
Artificial Intelligence Has a ‘Sea of Dudes’ Problem - carlosgg
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-23/artificial-intelligence-has-a-sea-of-dudes-problem
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PaulHoule
Hilarious. The nyt accused AI researchers of being white, which is
preposterous. (Maybe they aren't black but many are Asian)

Now it is true they trend male. Particularly true if they are not white.

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programminggeek
The bias against men in this article is staggering.

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yoo1I
There is a bias in AI systems that stems from them being written almost mostly
by (white) men.

That just pointing this out, yields this knee-jerk reaction yours is very sad.

There is a an opportunity here to make a global society where computers can
serve all of humanity in specific needs of everyone instead of just their
creators. Let's not squander it.

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exstudent2
It's not just pointing it out. "Sea of dudes"? How is that an appropriate and
professional way to frame the data?

Swap that out with anything else and you can immediately see the problem. How
does "Fashion has a sea of chicks problem" sound?

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pnutjam
Fashion has a lot of men involved.

They're trying to be edgy. It's not like they said it's a sausage fest.

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qbrass
Give it some time, and the random adjective generator that keeps reposting
this article will come up with it.

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pnutjam
Sorry to see these thin skinned boys preventing discussion of a legitimate
problem.

There's nothing prejudicial about noting a deficiency or proposing a more
fully rounded environment.

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exstudent2
How about you start with not assuming everyone who disagrees with you is male.
Then not call grown men "boys". It's super offensive and doesn't help the
point you're trying to make.

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visarga
The term 'dude' is unisex and can be used to refer to either of the two
genders.

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andrewfromx
moving my brilliant comment from dup thread: Really gets to the nature of what
we mean by the term "intellgence". It's _gender_ specific. A lot of times in
AI you'll hear people talk about a no gender robot thinking for itself. But we
have no examples of genderless intellegent humans. intellgence implies gender.

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andrewfromx
and there was a great reply too: "Intelligence is the ability to extract
meaning from a mass of input -- but yeah, what makes it meaningful? By
definition, it has to be meaningful to a person in some way. While everyone
wants good medical data and scientific breakthroughs...yeah, it seems like
sooner or later you're going to reach a question which men and women view
differently." how can I just move this thread over here?

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malux85
I dont understand - what does a persons sex have to do with it?

I hadn't even noticed, probably because I'm not looking

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tclover
No words.

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jbmorgado
This PC thing that keeps blaming White Men for everything is hilarious.

Maybe there are not data sets made by woman cause woman don't take their time
to contribute to them? But of course that's men fault... white men fault as
usual.

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yoo1I
Why with the thin skin ? This particular problem isn't about "men's fault",
it's primarily about bias.

To make a very blunt argument: If you were to write _an AI_ to reason about
menstruation, and let a group of women train it then you would get a
particularity different outcome than if a group of only men did it.

This argument extends to many other topics on different levels of subtlety.

... there are of course complex reasons why "women don't take their time to
contribute", and to just dismiss that as "This PC thing" is a little short-
sighted.

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VLM
Isn't that an extremely sexist view?

Hitler used to talk a lot about "Jewish physics" vs "Aryan physics" as if
there's a difference.

I'm just surprised to see extremist talk like that on HN.

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yoo1I
Sure, why not? Using "You're just like HITLER!" always seems like a sound
argument.

> I'm just surprised to see extremist talk like that on HN.

Except you are the extremist here. If your take-away from me saying that women
and men have different experiences about life on this planet is that it's just
like what HITLER! said, your argument lacks nuance.

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WayneBro
I wonder if this woman thinks we have a "sea of chicks" problem in elementary
education since mostly women are training our _actual_ intelligence.

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exstudent2
So the people who created the field are nothing more than "a sea of dudes".
What an ignorant and sexist viewpoint. Bloomberg and Microsoft should be
ashamed.

We need to stop being ok with racism and sexism against _anyone_. White males
included.

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yoo1I
And as part of that fight against racism and sexism we need to make sure that
the AI's we create aren't biased from being created and trained mostly by one
particular subset, the referenced "sea of dudes", because that's a pretty good
way to perpetuate racism and sexism _by our software_.

I don't see what's so hard about that. And really, as a dude, to be offended
because she said "sea of dudes" to mean that the field, which will probably
impact the global society in a huge way, is dominated by men, and not as you
imply diminish their contribution, is pretty thin skinned.

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exstudent2
You can't fight sexism and racism by being sexist and racist. It's also not
sexist or racist to use the data provided by participants.

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yoo1I
Except there is no sexism or racism against white men (which I am assuming you
mean, please correct me if I am wrong) to be found in this article.

Sexism or racism are societally useful concepts if you include the power
dynamics. Without them all that's left is that someone wasn't very nice to
you, which really as a grown up you should be able to deal with.

The power dynamic here is that the _software of future_ is created by a
majority of white men, who, overall, were the first and last group who were
and remain globally in charge.

So to say "uff so many men!" in an office 75% full of white men, is completely
different than saying "uff so many black women!" in that same office. Not
necessarily because of the numerical, but because of the powerbalance.

To point that out, does in no way mean that each individual man in that office
is a terribly racist sexist! It just means that there are biases in the whole
setup.

In the same vein it's not "sexist or racist to use the data provided by the
participants",but if you're not careful and you let the biases in your reading
of the data, that were shaped by your experience as a human on this planet,
affect the way your AI is trained (and it's almost impossible to be unbiased
in that sense), then the _outcome_ of what you're trying to do might well be.

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prodigal_erik
You would never think to say "uff so many right-handed people!" because being
right-handed doesn't makes you pre-judge them as flawed and less capable.

