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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.
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.
One could point out that there are fewer instances of white males being miscategorized. I suspect this has less to do with any actual racism and more to do with the fact that the people who developed the algorithm are likely predominantly white males and they tend to first test the algorithm on their own collection of photos or those in their circle.
This is an argument for a more diverse workforce...
It's an argument for more QA testing
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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Furthermore, if a 4 year old had pointed out the same thing we'd regard it as incorrect and then calmly correct for the real interpretation. That's not racism, that's "learning". We should regard this engine as if it were a small child and see that it's "learning". The only analog of this response I can see is when we blame the parents for perceived racism. It's the drawback of learning on the world-stage, under the scrutiny of every man, woman, dog, goat and goldfish on the planet. Living under the political correctness rules of the whole planet is rather debilitating, there's a lot of people with pitchforks already pre-sharpened for such things.
We, as a race, really need to dial down the offensive-radar. Everything is offensive to someone, somewhere. That doesn't mean all human progress should stop just in case someone gets a bit butt-hurt. Deal with it. It's a learning computer and it's still learning. It'll get there eventually. Just remember you were 1 year old and shitting your pants at one point. You don't have to poke fun at 1 years olds for shitting themselves. Nor should we find said shit "offensive".
One could point out that there are fewer instances of white males being miscategorized. I suspect this has less to do with any actual racism and more to do with the fact that the people who developed the algorithm are likely predominantly white males and they tend to first test the algorithm on their own collection of photos or those in their circle.
This is an argument for a more diverse workforce...
Yeah, because I bet that's how Google develops their image recognition algorithms - white guys walk around taking pictures of themselves.
As is more likely the case, there are few pictures of Albino gorillas in their machine learning corpus (racist against Albino gorillas!), and hence less data for white folks to more easily match gorillas based on macro level color characteristics.
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.
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.
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.
Searched for "dog" in my Google Photos. 6 photos came up, all of my kids or kid and wife. I don't care. It's an algorithm.
Searched for "seal" in my Google Photos. Only one came up, and it's of my elder kid. I don't care. It's an algorithm.
People who feel "offended" by an algorithm are batshit crazy.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
You have a right to be offended, just as I have a right to not care.
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.
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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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...
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.
Historically racists have called black people apes and monkeys. Therefore this accidentally and somewhat embarrassingly mimics that behaviour.
Historically white people were not, to my knowledge, insulted and discriminated against by being compared to seals and dogs. It's a bit more embarrassing to have women labeled as dogs because they are sometimes called bitches as an insult.
It's really not hard to understand. Context and history attach additional meanings and sentiments to some words.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
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.