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AI models still racist, even with more balanced training

21 points| rntn | 3 years ago |theregister.com | reply

26 comments

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[+] tibbydudeza|3 years ago|reply
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.

[+] notRobot|3 years ago|reply
Relevant article (and podcast episode):

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.

[+] ComradePhil|3 years ago|reply
> but their subconscious bias of being white slipped in when designing it

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.

[+] decremental|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] ZeroGravitas|3 years ago|reply
"more" being the key word in that headline. Since the researchers believe there are several potential disparities remaining in the process to be improved.
[+] emteycz|3 years ago|reply
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".
[+] yur3i__|3 years ago|reply
"Racially biased" works, racist just gets more clicks
[+] ZeroGravitas|3 years ago|reply
I don't think AI is alive.

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.

[+] CrispinS|3 years ago|reply
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?

[+] baisq|3 years ago|reply

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[+] paulryanrogers|3 years ago|reply
In what sense? Because on its face this seems so reductionist as to be harmful.