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I wrote a post about de-biasing efforts in machine learning, which got a bit long, so I decided to turn it into an article instead. It's about how corporate anti-bias solutions are mostly only designed to cover their asses, and does nothing to solve the larger (actually important) issue.
(As an aside: does it still count as a "bare link" if I point to my own content, just hosted elsewhere?)
Well yes corporations just want to cover their asses from criticism, but the worst is that the criticism is so powerful that the discussion ends up shallow. I'm so annoyed that we had a cancellation of a language model that produced rap lyrics. FN Meka had a record contract which was later torn up because it was a "appropriator" using words reserved for someone with "lived experiences". It was just reported on and everyone glossed it over and forgot about. I'm like what did just happen? They cancelled a pile of math... There are slightly more deeper philosophical problems with the way it was cancelled. It cuts directly into postmodernism and its issues with treating the inauthentic the same as the authentic. Because at the end of the day the language model is just a mirror of the language used by those with the "lived experiences" and should be understood as such. https://youtube.com/watch?v=vYmfnfljvnM
Clearly they didn't. They "canceled" actions of people for (to them) socially relevant reasons.
This kind of "they canceled math" reminds me when pirates said that "a number was banned", meaning that the sharing of an encryption key was banned (my point is independent of agreeing with that ban), or "I just used words" or "I just moved a mouse and clicked on things". Or saying "it's just pixels" if you were caught with CP.
(Another somewhat similar trick is "no person is illegal", making it seem as if someone who uses the phrase "illegal immigrant" meant that the person themselves is illegal besides being an immigrant, when clearly it means a person who immigrates illegally. The person isn't illegal, but their actions are. Similarly here, it's not the math that is canceled but an action performed through math.)
It's an annoying rhetorical tool. It's not "just" that, and the fuss isn't about that "just" part but the consequences, the context, the intent, the usage, etc. Everything is, at the end of the day, "just" something. A bomb is just some chemicals, just some molecules. Everything is just a bunch of quarks and electrons and so you can make any action sound absurd.
You are annoyed at the rhetoric of my attempt of being succinct. So let me expand on that. Yes they "cancelled" actions of a group of people that own and operate a language model that was trained on existing rap lyrics. My statement was reduction on that. The thing that I'm trying to convey here is that the discussion with the ethics around input and output AI models in general is very shallow. The discussions revolve around harm caused by unpredictable output which have no actual consequence other than making someone feel bad over a generated content. Image or lyric...
The ethics discussion should be deeper than social panics du jour. It shouldn't be ethical for example to use machine learning algorithms to nudge behavior of people. e.g. presenting alcohol ads to people that has a signal in their online behavior that they are prone to become alcoholics. The other example which I saw recently on a friends youtube, ads for investment scams when he searches for how to invest in stocks(since he most likely don't have requisite knowledge to sniff out scams). Those AI applications have the potential to ruin someones life as opposed to n-word by algorithm or violent nightmare fuel from an AI painter.
Sure, this is a much better argument because now you have to address the substance of who (or what, if an AI isn't a who) is allowed to utter the n-word and whether non-blacks can utter it indirectly through the operation of AI systems or whether it causes "harm" or not.
Yes and what is the difference between an AI and CD recording? Predictability? Determinism? Am I allowed as a non-black operate a CD-player with rap album in it? To sample it and create a new piece of art?
All these questions because some people decided to equate the copy with the original. AI just mimics reality but it isn’t reality.
Try blasting the song "Nigga Nigga Nigga" as a white guy next to some wokes. I guess they'd disapprove.
(also CDs are grandfathered in, their analog predecessors were made much earlier than the current progressive morals around race).
What happens if the Spotify algorithm recommends and blasts a song with "Nigga Nigga Nigga" next to some wokes? Is that racist? Do I have an argument that "the algorithm" did it?
I could guess that if a spotify recommendation played "Gary Barts Ntu Troop - Uhuru Sasa" and "Gil Scott Heron - The revolution will not be televised" it would be deemed as appropriation.
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