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Google's Sentiment Analyzer Thinks Being Gay Is Bad (vice.com)
gooddogsgotoheaven shares a report from Motherboard: In July 2016, Google announced the public beta launch of a new machine learning application program interface (API), called the Cloud Natural Language API. It allows developers to incorporate Google's deep learning models into their own applications. As the company said in its announcement of the API, it lets you "easily reveal the structure and meaning of your text in a variety of languages." In addition to entity recognition (deciphering what's being talked about in a text) and syntax analysis (parsing the structure of that text), the API included a sentiment analyzer to allow programs to determine the degree to which sentences expressed a negative or positive sentiment, on a scale of -1 to 1. The problem is the API labels sentences about religious and ethnic minorities as negative -- indicating it's inherently biased. For example, it labels both being a Jew and being a homosexual as negative. A Google spokesperson issued the following statement in response to Motherboard's request for comment: "We dedicate a lot of efforts to making sure the NLP API avoids bias, but we don't always get it right. This is an example of one of those times, and we are sorry. We take this seriously and are working on improving our models. We will correct this specific case, and, more broadly, building more inclusive algorithms is crucial to bringing the benefits of machine learning to everyone."
If the algorithms that have come to these conclusions are based on analyzing public data from the Internet, then if an AI decides that any particular characteristic is negative, it's because it reflects the sentiments of those who bother to post opinions.
Most people that do not themselves exhibit the trait that's being argued-against by the noisy minority don't usually express opinions on it, so they're a hole in the data that needs to be accounted for. Unfortunately it's a lot easier to interpret based on what has been said than what has not been said.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
A lot of people rage over being called out for their bigoted or homophobic remarks. Freedom of speech does not equal freedom from the negative consequences of said speech. Fixed it for you. People rage over the consequences of being an insensitive jerk.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
As long as it's neither your dick or ass, how's it your business? Or do you make other guys dicks and asses your business?
That's SO gay, dude!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Their api is trying to be too universal and monolithic.
Gay is neither good or bad. Gay is just a label. Google should be able to recognize that 'gay' means one thing when a bigot uses it, but it should also recognize that 'gay' means something else when others use it.
In other words, the meaning of words should be heavily weighed on the training data of the individual listening/reading and on the training data of the individual speaking/writing.
Biologically speaking homosexuality is bad for the replication of any species in it's most basic form
Well, no.
Being homosexual might be bad for the replication of the individual (since it reduces the individual's chances of having offspring), but it doesn't necessarily follow that it's therefore also bad for the species.
Consider that childless homosexuals, not being burdened by the task of having to care for children of their own, will likely therefore have extra time and resources available to help protect and care for the children of child-bearing couples in their family or community, thus improving the children's (and therefore the species') chances of surviving. Given the huge time investment that human children require, increasing a child's odds of survival to adulthood is a huge win.
And if you think that sort of dynamic is uncommon in nature, consider that fact that 99% of bees are sterile and play no role in the reproduction of their hive, except to gather food and protect the queen and the drones who do handle the reproduction.
Specialization and division of labor is one of the things human civilization is based on; there's no reason it can't be applied to reproduction as well.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
In other words, reality does not agree with your opinion, thus reality is defective and must be "fixed".
Please tell me more about this internet where all topics receive balanced coverage of opinions except "gay" and "jew".
See that "Preview" button?
Reading the ridiculous comment from the google spokesperson falling all over themselves to apologize and prattle on with all the talking points of every fake corporate "diversity" statement ever made is pretty hilarious. And pathetic.
The system came up with its conclusion on its own. It wasn't the desired conclusion by some people's standards. It's a machine that isn't real. Who cares what it "thinks"? Why apologize? Once they program enough biases of all the things it is NOT allowed to consider "bad" the whole point of this application is gone.
I bet it if it decided that white straight christian/atheist/agnostic males were the scourge of the earth then everybody would celebrate.
Actually this pokes a bigger hole in their algorithm. EVERYTHING has context. To gun nuts, democrats are going to seem bad. To democrats, democrats are going to seem good. EVERYTHING HAS BIASES. Kind of a huge oversight with Google, you need the context of the reader's biases to even begin to predict positive or negative rating of any text.
Even though we like to think that everyone is enlightened, etc as us, in very broad swaths of American society being gay or jewish (or Muslim or...) is very much perceived as a negative out of the starting gate. File under: Sad-But-true.
I just don't understand why Google should apologize for a fact (namely, for the sentiments of some strangers). Okay, so it turns out there are sufficiently many people who think that homosexuality is bad—but why then pretend they don't? It's not as if it's some kind of an objective measure or an ethical judgment of divine origin. They got the answer to the exact question they asked. If they wanted a different reply, maybe they should've asked a different question.
Gay is neither good or bad. Gay is just a label.
While true, one can easily see the reason for the problem.
Google API is trained to look for correlations in written text. If it sees a lot of negative text about something, then that's what it will believe.
I note that there's a lot of text that condemn jews for one reason or another, but there's not a lot that *praises* jews. We hear all the time about Christian charities, for example, but not a lot for the jewish ones(*).
There's also a lot of negative statements about gays, and although there's *some* text praising gayness, it's mostly either personal ("good on you for having the courage to believe in yourself") or neutral ("it's OK to be gay, it's normal"). I've never seen writing that *praises* gayness as a concept.
Compare with Christianity, where there is endless adulation of the Christian way of life. Democracy is probably the same way.
I'd be interested to see what the API thinks about Islam, or Trump, or Clinton, or a host of other controversial political subjects.
Google API is probably just giving us a reflection of the zeitgeist.
(*) Don't read anything into this, I'm only saying that Christians get better press.
On the one hand we have tons of actual data from probably hundreds of millions of people. Sure, it's a biased sample, but it's still a very large sample.
On the other hand, we have your ideologically motivated handwaving and reinterpretation.
Which of those do you think is more reliable?
It's just doing its job. Obviously on the data it was trained, "gay" and "jew" were used as derogatory terms. And they're apologizing for that instead of explaining it? Wouldn't you rather have a system that didn't have injected bias, like injecting an override such that "gay" and "jew" receive a sentiment boost despite that being contrary to its training? Total crap. Someone probably ran through every SJW term and happened to find two that didn't have the results they wished it had on usage amongst speech.
That brings up a point I was going to raise: it's odd that this algorithm would be summative of values for individual words rather than trying to derive a context. Given that would be a really stupid design, my guess (if you think I read TFA you best check the url you're currently on) is that they tested this by taking a sentence like "You're so happy", got a score, replaced it with "you're so gay!" or "you're such a jew!" and got a negative sentiment whereas things like "you're so funny" generally had a positive context. I.e. biased testing.
Word "homosexuality" found. Negative sentiment detected.
It's not a judgement by the AI against the people, it's a judgement about how others react and behave towards those them. Stop apologizing for your AI being able to perceive human behavior. "I'm so sorry my AI figured out you have a flat tire".
How often are parents disappointed that their kid is straight? Being gay is subjectively more often bad than good and everyone knows it.
But from a biological standpoint, no one can say that it can scientifically be positively correlated to the replication of the species
You repeatedly speak in absolutes ("noone can say" - "biologically homosexuality is bad") when there isn't cause for it and there certainly isn't a scientific consensus. You imagine a PC agenda propagating homosexuality as good for the species, when that really makes no sense.
Homosexuality is common throughout nature. While biological dead ends do make it through the process of evolution for a long time, homosexuality is so endemic that it seems that it must have some positive impact on the species, or it would have evolved out. The theory isn't there, but empirically nature has shown it to be true.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
Your brain is wired in a way which interferes with reproduction - not good! Reproduction is one of the key characteristics of life. If you're a gay male engaging in anal sex then that's an additional health risk - is that good? Gay youth suicide rates are 300% higher than that of normal people - that can't be good.
Good traits - intelligence, athleticism, attractiveness - don't require social engineering to be acceptable. Let's stop pretending that homosexuality isn't a huge burden to the afflicted, we aren't doing those faggots any favors.
Being bisexual myself, obviously I have nothing against fellow gay people. Quite the contrary. However, I think Google's API is spot-on. Even in TFS they say "The problem is the API labels sentences about religious and ethnic minorities as negative" - well thanks, Captain Obvious, the majority will always see the minority in negative ways - because they're different.
What we need to focus on is what the cause for negative perception is and fix things there, not replacing a correct algorithm with a lying one.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
I am Jewish and living in Israel and what you are saying is a lie that some of our religious people spread in order to pretend to integrate with western culture.
"If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads." - This is Leviticus 20:13, part of the Jewish bible.
Furthermore, you should ask yourself, if Jewism has nothing against homosexuality, how come in Israel gay marrige are prohibited while they are legal in countries that have a high percentage of Christians?
The conservative and reform Jewism are not homophobic, but the orthodox Jews, those who represented jewism for the last few hundred years, those who are the majority here in Israel, they are homophobic just like Christian and Muslim friends.
Avantgarde Hebrew science fiction
Good and evil are binary categories for the uneducated--it's really all relative to an individual perspective and it's never binary
It's this kind of thinking that has allowed a generation or two of self important assholes who think that whatever they do is right as long as they can justify their actions to themselves. (Casting couch and degrading woman is ok because Wiesntein is making movies that uplift woman - so for 1 person hurt, millions helped.) This idea is destroying our society's honor and soul.
Once you find good and evil always relative, anything is acceptable.
It's a bit of a problem with the entire machine learning methodology. Presumably, these kind of bug-features could be worked out, in the manner you describe, given enough time and resources... The problem is that when the banks, police, HR departments etc. start making extensive use of these things. Are they going to be looking for an algorithm that's fair, or an algorithm that's profitable? To be sure, there is probably an algorithm that's both. Human civilization could reap a wicked ROI on this stuff, but in today's dark world, that is seen as infringing on someone's right to make a profit. My guess is that AI starts getting widespread deployment and the problems manifest quickly... But the problems look so similar to the ones we already have (the AI, after all, is trained for that) that there is no public outcry. It might even serve to reinforce those preconceptions. "The algorithm never tells me to hire a gay, they must be really bad." The idea that "Because things are bad now, there is no other way they could be" has a lot of traction these days. It's caused a lot of good people to maintain horrible status quos.