6 ms·

Those are all legitimate points. I don't think anyone is concerned about Google trying to get past fake news (or rather, surely there are few voices there) Th

Those are all legitimate points. I don't think anyone is concerned about Google trying to get past fake news (or rather, surely there are few voices there) The issues are more disconcerting, like senior executives trying to make sure that 'Trump never happens again', the assumption being either 'voters were so deeply misinformed' or that 'Trump is illegitimate because of who he is'. If the former, well, ok, possibly, but I feel that G will end up leaning on the bias to try to tell us 'how bad Trump' is. If it's the later, well, this would be deeply anti-democratic. The new policy sheds light on how they'll go about this - in the article they reference to how, when people type 'Clinton emails' that there should be no reference to the ostensible scandal. This is possibly problematic as Hillary Clinton was asked to produce emails by the Feds and decided to delete most of them: this is a legit scandal. Arguably, G is suppressing this information because they don't deem it factual? Or newsworthy? More extensively, they gave examples of how they are going to move from 'truth' to 'fair' in an intersectional manner by offering ups suggestions that 'balance historical injustice'. Open google.com right how, if you type 'women can' you get suggestions such as 'vote, fly, do anything'. If you type 'men can' you'll get as a first suggestion 'have babies'. While the former is uncontroversial (i.e of course women can vote and fly), is this really Google's place to start to suggest such things unless they are material to historical searches? And the male suggestion, doesn't really line up with the female example. 'Men can have babies'? Well, this a very narrow and specifically intersectional ideal, while maybe it's technically true, I don't see how bringing up that issue in the context of someone searching is relevant to anything at all (again, unless it fits some kind of algorithmic purpose i.e. it's a popular search). The notion that Google, the manger of the world's information, is going to 'right historical wrongs' is in some ways very good, I mean, who doesn't want to make 'wrong things right'? But of course it's utterly Orwellian in practice, with a small group of ideologues deciding what we should see and not, based on their unique worldview. The implications of this new 'right the wrongs of history' worldview on search results is beyond scary. So yes: getting rid of fake news, trying to point out narrative, calling out lies - sure. Problematic: trying to feed people content that Google deems 'more appropriate'. Scary: modifying search results and suggestions to be consistent with their worldview and to 'right the wrongs of history'. I don't trust the talent and overall goodwill of Google anymore, I think they need to be regulated and there needs to be more transparency. I also think it would be ideal to end the monopoly and try on actual diversity, i.e. real competition.

cromwellian 7y ago
>The issues are more disconcerting, like senior executives trying to make sure that 'Trump never happens again' That's not what she said, she said "Trump situation", and by situation, one would assume, the massive abuse of social platforms to spread false and misleading data about Clinton, which we know from scientific studies, that false stories were reshared far more by Trump supporters than vice versa, and that a non-trivial chunk of these fake gifs came from overseas. Isn't that a situation we don't want to repeat? Also, I'd argue the definition of a Doctor is genderless, so if I ask Google what a doctor is, I don't want it telling my daughter "A doctor is a male human being who..." This isn't "social justice", this is fact. You can call for breaking Google up all you want, but AI ethicists at every company are concerned about cognitive bias creeping into machine learning, and correcting that bias will be perceived you as putting your finger on the scales to 'correct the wrongs of history' I'm just telling you, this view goes beyond Google, and pretty much any honest data scientist is going to be looking to combat bias in his training data. Anti-social justice warrior people arent going to like it, but the genie is out of the bottle government isn't going to stop the march towards unbiasing our databases.
- sonnyblarney 7y ago
  >>> ""Trump situation", and by situation, one would assume, the massive abuse of social platforms to spread false and misleading data about Clinton, " I don't know how one would assume the term "Trump situation" would imply "all the lies about Clinton on social media". A more direct interpretation of her statement would be "we don't like Trump". Now - of course you could be right, but I don't see how her words communicate that fact at all. If the exec was concerned about 'all the lies about Clinton' - why didn't she just say that? I don't think that 'getting rid of lies' is counter factual, nor is it controversial. If this exec was communicating something along the lines of: "There was some interference and misinformation in the last election, and it possibly affected the outcome, we want to make sure people are well informed" That'd be great! There would be no scandal, nothing to talk about. This would be Google just 'doing their job' in a fairly conventional manner. But she didn't use that language, she went much further. >>> "I'd argue the definition of a Doctor is genderless," Nobody is going to argue that. But what does that have to do with offering up as a 'first suggestion' when people type 'men can' ---> 'have babies'? Making sure the world is informed about that very specific 'fact' that does require some contextualization, is an ideological problem, and this has nothing to do with 'un-biasing' our databases': it's projecting a whole set of ideals. So the 'first problem' with the 'Social Justice search algorithm approach' is that it will extend far beyond 'un-biasing'. It will go straight into ideology and narrative. But the more subtle problem of 'un-biasing our databases' is the fact that it's going to be difficult to determine what bias is. So instead of 'Doctor' how about - 'Truck Driver'. About 6% of Truck Drivers are female. Is this a 'bias' problem in society? Do we need to 'unbias' our data to make sure that every representation of 'Truck Driver' is 50%/50%? What about race? In Sweden, there are almost zero Black Doctors, mostly by virtue of the fact there's very few Black people in Sweden of course. So, in Swedish search results, how do we represent the image of 'Doctor'? 15% Black? 50% Black? What's the 'unbiased' racial representation of 'Doctor' in a country that fairly ethnically homogenous? So the very mention of 'un-biasing databases' is a frightening, Orwellian concept, again, because it'll take a considerable amount ideology for someone to determine what 'unbiased' even is. >>> "Anti-social justice warrior people aren't going to like it," "Anti-Social Justice Warrior" people are not generally not 'Anti Social Justice' - and they are not likely opposed to having search results showing a Female, or Black Doctor, or Pilot (or even Truck Driver), but there's a very legitimate concern about the extent to which information is manipulated, and how it's manipulated. The examples given in the reference article I feel go beyond issues of 'getting rid of fake news' and go far beyond merely showing a 'female Doctor' on a search for Doctor. The terminology she used was along the lines of 'correcting for historical injustice'. Terminology like that, and more directly 'un-biasing our databases' I interpret as 're-writing information to suit my view of the world and how it ought to be' - which is surely 'Social Justice' in the minds of those tampering with the data, but it's not to others. Given the magnitude of the influence of Google, this issue has to be addressed in a more open and transparent fashion, and it probably needs to be regulated (and publicly communicated) - and in any case there needs to be more competition in search. Edit: I should add, doing things like carefully altering AI training data so that the tech doesn't erroneously and in a 'biased' fashion identify 'black people' as more likely to be criminal is totally fair game (as we learned with MS's 'racist' AI). But we should be thoughtful and deliberative about such things.

cromwellian 7y ago

>The issues are more disconcerting, like senior executives trying to make sure that 'Trump never happens again' That's not what she said, she said "Trump situation", and by situation, one would assume, the massive abuse of social platforms to spread false and misleading data about Clinton, which we know from scientific studies, that false stories were reshared far more by Trump supporters than vice versa, and that a non-trivial chunk of these fake gifs came from overseas. Isn't that a situation we don't want to repeat? Also, I'd argue the definition of a Doctor is genderless, so if I ask Google what a doctor is, I don't want it telling my daughter "A doctor is a male human being who..." This isn't "social justice", this is fact. You can call for breaking Google up all you want, but AI ethicists at every company are concerned about cognitive bias creeping into machine learning, and correcting that bias will be perceived you as putting your finger on the scales to 'correct the wrongs of history' I'm just telling you, this view goes beyond Google, and pretty much any honest data scientist is going to be looking to combat bias in his training data. Anti-social justice warrior people arent going to like it, but the genie is out of the bottle government isn't going to stop the march towards unbiasing our databases.

sonnyblarney 7y ago
>>> ""Trump situation", and by situation, one would assume, the massive abuse of social platforms to spread false and misleading data about Clinton, " I don't know how one would assume the term "Trump situation" would imply "all the lies about Clinton on social media". A more direct interpretation of her statement would be "we don't like Trump". Now - of course you could be right, but I don't see how her words communicate that fact at all. If the exec was concerned about 'all the lies about Clinton' - why didn't she just say that? I don't think that 'getting rid of lies' is counter factual, nor is it controversial. If this exec was communicating something along the lines of: "There was some interference and misinformation in the last election, and it possibly affected the outcome, we want to make sure people are well informed" That'd be great! There would be no scandal, nothing to talk about. This would be Google just 'doing their job' in a fairly conventional manner. But she didn't use that language, she went much further. >>> "I'd argue the definition of a Doctor is genderless," Nobody is going to argue that. But what does that have to do with offering up as a 'first suggestion' when people type 'men can' ---> 'have babies'? Making sure the world is informed about that very specific 'fact' that does require some contextualization, is an ideological problem, and this has nothing to do with 'un-biasing' our databases': it's projecting a whole set of ideals. So the 'first problem' with the 'Social Justice search algorithm approach' is that it will extend far beyond 'un-biasing'. It will go straight into ideology and narrative. But the more subtle problem of 'un-biasing our databases' is the fact that it's going to be difficult to determine what bias is. So instead of 'Doctor' how about - 'Truck Driver'. About 6% of Truck Drivers are female. Is this a 'bias' problem in society? Do we need to 'unbias' our data to make sure that every representation of 'Truck Driver' is 50%/50%? What about race? In Sweden, there are almost zero Black Doctors, mostly by virtue of the fact there's very few Black people in Sweden of course. So, in Swedish search results, how do we represent the image of 'Doctor'? 15% Black? 50% Black? What's the 'unbiased' racial representation of 'Doctor' in a country that fairly ethnically homogenous? So the very mention of 'un-biasing databases' is a frightening, Orwellian concept, again, because it'll take a considerable amount ideology for someone to determine what 'unbiased' even is. >>> "Anti-social justice warrior people aren't going to like it," "Anti-Social Justice Warrior" people are not generally not 'Anti Social Justice' - and they are not likely opposed to having search results showing a Female, or Black Doctor, or Pilot (or even Truck Driver), but there's a very legitimate concern about the extent to which information is manipulated, and how it's manipulated. The examples given in the reference article I feel go beyond issues of 'getting rid of fake news' and go far beyond merely showing a 'female Doctor' on a search for Doctor. The terminology she used was along the lines of 'correcting for historical injustice'. Terminology like that, and more directly 'un-biasing our databases' I interpret as 're-writing information to suit my view of the world and how it ought to be' - which is surely 'Social Justice' in the minds of those tampering with the data, but it's not to others. Given the magnitude of the influence of Google, this issue has to be addressed in a more open and transparent fashion, and it probably needs to be regulated (and publicly communicated) - and in any case there needs to be more competition in search. Edit: I should add, doing things like carefully altering AI training data so that the tech doesn't erroneously and in a 'biased' fashion identify 'black people' as more likely to be criminal is totally fair game (as we learned with MS's 'racist' AI). But we should be thoughtful and deliberative about such things.