I can't understand how people can keep shouting "it's not AI, it's not really thinking" and then go and label a bunch of numerical weights to be "racist".
The AI is racially biased. The community that doesn't see racial bias in AI as a problem and only ever mocks and ridicules the premise because they can't take it seriously is racist.
Or, the community knows that models will always have biases, and so the community makes its software work around that limitation by other means than modifying the model, because that might not be possible at all.
On the other hand I'd be happy calling, laws, customs, organizations, religious beliefs, and various other things and conclusions drawn from statistics 'racist' without them being living, thinking beings.
I see comments like this all the time on these sorts of articles, and I have two criticisms:
First, although "AI exhibits racial bias due to biased training data" is far more accurate, I think it's perfectly acceptable to condense that to "AI is racist". Especially in the headline of an article that goes on to explain the issue in detail.
Second, I would say that even racist humans are racist because of bad training data, so if we're fine calling people racist, why not AI?
It reminds me of the early Kodak 35mm film which worked great if you were white but they were horrible when using them with darker skinned people.
It took a complaint by furniture and chocolate makers that the photos of their products were shit before Kodak fixed it.
So were the chemists racist ???.
Obviously not but their subconscious bias of being white slipped in when designing it - it is the same as any algorithm or technology designed by a non diverse team.
> Each Kodak printer needed to be calibrated and standardized before photos were printed on it. And so the printers came with something called a “Shirley Card,” which was a color reference card created by Kodak in the 1950s.
Shirley was a white woman, and so the cameras used to be calibrated to white skin tones, and performed poorly with darker skin tones.
They did not think of it even though the US has a significant population of African Americans - they moved in social circles or lived in areas where black people simply did not feature in their life.
In a capitalist economy, if there's a group with less money the system is explicitly designed to discriminate against them.
Why would you optimise your product for people who can't afford it?
> The typical black family had almost no wealth in 1968 ($2,467; data refer to 1963). Today, that figure is about six times larger ($17,409), but it is still not that far from zero when you consider that families typically draw on their wealth for larger expenses, such as meeting basic needs over the course of retirement, paying for their children’s college education, putting a down payment on a house, or coping with a job loss or medical crisis.
> Over the same period, the wealth of the typical white family almost tripled, from a much higher initial level. In 2016, the median African American family had only 10.2 percent of the wealth of the median white family ($17,409 versus $171,000).8
I don't see why a "capitalist economy" participant would spend a single cent on discrimination of not-customers. Seems to me they would just not care about them, instead of actively discriminating, and they wouldn't try to stop them from being new customers too.
They don't need to actively discriminate, that was my point, the invisible hand does it, just like it turns their selfish desire for money into goods and services for the rich.
Sell a man a fish and he'll be fed for a day, teach a man to fish and you'll never get rich selling fish to the masses.
Though, ideally if you could make the fish addictive, and if it kills them then only slowly and in a way that needs statistics to be tied back to your product, that's the ideal.
Which is where the unconscious bias comes from. It didn't mean researchers were all KKK members, just that they internalized the idea that black people weren't worth considering as they were all poor second class citizens anyways, so who would ever bother taking a picture of them? But this inequality was the result of purposeful economic discrimination by the faction of people that were indeed part of the KKK
To answer your question, though, you would want your camera to work for dark skin in case your white customers want to photograph an African American. I see no reason why that should be disallowed even in a racist society. But again, that was an oversight as they didn't even consider that anyone might want to do that
That is exactly what he said. The OP seem to be attempting to attribute racial contempt when the simplest explination is they just did not think of it.
Even when the models are trained on data that should coax the outcome they want to see they're still getting undesirable results. Reality is simply refusing to bend to their will. I wonder at what point they either just fudge it or give up.
"more" being the key word in that headline. Since the researchers believe there are several potential disparities remaining in the process to be improved.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 79.8 ms ] threadOn the other hand I'd be happy calling, laws, customs, organizations, religious beliefs, and various other things and conclusions drawn from statistics 'racist' without them being living, thinking beings.
First, although "AI exhibits racial bias due to biased training data" is far more accurate, I think it's perfectly acceptable to condense that to "AI is racist". Especially in the headline of an article that goes on to explain the issue in detail.
Second, I would say that even racist humans are racist because of bad training data, so if we're fine calling people racist, why not AI?
The fact they join the legions of mentally ill and toxic ex-Googlers and Twitter people doesn't say much.
The Register is irreverent, don't read them literally.
It took a complaint by furniture and chocolate makers that the photos of their products were shit before Kodak fixed it.
So were the chemists racist ???.
Obviously not but their subconscious bias of being white slipped in when designing it - it is the same as any algorithm or technology designed by a non diverse team.
https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/shirley-cards/
> Each Kodak printer needed to be calibrated and standardized before photos were printed on it. And so the printers came with something called a “Shirley Card,” which was a color reference card created by Kodak in the 1950s.
Shirley was a white woman, and so the cameras used to be calibrated to white skin tones, and performed poorly with darker skin tones.
Or they didn't have dark skinned people around them to test it on... and didn't think about why it would not work on darker skins.
By saying "subconscious bias" you're implying that deep down they didn't want it to work for dark skinned people.
They did not think of it even though the US has a significant population of African Americans - they moved in social circles or lived in areas where black people simply did not feature in their life.
Out of sight - out of mind.
Why would you optimise your product for people who can't afford it?
> The typical black family had almost no wealth in 1968 ($2,467; data refer to 1963). Today, that figure is about six times larger ($17,409), but it is still not that far from zero when you consider that families typically draw on their wealth for larger expenses, such as meeting basic needs over the course of retirement, paying for their children’s college education, putting a down payment on a house, or coping with a job loss or medical crisis.
> Over the same period, the wealth of the typical white family almost tripled, from a much higher initial level. In 2016, the median African American family had only 10.2 percent of the wealth of the median white family ($17,409 versus $171,000).8
They don't need to actively discriminate, that was my point, the invisible hand does it, just like it turns their selfish desire for money into goods and services for the rich.
Though, ideally if you could make the fish addictive, and if it kills them then only slowly and in a way that needs statistics to be tied back to your product, that's the ideal.
To answer your question, though, you would want your camera to work for dark skin in case your white customers want to photograph an African American. I see no reason why that should be disallowed even in a racist society. But again, that was an oversight as they didn't even consider that anyone might want to do that
I usually use 'incompetence' or 'ignorance' rather than 'stupidity'.