

Can you sue a racist AI? - chapulin
http://fusion.net/story/160196/the-google-photos-gorilla-fail-wont-be-the-last-time-ais-offend-us/

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paulhauggis
"When the news surfaced on Twitter, a Google engineer almost immediately
tweeted an apology"

The AI is not 'racist'. It used data and statistics and based on this data,
mis-categorized these pictures.

I wish there were more people (and companies) standing up to this political-
correct bullshit instead of bowing down to it and running scared in the corner
because they are afraid they will be fired or have their careers ruined.

Nobody has the right to not be offended.

~~~
rmxt
What do you think the skin tone of the people that came up with the AI is? Can
you say with a straight face that this has 0 influence on how they initially
calibrated the models? I would imagine that they tried their best to have the
algorithm learn equally well across all skin tones...but my impression is that
as a gut reaction, people generally envision an unknown person as someone of
their own race.

Even though the association between blackness and great apes is a longstanding
racist trope, I don't think anyone should be suing anyone over something like
this. Instead of getting on your soap box though, you could at least
acknowledge that there are increasingly meaningful decisions being made by
algorithms that may or may not be monitored by human discretion. What happens
when someone does actually get physically hurt, or experiences financial
misfortune, due to shoddy programming? That's what the article is getting at
-- you merely fell for the clickbait.

Nobody has the right to not be offended... but certain relationships between
users and companies can engender certain obligations and duties between one or
the other. _That 's_ the point of this article, and image connotations that
stir up bad feelings are merely the latest topic to bring the subject to
light.

P.S.: What exactly is "bullshit" about people expressing their dismay about
associating blackness with monkeys? Just like people don't have a right to
"not be offended," those same people have a right to voice their displeasure
at the company and people that promote these shitty images. The fact that
you're trying to silence their response makes you no better than those that
wish to sue Google for something like this.

~~~
paulhauggis
"What do you think the skin tone of the people that came up with the AI is?
Can you say with a straight face that this has 0 influence on how they
initially calibrated the models?"

Are you really being serious right now? You can't really see how AI could make
the mistake that it made?

"What happens when someone does actually get physically hurt, or experiences
financial misfortune, due to shoddy programming?"

This has nothing to do with the topic at hand. Companies already experience
financial misfortune from AI through mistakes made through algorithmic
trading.

Why are we going as far as AI? It's not here yet. What about when people
spread lies online and it ruins a career or when sites like Wikileaks spreads
undercover operative positions and someone gets killed by a foreign
government?? There are no consequences.

"those same people have a right to voice their displeasure at the company and
people that promote these shitty images. The fact that you're trying to
silence their response makes you no better than those that wish to sue Google
for something like this"

It only goes one way, however. This is the problem. For example, people have
been fired for expressing their dislike of gay marriage on Facebook (which I
don't consider homophobia). However, I don't see anyone getting fired for
spreading their dislike of religions or religious people (another protected
class) which I see plastered all over social media. There are countless
examples of this and it's making our society a pretty scary place.

This should be the real discussion here: Why are some people free to bully,
torment, and slander another class of people with virtually no repercussions?

~~~
rmxt
I can most definitely see how the AI made the mistake. My point is that it
might be possible that the human creators of those programs might have had an
unwitting role that lead to that mistake.

What is "slanderous" about stating the truth regarding someone's opinion?
People are free to criticize those who oppose gay marriage... no one is free
from public backlash to backwards opinions.

~~~
paulhauggis
"People are free to criticize those who oppose gay marriage"

Everyone should have the freedom to their opinion. However, if I say I don't
like gay marriage..I have a really good possibility of getting fired from my
job and being called "homophobic". I've even heard that even stating this
opinion is a form of discrimination. Let's be clear here, I'm not talking
about bullying people that are gay or attacking them personally.

Along those same lines, I've seen horrible things being said about anyone
religious. Horrible and bigoted shit. Yet, there is no outcry. Nobody is
getting fired for essentially doing the same thing to another group of human
beings.

~~~
rmxt
Saying you "don't like gay marriage" is a bit like someone in 1950s America
saying they "don't like interracial marriage." I don't think that someone
should get fired from their job for believing that (because I wouldn't wish
that on many people), but it seems that it would be hard for someone to
reconcile those beliefs with fair and positive treatment of all people in
their work-world. How can you feel that someone shouldn't be entitled to get
civilly married while still fully respecting them as a person?

Do you have any stories or links for things about people saying "horrible and
bigoted shit" about Christians or some other majority religion and then _not_
getting ridiculed/lambasted by some other portion of the population, or not
being criminally charged? Wherever I see atheist billboard controversy, I see
Christian backlash. Whenever I see Christian billboard controversy, I see
agostic/atheist backlash. My general perception is that this is how free
speech is supposed to work.

Free speech that infringes (or encourages infringement of) on the rights of
others to peaceably live their lives with dignity(i.e., for a gay couple to
get married) is where I imagine the line between harassment and free speech
occurs. This is a critical difference: as demonstrated by recent events
(Charleston, etc.), there are terrible people that will take the "bigoted
shit" to an extreme and cause physical harm. However, I've _never_ seen an
instance of American on American crime where "bigoted shit" led to material
harm against a Christian, without the wheels of justice being spun full blast
in pursuit. The same cannot be said for historically discriminated
populations, e.g. gay people until this generation, black people until maybe
the generation before that, and Irish and Italians in the 19th century, for
example.

Apologizing for a picture that has "gorilla" next to a black person's face
isn't about persecution, or gay people, or about any other class of people (as
you've somehow made this conversation about); it's about realizing that people
in the past were shitty, and we can do better than that.

