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Google Apologises For Photos App's Racist Blunder
Mark Wilson writes: Google has issued an apology after the automatic tagging feature of its Photos apps labeled a black couple as "gorillas". This is not the first time an algorithm has been found to have caused racial upset. Earlier in the year Flickr came under fire after its system tagged images of concentration camps as sports venues and black people as apes. The company was criticized on social networks after a New York software developer questioned the efficacy of Google's algorithm. Accused of racism, Google said that it was "appalled" by what had happened, branding it as "100% not OK".
Anything that's politically incorrect will be blacklisted from being labeled as a result. No more gorrillas or any other of a million and one potentially offensive labels!
Although gorillas might be labeled as people, which would actually make some SJWs happy.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
Alogorithms aren't racist, and teaching a computer to visually recognize objects is hard. Move along.
So, do really pale "white" people get mis-labeled as ghosts? Inquiring minds are somewhat concerned because they are rather pale....
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
Why didn't they test it on all those black employees they have that clean the toilets and collect the trash?
It's impressive that it can even recognize and classify things as such. Great apes and humans share about 99% of our DNA, any 'alien' entity would classify us amongst the apes.
The fact that black people are black and thus have a closer resemblance to the generally 'darker' great apes is not racist because an algorithm that is not programmed to have biases cannot be racist. It's just peoples interpretation of the facts that makes things 'racist'. Superficially, black people and apes look mathematically more alike than white people and apes. If the thing was trained on albino apes (which do exist), white people would be considered apes AND NOBODY WOULD THINK IT WAS RACIST.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Google's algorithm also identified photos of some sunburnt Essex chavettes on the beach as Yorkshire pigs. A Google spokesperson said "no apology if necessary - it's an accurate assessment".
You are all cows. Cows say moo. MOOOOOOO! MOOOOOOOOO! Moo cow MOOOOOOO! Moo say the cows. YOU GORILLAS!!
Yonatan Zunger, Google’s chief architect of social: "Machine learning is hard" Now tell us more about them self-driving cars.
Software doesn't hate black people. Software doesn't dislike Islam. Software doesn't think kids these days need to pull their damned pants up and stop playing that crap music too loudly.
Apologizing for a program miscategorizing an image it has never seen before as somehow "racist" makes about as much sense as GE apologizing because my toaster looks like a frowny-face from just the right angle.
Yes, Virginia, we've taken this shit too far.
I'm sorry but I lol'd pretty hard when I first read this, but I would have laughed too if it said "Google has issued an apology after the automatic tagging feature of its Photos apps labeled a white couple as 'albino monkeys'.". Like mentioned elsewhere, it's an algorithm, but it is still none the less funny.
I do wonder if the programmers at google had to stop laughing before they could go in and fix the bug.
I wonder if a picture of me would be labeled as "albino gorilla"?
All I see is a bunch of meatbags...
or from Star Trek:TNG - Ugly bags of mostly water...
...the algorithm was also found to have labeled a photo of a data center as "the master race" and a photo of urban sprawl as a "viral infection."
And as Richard Dawkins has said, we ARE apes - all of us humans.
Photos App's Racist Blunder
Stupidest reification ever. Algorithms aren't people and don't have human attributes.
What's wrong with being classified as a rather violent but otherwise perfectly fine animal like an ape?
What about white men who risk being classified as Bill Gates, or Poettering? That would be really offensive.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
Ok, I'm sorry. I shouldn't laugh... this hard...
Let's see, we'll do this completely-innocent thing, which is hard, but helps society. Suddenly, hard thing does some harmless,amusing, not-entirely-predicted thing, and people whine about it. OMG, LET'S LEGITIMIZE THEIR STUPIDITY AS A VALID OPINION!
No, you're admitting fault here for something that is NOT YOUR FAULT. You're admitting bad behavior and bad decisions for something that was good behavior and good decision-making, but produced a bad outcome.
THIS IS WHY WE HAVE SHIT SCHOOL SYSTEMS!!! If we have 60% success rate and improve the school system by broad, visible measures to give a better education and improve to an 85% success rate, 15% OF PEOPLE WILL CRY THAT OUR NEW EDUCATION SYSTEM FUCKED OVER THEIR KIDS! Someone will point to all the failures, create a collage, and claim we're totally incompetent!
The appropriate response to bitchwhining about this non-issue is to tell people to stop fucking whining.
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there's no issue. just a hissy fit thrown by a guy who has heard this expression addressed at him/his friends in a negative manner in the past (understandable). i mean, just look at the faces the girl in those pictures is making... isn't gorilla the first thing you think of?
what's next? are we going to pretend a closeup of a bald patch doesn't look like a billiard ball? or that asians don't look like they're winking in photos? or that dwarves in funny hats don't remind us of garden gnomes? some people just want to get offended and there's nothing we can do about it. i'm surprised google responded to it.
So what the algorith prooperly recognized gorillas without fur
What next a hairy fat guy in a pool gets tagged as a walrus ? His girlfriend a whale ?
Oh the horror the machine was mean.
Google announce that it will change the tagging of Caucasians from 'cracker' to 'saltine'.
Silence is a state of mime.
"Ape" is a general language term that can be used by different people to specify quite different groups of creatures; it's more correct to say we're all hominids.
Before anyone else is offended, it's time to just ban google image search along with any youtube videos of the Dukes Of Hazard
That woman does look like a gorilla when she makes faces like that, can't blame the computer that automatically flagged you for that.
Modern app appers know this is acceptable because only apps can app apps, not Luddite software like Photoshop!
Apps!
It's part of the cult of PC (Political Correctness) to carry out self-flagellation as a method of atonement.
Life is not for the lazy.
The truth is that there are a ton of entitled idiots who believe they have the right to be offended, and gigaton of idiots who chose to oblige. That's why we don't have nice things anymore.
Black, simian, short dark hair, big lips. Ape.
Once again, reality gets labeled as racism.
Google "Patrick Ewing" (former NBA player) and tell me with a straight face that he doesn't look like a gorilla.
Wouldn't this be classified as "stereotyping", assuming an algorithm could be accused of even doing that?
Atonement for someone else being a whiny little bitch with nothing better to complain about *throws pencils*
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Should watch this video from Slavoj iek about political correctness. Man makes some pretty amazing points.
https://youtu.be/5dNbWGaaxWM
This is kind of like being hit in the arm by a baseball as you are walking by your neighbor's yard. It's probably no big deal, probably didn't hurt much and is unlikely to have caused permanent damage of any kind. But it's still respectful for your neighbor to apologize.
but helps society
Remember that Google gets money from this, primarily indirectly through advertising. Anything they do to help society also lines their wallets (which is pretty much the definition of how capitalism is supposed to work).
Don't fall into the trap of thinking Google's intentions are completely selfless. I'm beyond certain that they meant no harm, but considering they are getting something out of it, it would be very disrespectful for Google to brush it off.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
I'm not going to downplay the feeling of insult that the black couple experienced. There is a long history of racism against blacks, referring to them as apes and other things, with the intent of putting them down. In *this* case, it was an accident of a flawed algorithm, but there's some history here that makes that a hot button. For the sake of repairing the effects of racism of the past, we should be careful about how we use racial slurs, even accidentally.
That all being said, we're learning more and more about gorillas and other higher apes and how intelligent they are. We're closely related. To an alien from another planet, they may look at humans and other apes and not perceive much difference. To compare humans (in general) to apes (in general) isn't all that unreasonable. And some day, when all this racism shit is behind us, mistakes like what happened here might be merely amusing.
And to be extremely clear, I never said "Google was being racist", in any form or fashion at all. Let's nip that in the bud before someone argues against that straw man.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
Hm, so, you're saying if you wrote some software that has undesired, incorrect behavior that could easily be considered deeply insulting and someone told you about it or even-gasp-complained, you'd tell them to stop fucking whining. Oh, and insult anyone who thought an apology for your fuck-up is appropriate.
What a piece of work you are. Just the sort of person I'd want to work with or have designing products. I'm sure that when a bad outcome comes about, despite your behavior and decision-making clearly having been perfect, your response will be polite and professional.
When someone says, "Any fool can see
Lol, who am I kidding? This is Slashdot! If the OP isn't blatantly racist, it'll just be complaints about "PC whiners" and how algorithms can't be racist.
If the Google algorithm were used on a photo taken from an HP webcam, would it identify black people as invisible gorillas?
How is this not their fault? They clearly didn't test their software properly. Their software produced completely unacceptable results. They're right to apologize.
You're admitting bad behavior and bad decisions for something that was good behavior and good decision-making
Good decisions? Sorry, but releasing poorly tested software like this was obviously a bad decision. The bad outcomes were a direct result of their poor decision making.
Reasonable people take responsibility for their mistakes. They don't play pretend that "they did everything right" and that their failures were completely beyond their control.
You sound like the kid who demands a trophy for participation.
Required reading for internet skeptics
That's probably what the algorithm should return, just to avoid the possibility of offending anyone. Just label any photos of intelligent hirsute bipedal mammals as "Hominids" and call it a day.
Who knows, maybe the term will even catch on in the larger culture. "Machine learning" doesn't mean we can't learn from our machines.
You have a right to be offended, just as I have a right to not care.
If a dog sorted 10000 random pictures of people and animals while making only one or two awkward mistakes, would some people accuse the dog and its trainer for being racist. Yes. Yes they would. Even if the dog had mixed heritage and identified as a bi.
The only way to fix this once and for all: Tag all dark colored animals as people and sport venues as concentration camps. Its not that far off and then nobody needs get offended.
While there is the possibility of a genuine mistake by the algorithm (neural net?), could Google's algorithm have used services like Amazon Turk or other people labelling test/training images and could some of those have purposely labelled similar looking images like that? ie. could those labelling training images (eg. on Amazon Turk) have entered racially offensive terms for some images so the algorithm got trained with the incorrect, offensive terms?
They tweak the algorithm a bit. A week from now, a gorilla in a photo is tagged as 'black person'. Hilarity ensues.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Your right to be offended should end with you and not in punitive damages against the offensive individual or company.
Brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
This is kind of like being hit in the arm by a baseball as you are walking by your neighbor's yard.
It's kind of like being hit in the arm by a baseball THAT YOU IMAGINED, BUT WHICH DOESN'T ACTUALLY EXIST, as you are walking by your neighbor's yard.
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It's part of the cult of PC (Political Correctness) to carry out self-flagellation as a method of atonement.
Wait, so if I offend someone, I have to masturbate to atone?
And does all the previous self-flagellations give me time served so I can go off now, and spend everyday of my life offending people? I mean, I have done soooo much self-flagellation, I could walk into a NAACP meeting and just calling every African-American the 'N' word, every woman the 'C' word, and call every LGBT person the 'F' word.
Hm, so, you're saying if you wrote some software that has undesired, incorrect behavior that could easily be considered deeply insulting and someone told you about it or even-gasp-complained,
I would assume they're ridiculous. There's a difference between, "Oh, that's not quite right" and "OMG LOOK AT THIS HORRID! YOU MUST APOLERGIZE!" This is an unremarkable bug, not a sleight against anyone; an apology has no context, aside from patting someone on the head and placating them for being retards.
I'm sure that when a bad outcome comes about, despite your behavior and decision-making clearly having been perfect, your response will be polite and professional.
It might be, but it won't be an apology. When people start rallying and screaming on my Facebook page because 85% of people who watched Planet of the Apes also watched a Martin Luther King documentary and my auto-recommender paired "Martin Luther King: I Have a Dream" with "Planet of the Apes", I'm of course going to tell them they're all idiots.
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Wow, it's been a while since I saw a post with so much caps lock and exclamation points reach Score:5, Insightful...
Also, if Google failed to test the software properly for a group of people that may very well constitute millions of their users, then it is indeed Google's fault.
Woah bud, calm down. You weren't on this development team, were you?
It's called an "apology" - did you skip that day in kindergarten?
How is this not their fault? They clearly didn't test their software properly.
They may have tested it with hundreds or thousands of photos available on Picasa and not had it tag anyone "Canus Lupus Homus Sapius Chimpanzeeus", and then released it and in a week had someone take a picture at their wedding and get tagged "Chimpanzees". If your face is hard, deeply-wrinkled, and sporting a bolt-on pair of enormous, leathery ears, it might tag you as a monkey; I think I've encountered exactly one person in my life who looked like that, so it's not surprising it'd miss him in testing. Maybe they're not Aerosmith or
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I know it is hard for many to be rational and factual about some topics but, I have see the same categorisation choices made by young children on more than one occasion. We must be forgiving and understanding toward Google's AI and it's faux pas because it has not received the social conditioning necessary to discriminate politically and override it's simple visual correlation matches. We may also learn something about the deeper causes of xenophobia and politically incorrect behaviour in humans if we consider this topic rationally. We must come full circle from the rational (a match is a match), to the shared social illusion (political correctness) , and back to the rational view (understand the process) in order to understand the phenomena fully. And if Google tells you that the city of Cusco in Peru is gay, please just be wise enough to understand that the AI is young and still learning the complex and ambiguous ways of human society.
Hideki!
Did the photo show up as the first result when someone entered gorilla? Or someone had to click through the million pages to find the photo that offended them?
Richard Dawkins is a biologist. he would never say something so stupid. we are all hominids, and we are certainly not apes.
Yes it does, that is why we teach children to respect other people, no matter what they superficially resemble. Were you neglected as a child?
yeah, but, whether you like it or not, we are apes. We are hominids, we are apes, mammals, and finally, we are ground-dwelling fish.
I don't think its more correct to call as humans rather than apes, only more specific. OTOH, there is a whole lot of racism-related sensibilities on black people, and i cant blame them, just like we latinos, or asians or, for that matter, mostly everyone who's not perfectly caucasian.
How good does the cutting edge of object recognition need to be before it's not "poorly tested" anymore, especially when it's for a silly photo app and not a medical or military application? I never hear this type of thing from people who have actually had to solve these types of problems. The reality is that objects are going to be confused with other objects. Lots of them, once we're talking about hundreds of millions or billions of samples. Some cases will fail with great regularity and patterns. The unfortunate fact here was that the pattern happened to coincidentally have really embarrassing cultural connotations.
This is one of the things I don't miss about working in machine vision. We'd run our algorithm over a zillion images and it would correctly handle all of them save a small handful and that small handful would be filed as bugs. OK, maybe we'll be able to handle that small handful at the expense of a smaller handful next time around. But the pass/fail criteria for the tool is in its overall results, not in the outliers.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
There really is no issue to be downplayed. It's an image recognition algorithm, and it's going to make mistakes. Some hilarious, some embarrasing. But none of it intentional. Unfortunately there will always be people who will see malice in every mistake, and take the slightest affront to whine loudly. If the affront happens to involve any minority, you have a "winner" on your hands in terms of righteous indignation.
An apology is in order, nothing more. And only to the misidentified people, not to the black community at large, Seriously, if the system had identified a white couple as polar bears or Klan members, people would have just laughed.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
No, "Ape" is a very specific term used to specify members of Hominoidea. It is unfortunate many are ignorant of the meaning of the term and use it improperly to include monkeys.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Humans are apes - specifically, great apes. (aka Hominidae aka "hominids"). "Hominids" simply means human-like. It used to mean only humans, then it included other extinct human-like creatures and now it generally includes all hominidae. While "hominid" (or alternatively "great ape") is a more specific term, it is certainly NOT a more correct term, merely the Family of the SuperFamily.
One could say that humans are mammals and it would be no less correct. Humans are animals, chordates, mammals, primates, apes, and also great apes.
It's unfortunate that the Google facial recognition software was not aware that humans don't like being reminded that they are indeed very closely related to other great apes and could easily be confused with gorillas by a non-human intelligence. Our indignance at the notion we're apes that look a lot like gorillas is rather silly -- like zebras being offended at being miscategorized as ordinary horses.
Granted, I understand the racist implication that those flagged erroneously as gorillas are somehow less human than others. Thankfully, the computer isn't racist. It merely wasn't sophisticated enough to discern the difference given the input, the algorithm, and its training.
I'm impressed it figured out the object in the photo was a living thing and got the kingdom, phylum, class, order, superfamily, family and sub-family correct. If it had chosen chimp or bonobo, it would have been even closer.
Heck, check out this comparison of a gorilla baby and a human baby -- no one would have blinked an eye if the software said the gorilla was a human baby.
http://intentblog.com/wp-conte...
Another cute gorilla baby -- a bit older:
http://www.ctvnews.ca/polopoly...
I think we're looking for racism where there is none. Observing physical characteristics is not racism, and the fact of the matter is that some black people tend to have a more protruding jawline and fuller lips than one would see in a specific group of people who are caucasian. If you compare those two, very specific, physical characteristics with the great ape family, you see similarities.
Now, before anyone starts screaming about how I'm racist (too late), having one or two physical characteristics with another species, out of hundreds of physical characteristics, doesn't mean a damn thing when it comes to humans easily identifying people as not belonging to the same subgroup that shares those characteristics. It's the same reason why we don't think that someone with a striped mohawk is a zebra. We're able to take contextual clues and infer that that person is not, in fact, a zebra.
However, it DOES mean that an algorithm that has been largely trained on either insufficient or faulty data sets can make incorrect inferences based on the characteristics that it has been trained to recognize. If anybody is at fault here, it isn't the algorithm, but whatever engineer fed their image recognition an algorithm so woefully insufficient that it would confuse a human with an ape just based off of a physical characteristic or two out of any number of data points that would indicate, "Hey, this is obviously a human being".
> "Ape" is a general language term that can be used by different people to specify quite different groups of creatures; it's more correct to say we're all hominids.
This is subject to some debate. "Correct" is also imprecise (like "better"). A less ideology-loaded way to put it would be:
"Ape" is a general language term that can be used by different people to specify quite different groups of creatures; it's more specific to say we're all hominids.
Then again, "ape" is 100% correct. I'm an ape, as everybody commenting here (unless that thing about "reptilians" turns out to be not a dellusion).
What is interesting, to be on-topic, is that IIRC one teacher once told me he went to Africa and there white people are considered more close to chimps, because whites usually have thin lips (just like chimpanzees) and a pale face (idem).
I wonder if algorithms are inadvertently influenced by cultural bias of coders/users (and I mean this honestly as unwilling, I don't consider everyone a racist). We should perhaps take a look at what we depict in our photos.
I'm also reminded of an article I've read recently about how photo films were invented for use in depicting white people, and definitely being awful for dark skin people. Just imagine if photos always gave good results for blacks while producing whitewashed images of whites.
How can a computer algorithm be racist? I just did a search on mine and when i type in "dog" it found my white cat and my 8 year old son. It's no different from autocorrect. People need to lighten the fuck up.
This person is using "blacklisted" word. Mod it down.
'Algorithms' don't work the way you think they work. Move along to another discussion.
It's called an "apology" - did you skip that day in kindergarten?
When the apology is a completely over-wrought bit of silly nonsense rendered in response to gleeful press releases from the Big SJW industry (who desperately NEED there to be events like this, whipped hugely out of proportion, in order to have things to get sound angry about), then it's not an apology. It's a forced sacrifice on the alter of Political Correctness gone (ever more) insane. There's nothing to apologize for here, because nobody at Google sat down to create a racist process or racist results. People who can't mentally untangle the difference between intent and coincidence should just shut up ... except, they're all media darlings now, because it's fashionable to be completely irrational on that front, now.
If Google tagged me as "albino ape" or "yeti" or "Stay-Pufft Marshmallow Man" I'd think it was hilarious. Those manufacturing faux offense at this bit of completely benign nonsense are the real racists. They are the ones who are saying that black people aren't smart enough to understand the situation. As usual, the racist SJW condescension is the most actually offensive thing in the room.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
All hominids are apes. And gorillas are hominids too, incidentally.
we are all hominids, and we are certainly not apes.
You just contradicted yourself. If we are not apes then we can't be hominids.
It might be, but it won't be an apology.
Unless you are Steve Jobs reincarnate, I doubt this position will get you as far in life.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
How exactly does this "help society". Do we really need an algorithm to try and guess what's in a photo? If I can't tell what's in the photo when I look at it then I certainly don't expect some algorithm to get it right. The only time I need a caption telling me what it is is if it's so obscure you can't tell by looking.
His is a case of trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist.
Computers matched images the best they could and without human leftist or racist bias.
And they decided black people look like apes. Obvious, but declined for decades.
Try doing IQ tests, and you will get the same results.
Or maybe look at criminal records and see how black people behave like animals.
There is nothing to be sorry about. It was just truth becoming visible.
Yes You Can Say humans are essentially apes. But if You Say a black man Is an ape You are racist. When tes nugent caller président Obama an ape he was a racist. when the libéral left wrote all those political cartoons depicting the former président Bush as a monkey with his monkey ears they were not being racist. The were in fact being politically insightefull. There Is a double standard. it Is about time crackers realize they are no longer in charge. There are things only black men Can Say. There are places only blacks are Streets where only blacks are allowed to walk. Get over it. Now we all need to get behind al sharpton and his crusade against racist computers.
I wouldn't go as far as to say they are saying that black people aren't smart enough to understand the situation, but I will readily agree that people are trying to work this up into something that it really isn't.
News flash, given their skin color, it is easier for black folks to be mistaken for apes in an image processing algorithm than white people. This just shows the algorithm isn't perfect. Write up a bug and make a test case.
Now that I think of it, I wonder how non-technical folks think that image recognition works. Maybe if you were ignorant on the subject, you might immediately think "OMG, they have racist programmers at Google." Of course, this is where responsible media outlets would point out that computers have zero prejudice and that image recognition is hard work.
So Google obliging those idiots offends you? And they should oblige you instead? That offends me!
Or maybe you should just shut the fuck up and choke on a horse cock.
Thankfully, the computer isn't racist. It merely wasn't sophisticated enough to discern the difference given the input, the algorithm, and its training.
Strictly speaking I think that means the computer (or at least this instance of the program) is racist.
I mean, what's the practical difference between a person hearing their parents talk about "lazy nigegrs" later identifying somebody as a "lazy nigger", and an algorithm who's training data set contained insuficient variety of dark skinned humans and gorillas later identifying a dark skinned human as a gorilla?
I wouldn't go as far as to say they are saying that black people aren't smart enough to understand the situation
Sure they are. Because the only people who could possibly take actual offense at this would be those who, having it explained to them, still can't understand it. Those who are insisting that black people be offended by this are insisting that black people can't handle the simple information that would remove any perception of malice from the narrative.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Great video, thanks for sharing. Wish he'd leave his nose alone though! :)
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
"Helps society"?
Do you think, for one single second, that Google gives one sweet, wet, good-god-almighty FUCK about "helping society"? Google cares about helping its bottom line, and that is all.
As far as fault:
They own the faulty algorithm. That faulty algorithm has the opportunity to piss off 38 million-or-so African Americans in the US alone, which means 38 million fewer possible customers to make a buck off of. If "good behavior and good decision-making" somehow produce a "bad outcome," then the appropriate thing to do is say, "We had the best of intentions, but we missed the mark. We understand that this erroneous tagging can be very distressing to a group of people for whom racism is very much a real and current problem, we take this seriously, and will do everything we can to correct the problem that led to these outcomes." You know - demonstrate empathy. Which is what they did.
Tossing off a glib, "HAHA ur a whinney little biyotch" is not how you keep customers. And Google certainly understands that having 38 million people refuse to use your services and products right out the gate is a big problem when it comes to potential revenue.
Calling it an apology legitimises the fact they Google was forced to crawl on its belly by the PC brigade. This was a software glitch, nothing more, but the squealies will never miss an opportunity to vilify another person or group.
This time it fell neatly into their laps, a gift to the it-is-my-right-to-not-be-offended-by-anything-ever crowd who always seem to be on the lookout for something to take offense to.
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
Richard Dawkins is a biologist. he would never say something so stupid.
I'm curious what you feel is stupid about that straightforward statement. Regardless, Richard Dawkins did, in fact, say exactly that.
Gaps in the Mind, by Richard Dawkins
"We admit that we are like apes, but we seldom realise that we are apes."
"In truth, not only are we apes, we are African apes. The category 'African apes', if you don't arbitrarily exclude humans, is a natural one"
"'Great apes', too, is a natural category only so long as it includes humans. We are great apes."
I did a search for the words "dawkins" and "ape" and the first result was a video of Dawkins saying that he is an ape. I challenge you to find any living biologist that claims otherwise.
we are all hominids, and we are certainly not apes.
Gorillas are hominids, and all hominids are apes. Humans are apes and hominids, just like gorillas.
Some asshole must have changed wikipedia to make you wrong. It says:
The Hominidae (/hmndi/), also known as great apes,[notes 1] or hominids, form a taxonomic family of primates, including four extant genera: orangutans (Pongo) with two species extant; gorillas (Gorilla) with two species; chimpanzees (Pan) with two species; and humans (Homo) with one species.[1]
You'd better go in there and correct it to say say humans are not apes.
What are all you Left wing cretins going to do when we have true artificial intelligence, and it says "White people have the right to simply live around their own kind."
I mean, what a 'hate' crime that is! How 'racist', to simply want to be left alone and live with people like yourself! How terrible of 'racist' white people to want to deny non-whites the apparent benefit of living among apparently BETTER white people! Otherwise, what's the problem with white people just having our own countries - AGAIN? Why do Left wing cretins believe that non-whites get a 'better life' only if they GET AWAY FROM THEIR OWN RACE? LOL.
Even computers can see that Africans are closer to apes than white people are - or do you deny the existence of evolution? Why on Earth would all the races of humans be as evolved from apes by the same amount?
Never heard of homo erectus?
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/23/Homo_erectus.JPG
Does that look like a white man to you, or an AFRICAN, perchance?
it's more correct to say we're all hominids.
Now we're going from racism to homophobia. Thanks Slashdot!
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Wheres the racism?
Racism is a belief that one race (a subgroup with a distinct set of genetic and physical attributes) of humans is superior to another.
Picture detection software does not have these beliefs, or in fact, any beliefs whatsoever.
So that's that.
while unfortunate and unwanted, that result is not racism. An accident in the algorithm is not the same as asserting that A race is superior to another race. Stop misusing this word.
Wrong, and this shows you don't know anything about biology... apes are a specific pair of families.
Those aren't gorillas?
Which families would those be? The answer is: gibbons and hominids. Therefore all hominids are apes.
Intent.
Don't have children. You overreact to a degree that will damage offspring.
People who are photographed don't need be labelled as "humans" in whatever medium the photograph is embedded in. They're just there. Even if they get a label, it's more specific; for instance: you might see a news story with people in a photo, but at best they're "participants" or "protestors" or "suspects"..., not "humans".
There aren't any pale apes other than humans. There are pale, upright, bipedal apes called gorillas. They're darkly colored. Any time they're pictured, they're probably accompanied by the word "gorilla" (e.g. "scientists make new discovery about gorilla diets..." would probably be accompanied by a gorilla photo, even if it has nothing to do with the study other than including gorillas).
When the AI takes over, we're ALL going to be rounded up and put into "sporting venues."
I read this as "App" is a general language term that can be used by different people to specify quite different groups of creatures;
Do you live in a bizarro universe where it's common for people to demand to be insulted?
Person A: Hey you, I DEMAND that you insult me, my deeply held beliefs, my family, and my circle of friends. ;)
Person B: Sorry sir, I will not oblige. Have a good day.
Everyone has a right to be offended as it's a personal feeling that anyone can have without needing to ask an authority figure for permission.
we are all hominids, and we are certainly not mammals!
That's kind of what you said here. Hominidae is a slice of Hominoidea.
black people are apes. as are while people.
not gorillas, though. that's just way off.
we're much closer to chimpanzees.
It isn't racist. It's reality.
Your existence offends me. Please stop it.
Incorrect. they are pongidae and hylobatidae.
You Missed the point. The point is to blame the white man for endemic racism. Somehow it is perfectly acceptable to say humans descended from apes. But the black Man was not and has never been an ape. To call blacks apes is racists. Black men descended somehow from a separate gene pool from the rest of humanity. Perhaps they were created by aliens to rule over the whites apes. I do not know. What I do know from my political correctness lessons is that whites / Asians / Latinos / aborigines / were all the products of evolution and descended from apes. The black man however was not. Don't agree with me? Then guess what you are a racists / pedophile / Nazi (take your pick) who does not believe in tolerance.
you are confusing ape with great ape. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Apes does not equal hominoids. If it did, it would be a cladistic term, and it isn't.
Humans are not apes, not by any historically common definition, nor by the definition used by palaeoanthropologists. In fact, "ape" is specifically used to distinguish humans from other hominoids (i.e., when you want to say "all the hominoids except humans", you say "apes").
You really should to a bit more research than simply typing "ape" into Wikipedia and seeing that someone merged two pages that they shouldn't have. Here:
http://johnhawks.net/weblog/topics/phylogeny/taxonomy/humans-arent-apes-2012.html
But hey, what does a guy whose job consists of classifying humanoid species know about it, right?
It's kind of sad that Slashdot "moderation" these days seems to consist of "Did he post a link to Wikipedia? Then it's an 'insightful' post!" It just reinforces self-righteous ignorance.
Our indignance at the notion we're apes that look a lot like gorillas is rather silly -- like zebras being offended at being miscategorized as ordinary horses.
Your indignance would be rather silly, indeed.
The issue is this: for the last 300 years people have been justifying mistreatment of blacks by saying that they are only apes and not really human. I've seen more than one old source that explicitly claims that Africans are closer to gorillas than to humans. This is the background, centuries of claims that blacks are not human.
Your zebra example silliness lacks this background. Similarly you don't have that background. No one goes around saying that you shouldn't have human rights because you aren't a human. There are still people who say that about blacks.
I think we're looking for racism where there is none. Observing physical characteristics is not racism, and the fact of the matter is that some black people tend to have a more protruding jawline and fuller lips than one would see in a specific group of people who are caucasian. If you compare those two, very specific, physical characteristics with the great ape family, you see similarities.
Now, before anyone starts screaming about how I'm racist (too late), having one or two physical characteristics with another species, out of hundreds of physical characteristics, doesn't mean a damn thing when it comes to humans easily identifying people as not belonging to the same subgroup that shares those characteristics. It's the same reason why we don't think that someone with a striped mohawk is a zebra. We're able to take contextual clues and infer that that person is not, in fact, a zebra.
However, it DOES mean that an algorithm that has been largely trained on either insufficient or faulty data sets can make incorrect inferences based on the characteristics that it has been trained to recognize. If anybody is at fault here, it isn't the algorithm, but whatever engineer fed their image recognition an algorithm so woefully insufficient that it would confuse a human with an ape just based off of a physical characteristic or two out of any number of data points that would indicate, "Hey, this is obviously a human being".
Having done some random searches I agree this is just a mistake - and comparable to others. A few examples that I have found are
- a search for "dolphins" including a picture of my daughter swimming.
- a search for "squirrel" including meekcats
- a search for "cat" including some dogs
- a search for "ghost" including a slightly blurred picture of my wife
- a search for "man" showing some women and "woman" showing some men
Apart from being racist you are stupid ...that is not an algorithm as it does not terminate
No, Pongidae (orangutans) is a subfamily of Hominidae (great apes), not a family at all. Hylobatidae refers to gibbons, as mentioned by GP.
Of course, taxonomy isn't set in stone. You could well be using an extremely archaic taxonomic system, or one you simply made up yourself. However, that's a poor basis for insisting that every one who correctly cites widely-accepted modern taxonomy is "wrong".
It's very offending to mix up noble gorillas with shitty humans..
Btw, are you implying that Negroes are not closer to our ancestors?
It pertains no racism or other innate hatred, but Science should not be based on feels but on reals.
I am very worried of the chilling effects political correctness is causing, and has caused on scientific inquiry.
When google glasses came out, it was fun pointing it to all things and letting it figure out what it was pointed at.
At a certain time, a picture got taken from me, and behold, it though i was an gorilla too (and i'm white).
We all had a good laugh with that one in the office.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
You are incorrect. I have not confused "ape" with "great ape". Here's a Wikipedia article which explains the terms "ape" and "great ape" and contains plenty of relevent information to help you with your misconceptions on the topic. Read it and educate yourself before making yet more wild assertions.
Unfortunately for politically correct people. Gorilla's and people come from the same cloth so to speak. We as human's have now demonized the relationship because we go well beyond the simple character reference that we have between the two. Who's fault is that for a facial recognition software determining that some people faces look like another group of mammals? We create this crappy stuff and then are embarrassed when it screws up. Like voice recognition that cannot understand some people. Sorry, but facial recognition is very basic on the surface kind of identification. Its not going to know if your a gorilla or not if your face is shaped and colored like one. Whereas it might even recognize a gorilla as a human so there is that too.
I am mixed and a portion of that mix is black. I laughed - literally, and think this is quite funny. Software is not perfect and can not take everything into account. When it makes errors it is bad code, or just not overly observant programmers, and not an indicator of racism or any other *ism. Opposite is, of course, true - it is an *ism when someone deliberately codes it to call black people gorillas. This was not that. Nothing to see here, move along. Also, try not to laugh too hard. Whilst funny it offends those with "sensibilities."
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Wow. I assume you mean the racist 'we', aka 'they all look alike to us' we?
I don't really think computers can reach that definition.
No, I live in a country that's based around whiners and morons being whiners and morons. This kind of shit is where that comes from; unlike in the UK, where someone puts "Ramadan" next to a stack of bacon, and a Muslim goes, "Oh, that's funny," and nobody gets their panties in a twist. Here someone says fucking "eenie meenie minie moe" and gets sued for $3.5M.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
As if sniviling sycophants actually get anywhere in life.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
I've been told I should quit comparing Congresspeople to gorillas and chimps. The apes find it very offensive.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
The truth is that there are a ton of entitled idiots who believe they have the right to be offended...
Erm, they actually DO have a right to be offended. Just like you and I have a right to not give a fuck if they are offended.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
That depends on whether the algorithm knows that movies aren't real. "I see dead people" anyone?
That is the funniest thing I ever heard.. and i ..sirs... is also a person of color. That don't make it in the least less funny though...
Google is part of the goverment.
Nice headline. The app is "racist"?
I see any time of pride in Slashdot has eroded.
It identified great apes quite accurately, which is what humans are. It clearly needs a bit of improvement in distinguishing between Tribes and Genuses, but I don't see why anyone would complain if it mistakes your genus at first. It isn't like the computer thought they were lesser apes, monkeys, or prosimians, which would be a bit of an insult.
Shouldn't the word "blacklisted" be blacklisted? After all, it refers to black in a negative way.
One really shouldn't tie their identity to a color. All it does is make is make that person so much smaller.
Besides, there are no actual black people nor white, yellow, or red people either. Everyone is a shade of brown.
Get over it.
"I just reply to you when I see you spamming Slashdot with your nonsense"- by dave420 (699308) on Friday June 19, 2015 @10:31AM (#49945047)
Why'd you agree w/ my points on hosts then? Quoting you:
"I'm not denying all those things" - by dave420 (699308) on Wednesday September 17, 2014 @11:39AM (#47927435) FROM -> http://yro.slashdot.org/commen...
Of course not: It's impossible to dispute HOSTS FILES superiority to other methods!
Since my points in favor of hosts SINGLE FILE native kernelmode faster part show hosts doing more w/ less vs. so-called 'competitors' many part messagepassing + cpu/ram use overheads laden slower usermode FAR MORE COMPLEX 'solutions' doing less than hosts do for more security, speed, reliability, + anonymity!
I make creating a superior more efficient solution EASIER!
(That's more than a mere trolling stalking harassing "ne'er-do-well" like yourself could *EVER* manage).
---
"I'm simply pointing out that it takes an AdBlocker to block your spamming"- by dave420 (699308) on Friday June 19, 2015 @10:31AM (#49945047)
I bother you? Then WHY DON'T YOU DO IT & use 'em? Answer that!
(You stalk/harass me instead!)
OBVIOUSLY you don't & you're a "ne'er-do-well" troll & you have "other motivations" (next):
---
* QUESTION:
DO YOU WORK FOR AN ADVERTISING FIRM, or ARE YOU A WEBMASTER/WEBCODER http://slashdot.org/comments.p... , or a MALWARE MAKER, or ARE YOU AFFILIATED WITH 1 OF MY COMPETITORS?
Answer it!
As per your usual you'll avoid every question, or lie & You've been EXPOSED in your "motives" in the last link just above, lol!
APK
P.S.=> See Dave420 the "pot puffing clown" SQUIRM - evasions galore will ensue (as well as effete downmods via sockpuppets to *try* vainly "hide it" -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p... )... apk
"I just reply to you when I see you spamming Slashdot with your nonsense"- by dave420 (699308) on Friday June 19, 2015 @10:31AM (#49945047)
Why'd you agree w/ my points on hosts then? Quoting you:
"I'm not denying all those things" - by dave420 (699308) on Wednesday September 17, 2014 @11:39AM (#47927435) FROM -> http://yro.slashdot.org/commen...
Of course not: It's impossible to dispute HOSTS FILES superiority to other methods!
Since my points in favor of hosts SINGLE FILE native kernelmode faster part show hosts doing more w/ less vs. so-called 'competitors' many part messagepassing + cpu/ram use overheads laden slower usermode FAR MORE COMPLEX 'solutions' doing less than hosts do for more security, speed, reliability, + anonymity!
I make creating a superior more efficient solution EASIER!
(That's more than a mere trolling stalking harassing "ne'er-do-well" like yourself could *EVER* manage).
---
"I'm simply pointing out that it takes an AdBlocker to block your spamming"- by dave420 (699308) on Friday June 19, 2015 @10:31AM (#49945047)
I bother you? Then WHY DON'T YOU DO IT & use 'em? Answer that!
(You stalk/harass me instead!)
OBVIOUSLY you don't & you're a "ne'er-do-well" troll & you have "other motivations" (next):
---
* QUESTION:
DO YOU WORK FOR AN ADVERTISING FIRM, or ARE YOU A WEBMASTER/WEBCODER http://slashdot.org/comments.p... , or a MALWARE MAKER, or ARE YOU AFFILIATED WITH 1 OF MY COMPETITORS?
Answer it!
As per your usual you'll avoid every question, or lie & You've been EXPOSED in your "motives" in the last link just above, lol!
APK
P.S.=> See Dave420 the "pot puffing clown" SQUIRM - evasions galore will ensue (as well as effete downmods via sockpuppets to *try* vainly "hide it" -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p... )... apk
Well at first I thought like you do, but it is *possible* that Googles algorithm has a bias toward recognizing caucasian skin as "Human." And dark skin as "Other."
That's very possible, but more testing would be required to tell if Goggle's programmers are racist.
It is possible, very few things are impossible. It is unlikely as this was likely a group project and had some testing done before it went out into the wild. It could have been some clansmen working together in a conspiracy. It is just unlikely, not impossible. It is even possible for people to have prejudices and not even be aware of them, that too is possible. I suspect it was a limited data set, as all data sets are, and that the algorithms will be tweaked for even more accuracy over time. If that future tweaking means that there are more instances of this happening than happen now then, perhaps, we have a case of racism. I will give them the benefit of believing it was just poor code. Hell, not even poor code - just inaccurate code based on inaccurate goals.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
These are Googles customers who are getting offended. Google responded. Black people don't have to use Google's products, but Google wants them to.
Get over it.
White people are obliged by default.
who keeps modding this bigot up?
Somehow it is perfectly acceptable to say humans descended from apes
Only a hard core fundamentalist who was deliberately mischaracterizing evolution would say that. You cannot be a decendant of your cousins.
If you reported to Google that it classified you as a Yeti, I'd be shocked if they didn't apologize, even if you told them you thought it was hilarious.
People apologize when they, or the things they sell, make mistakes. Even if it was unforeseeable.
In this case, the "punitive damages" were negative public reactions, which extracted an apology (and, one hopes, a bug fix?). I'm sure you're not suggesting that it was wrong for offended parties to express their negative public reactions, or that the apology issued by Google was an undue burden? Let's also agree that a bug fix is actually in Google's interest.
So I'm kind of at a loss as to how that enormous corporation was harmed by these out of control PC Police. Or whatever is the framing du jour.
It's called an "apology" - did you skip that day in kindergarten?
When the apology is a completely over-wrought bit of silly nonsense rendered in response to gleeful press releases from the Big SJW industry (who desperately NEED there to be events like this, whipped hugely out of proportion, in order to have things to get sound angry about), then it's not an apology. It's a forced sacrifice on the alter of Political Correctness gone (ever more) insane. There's nothing to apologize for here, because nobody at Google sat down to create a racist process or racist results. People who can't mentally untangle the difference between intent and coincidence should just shut up ... except, they're all media darlings now, because it's fashionable to be completely irrational on that front, now.
If Google tagged me as "albino ape" or "yeti" or "Stay-Pufft Marshmallow Man" I'd think it was hilarious. Those manufacturing faux offense at this bit of completely benign nonsense are the real racists. They are the ones who are saying that black people aren't smart enough to understand the situation. As usual, the racist SJW condescension is the most actually offensive thing in the room.
"ScentCone", you are: RIGHT!
It's always a breath of fresh air to stumble upon an intelligent person on the Internet.
Stated exactly right in fact. 100% nice.
Everybody except the best has the "luxury of playing victim". Keep playing victims, idiots. You still won't be the best. Just knowing you had to play the victim, you will never feel the feel of being the actual best either.
suck it SJW's, including the other AC yelling about bigots. If you didn't SUCK you wouldn't have anything to contribute to discussions. I get it.
Awesome! I'm delighted that you Foe'd me on the strength of that comment, outing yourself as a thin-skinned little baby and card-carrying member of the permanently-offended crowd. Best of all I don't need to Foe you in return, whiny bitches like you have always been my natural enemies.
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
People apologize when they, or the things they sell, make mistakes. Even if it was unforeseeable.
No, they don't. When everybody involved knows that they're looking at the spurious output of a young image recognition process, apologies don't, and don't need to happen.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Go away troll.
Wtf are you talking about? Where'd you reply here first in this part of the discussion trees here that he did what you claim? I don't see you replying here at all in the first place in this part of the discussion here.
http://australianmuseum.net.au...
"Ape" is a general language term that can be used by different people to specify quite different groups of creatures; it's more correct to say we're all hominids.
That's just an ad hominem argument.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
No, "Ape" is a very specific term used to specify members of Hominoidea. It is unfortunate many are ignorant of the meaning of the term and use it improperly to include monkeys.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Humans are apes - specifically, great apes. (aka Hominidae aka "hominids"). "Hominids" simply means human-like. It used to mean only humans, then it included other extinct human-like creatures and now it generally includes all hominidae. While "hominid" (or alternatively "great ape") is a more specific term, it is certainly NOT a more correct term, merely the Family of the SuperFamily.
One could say that humans are mammals and it would be no less correct. Humans are animals, chordates, mammals, primates, apes, and also great apes.
It's unfortunate that the Google facial recognition software was not aware that humans don't like being reminded that they are indeed very closely related to other great apes and could easily be confused with gorillas by a non-human intelligence. Our indignance at the notion we're apes that look a lot like gorillas is rather silly -- like zebras being offended at being miscategorized as ordinary horses.
Granted, I understand the racist implication that those flagged erroneously as gorillas are somehow less human than others. Thankfully, the computer isn't racist. It merely wasn't sophisticated enough to discern the difference given the input, the algorithm, and its training.
I'm impressed it figured out the object in the photo was a living thing and got the kingdom, phylum, class, order, superfamily, family and sub-family correct. If it had chosen chimp or bonobo, it would have been even closer.
Heck, check out this comparison of a gorilla baby and a human baby -- no one would have blinked an eye if the software said the gorilla was a human baby. http://intentblog.com/wp-conte...
Another cute gorilla baby -- a bit older: http://www.ctvnews.ca/polopoly...
Terribly inaccurate performance. We're chimps, dammit.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Richard Dawkins is a biologist. he would never say something so stupid.
I'm curious what you feel is stupid about that straightforward statement. Regardless, Richard Dawkins did, in fact, say exactly that. Gaps in the Mind, by Richard Dawkins "We admit that we are like apes, but we seldom realise that we are apes." "In truth, not only are we apes, we are African apes. The category 'African apes', if you don't arbitrarily exclude humans, is a natural one" "'Great apes', too, is a natural category only so long as it includes humans. We are great apes."
I did a search for the words "dawkins" and "ape" and the first result was a video of Dawkins saying that he is an ape. I challenge you to find any living biologist that claims otherwise.
we are all hominids, and we are certainly not apes.
Gorillas are hominids, and all hominids are apes. Humans are apes and hominids, just like gorillas.
Great apes, or the greatest apes? discuss.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
It's not "unfortunate". It's an oversight on Google's behalf. Our company uses similar Machine Learning techniques, and we're certainly not innovative by noticing that not all errors are alike. We tell our algorithms in training not just that they made a mistake, but also how costly the mistake was. For Google, that means confusing humans with other primates is bad, getting the gender wrong is almost as bad, but confusing family members is quite acceptable.
A side effect of differentiated costs is that you can assign a different cost on the outcome "uncertain", so that the classifier will prefer that label instead of a more costly mistake.
We are all mixed, and from what I read, Pocahontas really left her mark, in Europe, too.
Algorithms may be racist, depends on the sample data you feed it. If the dataset is biased, the result will be biased.
Math may be racist, Statistics, Surveys, Engineering, Business. Because the problem design, layout, definition is done by people.
- Oh, and don't even get me started with the Humanities...