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By having a mirror, we can see and correct our flaws. I used to be (well, still am, a bit) worried that the increasing automation of our social structures (cre

By having a mirror, we can see and correct our flaws. I used to be (well, still am, a bit) worried that the increasing automation of our social structures (credit scores, admission processes, etc) will just encode these biases in ways that cannot be altered. But then saw how much of NIPS was about "fairness". If these biases get encoded, they are measurable, examinable, detectable - and can then be accounted for in ways (presumably) much more effective than existing patterns. So now, I'm not worried about the technology, although as always, I worry about the application of it.

PeterisP 9y ago
Is the (assuming it's true, but it seems plausible) situation that the majority of users searching for "black girls" actually do want to find sexual content instead of simply smiling faces a flaw that needs correcting? Is their intent unfair in some way, are their sexual preferences unacceptable? If I don't like what I see in my mirror, will putting makeup on the mirror improve my face? Will removing naughty sites from the search results somehow change the fact that "black girls" (or "asian girls", or "czech girls", etc) is not usually used as an innocent search term?
- RangerScience 9y ago
  So, I'd dance around the issue. Google's search algorithm is "fair", but society is not: It is not "fair" that these search terms are over sexualized. This is, of course, given some particular morality and ethos; your may not find society unfair in this way. (I do) My point is that now it is visible and you can make more informed choices. If you don't like what you see in mirror, why is makeup the "fix" of choice? Alter diets, exercise patterns; sun exposure, fitness levels, stress levels... > Will removing naughty sites from the search results Potentially. We're feedback loops as well; if these terms result in what someone is after, they will use those terms: if they don't, they won't. Eventually, I would expect people to stop trying to search with them; to then stop communicating with them (as meaning that); to then stop thinking with them (as meaning that).
  - ralusek 9y ago
    What you're proposing is a hack, and one with a lot of negative side effects. First of all, to go with the obvious, you better hope that what Google deems the direction they'd like to alter reality is aligned with your own, because I'm quite sure that this will mostly be untrue. Secondly, you're attempting to patch a problem at much too high of a level; making people less racist by altering what they're able to ingest, particularly by altering unbiased reality, is a bandaid that is destined to fail hard. What if, say, we wanted to change the negative stereotype of black Americans engaging in criminal behavior at substantially higher rates, so we demanded that Google remove access to racially distributed crime statistics. Many countries already do this, such as Sweden. We will have lost a primary tool with which to assess the nature of our reality, contextualize it, and strategize about it effectively. I'm more interested in a free society bettering reality than I am with hoping that Google's ideal version of reality is aligned with my own... particularly because I would still consider it to be a horrible solution even if it was.
    - RangerScience 9y ago
      Making people less racist by altering what they're ingesting is one of the most effective ways to do it. The "reality" in this case is not unbiased, because it's not the reality of "cars are hard" but the reality of "red means stop". > access to racially distributed crime statistics That does sound like something that would backfire or fail. Seems like you hit on the delineating factor: You search for crime statistics to contextualize and understand your reality. Is that why people search for porn?
  - PeterisP 9y ago
    My point was that it's like applying makeup to the mirror instead on your face - what you propose is not like improving your fitness, it's like making a curved mirror that makes you appear slim and flatters you, hides the problem and doesn't change anything about the underlying issues. After your proposed changes it is no longer visible, and we can no longer make informed choices - people searching for "black girls" still want the same thing, but they're getting a worse service (results that don't fit their intent) just to hide them and their preferences from other parts of the society. There's also a feedback loop in the opposite direction, if there are real problems that simply are hidden, they're not going to get fixed. On the other hand, it's worth examining the actual problem - it's worth noting that people who do want to find sexual pictures of black girls are just as valid users as black girls, and any fair solution must keep both of their preferences in mind; it would be unfair to simply damage the service for one group to appease the another. IMHO a fair solution would be based on data about what the people who use that query actually want (in some equivalence to picking equal opportunities in the "equal opportunities vs equal outcomes" tradeoff dilemma) - if some people are using the term in their daily search and some are not, then the interests of these frequent users could reasonably be considered more important. Aggressive personalization (different users having wildly different search results for the same term because of the differences in the assumed intent) is another way to do that, but it brings a bunch of other problems.

PeterisP 9y ago

Is the (assuming it's true, but it seems plausible) situation that the majority of users searching for "black girls" actually do want to find sexual content instead of simply smiling faces a flaw that needs correcting? Is their intent unfair in some way, are their sexual preferences unacceptable? If I don't like what I see in my mirror, will putting makeup on the mirror improve my face? Will removing naughty sites from the search results somehow change the fact that "black girls" (or "asian girls", or "czech girls", etc) is not usually used as an innocent search term?

RangerScience 9y ago
So, I'd dance around the issue. Google's search algorithm is "fair", but society is not: It is not "fair" that these search terms are over sexualized. This is, of course, given some particular morality and ethos; your may not find society unfair in this way. (I do) My point is that now it is visible and you can make more informed choices. If you don't like what you see in mirror, why is makeup the "fix" of choice? Alter diets, exercise patterns; sun exposure, fitness levels, stress levels... > Will removing naughty sites from the search results Potentially. We're feedback loops as well; if these terms result in what someone is after, they will use those terms: if they don't, they won't. Eventually, I would expect people to stop trying to search with them; to then stop communicating with them (as meaning that); to then stop thinking with them (as meaning that).
- ralusek 9y ago
  What you're proposing is a hack, and one with a lot of negative side effects. First of all, to go with the obvious, you better hope that what Google deems the direction they'd like to alter reality is aligned with your own, because I'm quite sure that this will mostly be untrue. Secondly, you're attempting to patch a problem at much too high of a level; making people less racist by altering what they're able to ingest, particularly by altering unbiased reality, is a bandaid that is destined to fail hard. What if, say, we wanted to change the negative stereotype of black Americans engaging in criminal behavior at substantially higher rates, so we demanded that Google remove access to racially distributed crime statistics. Many countries already do this, such as Sweden. We will have lost a primary tool with which to assess the nature of our reality, contextualize it, and strategize about it effectively. I'm more interested in a free society bettering reality than I am with hoping that Google's ideal version of reality is aligned with my own... particularly because I would still consider it to be a horrible solution even if it was.
  - RangerScience 9y ago
    Making people less racist by altering what they're ingesting is one of the most effective ways to do it. The "reality" in this case is not unbiased, because it's not the reality of "cars are hard" but the reality of "red means stop". > access to racially distributed crime statistics That does sound like something that would backfire or fail. Seems like you hit on the delineating factor: You search for crime statistics to contextualize and understand your reality. Is that why people search for porn?
- PeterisP 9y ago
  My point was that it's like applying makeup to the mirror instead on your face - what you propose is not like improving your fitness, it's like making a curved mirror that makes you appear slim and flatters you, hides the problem and doesn't change anything about the underlying issues. After your proposed changes it is no longer visible, and we can no longer make informed choices - people searching for "black girls" still want the same thing, but they're getting a worse service (results that don't fit their intent) just to hide them and their preferences from other parts of the society. There's also a feedback loop in the opposite direction, if there are real problems that simply are hidden, they're not going to get fixed. On the other hand, it's worth examining the actual problem - it's worth noting that people who do want to find sexual pictures of black girls are just as valid users as black girls, and any fair solution must keep both of their preferences in mind; it would be unfair to simply damage the service for one group to appease the another. IMHO a fair solution would be based on data about what the people who use that query actually want (in some equivalence to picking equal opportunities in the "equal opportunities vs equal outcomes" tradeoff dilemma) - if some people are using the term in their daily search and some are not, then the interests of these frequent users could reasonably be considered more important. Aggressive personalization (different users having wildly different search results for the same term because of the differences in the assumed intent) is another way to do that, but it brings a bunch of other problems.