Google Autocomplete Still Makes Vile Suggestions (wired.com)

Posted by msmash on Monday February 12, 2018 @06:43AM from the long-road-ahead dept.

An anonymous reader shares a report: In December of 2016, Google announced it had fixed a troubling quirk of its autocomplete feature: When users typed in the phrase, "are jews," Google automatically suggested the question, "are jews evil?" Almost a year after removing the "are jews evil?" prompt, Google search still drags up a range of awful autocomplete suggestions for queries related to gender, race, religion, and Adolf Hitler. Google appears still unable to effectively police results that are offensive, and potentially dangerous -- especially on a platform that two billion people rely on for information. Like journalist Carol Cadwalladr, who broke the news about the "are jews evil" suggestion in 2016, I too felt a certain kind of queasiness experimenting with search terms like, "Islamists are," "blacks are," "Hitler is," and "feminists are." The results were even worse. For the term "Islamists are," Google suggested I might in fact want to search, "Islamists are not our friends," or "Islamists are evil." For the term, "blacks are," Google prompted me to search, "blacks are not oppressed." The term "Hitler is," autocompleted to, among other things, "Hitler is my hero."

2 of 238 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

Re:Wait a minute... by jellomizer · 2018-02-12 07:12 · Score: 0, Troll

Normally this leads to vile thinking to express this statement as true.
Most modern racist statements goes off the following ideas.
1. Racism isn't a problem
2. The minority group wants more then it deserves
3. We should stop such groups from demanding more.
4. We should role back any special considerations for them
5. We should give preference to the majority group

--
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Re:What did you expect? by uCallHimDrJ0NES · 2018-02-12 07:27 · Score: 1, Troll

They should prevent exploitation of their algorithms in general, not just when it suits some particular vocal group.
I agree with this. It's interesting that my question was modded down. Who was afraid of my question? Anonymous cowards, I assume, who use their logged on sessions to mod things down they don't like to see, and their AC sessions to make actual comments when they are bok bok bok chicken.

--
Cloudiot: A person who does not see offsite storage as a way to lose control over access to his or her own data.