AI service gives Wikipedians ‘X-ray specs’ to see through bad edits

I can't help but wonder if this will have the side-effect that vandalism will become a more subtle subversion of the pages (or maybe there's already a number of people who do just that and this will thin out the field to make them more obvious)

This is very peculiar. New tool is introduced, which joins a set of existing tools (bots) which address the same problem. Some comparison of quality and robustness is expected.

Instead author gives us some insight into his/hers source of inspiration:

> A feminist inspiration

> “Please exercise extreme caution to avoid encoding racism or other biases into an AI scheme.” > Wnt (from The Signpost)

And few lines below we have this gem:

> While artificial intelligence may prove essential for solving problems at Wikipedia’s scale, algorithms that replicate subjective judgements can also dehumanize and subjugate people and obfuscate inherent biases.

Essence of not being sexist or racist is not to evaluate people basing on sex or race! Author instead accents that we should totally pay attention to subjective factors (such as sex or race) instead of objective factors (such as quality of edit).

And let me guess whos edits will be targeted with extra scrutiny.. Edits of people who don't buy feminist agenda!

(Disclosure, I'm egalitarian and MRA; While I fully support women rights, I just believe that modern feminism does not have anything to do with equal rights for anyone. This post nicely fall into this pattern.)

I agree the "feminist inspiration" part is a confusing non-sequitur. I think you're missing what they're trying to say, though. I interpreted that section as "we're making our algorithms and data open so that everyone can be sure they aren't implicitly racist or sexist".

Suppose, for example, that a user repeatedly rejected edits for anyone with a noticeably feminine username. Wikimedia wants to be sure that their algorithms don't take this person's rejects to be valid data. Again, they don't really say how they'll do this, which makes the whole section rather confusing.

It's a valid concern, just presented awkwardly.

Attempting to have processes that aren't implicity racist or sexist is a feminist practice?! If that doesn't qualify as an implicitly sexist statement I wouldn't know what would.

As referenced in the article, what is "good" and "bad" is dependent on perspective.

Wikipedia has several perspectives just within the colloquial / perceived mission. Is it for academic integrity? For common education? For the rich and powerful? For the everyman? To record as much as possible? To cull the best knowledge from the stream?

Is it for progressive ideals, which may be opposed by the common majority? Or does it reflect a conservative viewpoint, adopting only what has proven to coalesce in society?

For who's society? What about two sides of a war? Or two equally opposing economic interests (entrenched oil vs alternative energy)?

"good" or "bad" isn't a number...