Posted on 07/23/2015 2:50:11 PM PDT by artichokegrower
All Jacky Alciné wanted from Google Photos was a space to upload snapshots from his life. But a few weeks ago, what he got from the photo-sharing service was racist insults and a smattering of stories in the national press after photos of him and a female friend were labeled “gorillas” instead of humans.
“That has to be wrong,” thought Alciné, who is black, as he shuffled through his library of photos, only to discover that dozens of other pictures were also labeled “gorilla.” “It’s unexcusable,” said the 22-year-old Brooklyn Web developer. “There’s no reason why this should happen.”
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
“The problem is likely twofold, experts say. Not enough photos of African Americans were fed into the program that it could recognize a black person. And there probably weren’t enough black people involved in testing the program to flag the issue before it was released.”
I think this is a factual statement.
It would NOT be reasonable to assume that Google’s hiring practices discriminate against blacks. More than likely they favor minority candidates. However, they may need more minority applicants if their goal is racial diversity.
The problem is endemic. When Asian families push their children to excel in math, science, and technology, they get the desired results. When black children grow up in a disproportionate number of broken homes, are surrounded by drug abuse, gang violence, and generally lack exemplary role models, they will often fail to achieve their potential as future job candidates.
The bottom line though is that Google developers did have egg on their faces for this. They should be embarrassed that such a flaw was not caught in testing. Or at least put a disclaimer clearly stating that people WILL be misidentified in sometimes humorous or sometimes embarrassing ways, but that is not intentional and is simply part of the growing pains of AI.
“How tech’s lack of diversity leads to racist software”
Indeed. “Ebonics” is STILL not included amongst the 327 languages supported by Microsoft software, and even worse, the majority of text pages use BLACK letters against a WHITE background, thus allowing WHITE to greatly dominate the amount of BLACK on almost every computer screen on Earth.
Describe it to her as the modern day Library of Alexandria, with other things thrown in.
Anything you want to know that has been discovered is there.
Think of a city around the world. Mostly likely you’ll find pictures and intimate details, history...
Once the initial intimidation is over, I think anyone could enjoy it.
The irony in all of this is that the programer is probably from India working here on an H-1B visa. The white programer who would have been more sensitive to all of this was fired years ago.
Feeewings! Nothing more than FEEEWINGS!
The coders were probably Indians.
Clearly you are just exercising your White Privilege to say such a racist thing. If blacks, other minorities, and SJWs say it is racist, it is RACIST, who cares about the underlying reality!?
You racist, you.
/s, just to make it obvious.
There are no words to describe how utterly sick I am of their racialist mewling.
Hey Windy, just shoot yourself.
+10
LOL!
Never mind all dat shiz. When it time to eat?
Software cannot be racist.
Racist software? What a concept...
only matter of time before getting a tan is RACIST...
and applying makeup is going black face...
Are you freak’n kidding me!
The idiots are breading like cockroaches. How is this possible when they abort all their children.
Liberalism is a cancer.
She found your words inspiring, but the inertial force is strong with that one. We'll see.
Well good luck. Her life has been happy without the internet, but I do think there are good things there.
Course some not so good stuff too.
Take care.
1. The team has thousands upon thousands of stock photos *that have been tagged* with topics. Gorillas are tagged as gorillas. Planes are tagged as planes, but also maybe “sky” and “clouds.”
Here's how the software really REALLY works. It looks at words associated with pictures on the net. How many people all over the Internet do you think caption photos of black people with phrases containing the words "gorilla", "monkey", and "chimp"?
For an example, do a google image search on the phrase "chimp out".
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