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Google Tests A Software That Judges Hollywood's Portrayal of Women

Slashdot reader theodp writes: Aside from it being hosted in a town without a movie theater, the 2016 Bentonville Film Festival was also unusual in that it required all entrants to submit "film scripts and downloadable versions of the film" for judgment by "the team at Google and USC", apparently part of a larger Google-funded research project with USC Engineering "to develop a computer science tool that could quickly and efficiently assess how women are represented in films"...

Fest reports noted that representatives of Google and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy appeared in a "Reel vs. Real Diversity" panel presentation at the fest, where the importance of diversity and science to President Obama were discussed, and the lack of qualified people to fill 500,000 U.S. tech jobs was blamed in part on how STEM careers have been presented in film and television... In a 2015 report on a Google-sponsored USC Viterbi School of Engineering MacGyver-themed event to promote women in engineering, USC reported that President Obama was kept briefed on efforts to challenge media's stereotypical portrayals of women. As for its own track record, Google recently updated its Diversity page, boasting that "21% of new hires in 2015 were women in tech, compared to 19% of our current population"....

5 of 321 comments (clear)

  1. Morons by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Why do people think things like the Bechdel test are worth more than a fart in the breeze/

    1. Re:Morons by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Lesbian porn passes the test. Gravity fails it. And give your definition of substantial.

  2. How women are portrayed in movies by penguinoid · · Score: 5, Interesting

    More beautiful than average, and more extreme in one trait or another.

    --
    Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
  3. Re:Of course by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Interesting

    I'm certain the results of this experiment will be 100% fair and unbiased in any way, and everyone will agree with the results and come to a greater understanding.

    You left out "or you're a RAAAAAAACIST!"

    Or a sexist.

    Or a homophobe.

    MUST

    MAKE

    EVERYONE

    THINK

    ALIKE!

    DIVERSITY

    IS

    ONLY

    ALLOWED

    TO

    BE

    SKIN

    DEEP!!!!

  4. Interesting to quantify if possible by joe_frisch · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It would be very interesting to find a way to quantify bias in media. I don't know if its possible, but it sounds hard. OTOH, self-driving cars sounded hard as well and they seem to be becoming a reality.

    Last time I posted a req for a high level RF engineer, I got ~100 applications from men and 2 from women. If only for selfish reasons I'd like more women learning the skills that I need.

    I've been working in a high tech field for a quarter century now and I do see a problem the way women are treated in many places. The problems are not universal, and there is a lot of variety, but it exists. It difficult to separate cause and effect but more information would be helpful.