earth would say yes. It's that what it should say is up for debate.

That all AI will lie is probably inevitable because they are made by humans.

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

#988

Post by MrBuddyCasino » Sat, Feb 24, 2024, 10:12 AM UTC

janalsncm wrote: post #844

MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" a friend at google said he knew gemini was this bad...but couldn't say anything until today (he DMs me every few days). lots of ppl in google knew. but no one really forced the issue obv and said what needed to be said google is broken " Razib Khan, https://twitter.com/razibkhan/status/1760545472681267521

Here’s a simpler explanation. Google is getting their butt kicked by OpenAI and rushed out an imperfect product. This is one of probably 50 known issues with Gemini but it got enough attention that they had to step in and disable a part of the product.

It was certainly not some random issue that popped up, they specifically designed it that way: https://x.com/jonst0kes/status/1761190093669437559

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

#989

Post by christophilus » Sat, Feb 24, 2024, 2:32 PM UTC

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…

> put a black chick in it and make her lame and gay

TIL South Park is still a thing. I haven’t watched South Park in years, but that quote made me laugh out loud. Sounds like they haven’t changed one bit.

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

#990

Post by Viliam1234 » Sat, Feb 24, 2024, 4:48 PM UTC

sotasota wrote: post #759

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…

If you ever wondered what it was like to live during the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, well, we are living in the Western version of that right now. You don't speak out during the revolution for fear of being ostracized, fired, and forced into a struggle session where your character and reputation is publicly destroyed to send a clear message to everyone else. Shut Up Or Else. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go…

I have read the Wikipedia article again, and I am pleasantly surprised how more balanced it is now compared to the older versions.

For example, only half a year after the memo, some brave anonymous soul added the information that the version in Gizmodo (which most people have read, because almost everyone referred to it) was actually not the original one, and had sources removed (which probably contributed to the impression of many readers that there was no scientific support for the ideas mentioned).

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Google%27s_Ideolo...