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> A year ago, my colleagues and I created the Radical AI Network, building on the work of those who came before us. The group is inspired by Black feminist scho

> A year ago, my colleagues and I created the Radical AI Network, building on the work of those who came before us. The group is inspired by Black feminist scholar Angela Davis’s observation that “radical simply means ‘grasping things at the root’”, and that the root problem is that power is distributed unevenly. I'm a bit uncomfortable with this kind of political posturing being published in Nature, the preeminent science journal. It seems the exact wrong forum for it.

xmprt 6y ago
The article is low on examples which doesn't lend it much credibility but I can sort of understand where she's coming from because Google's AI has had similar issues in the past. Namely YouTube classifies LGBTQ+ content as not advertiser friendly and therefore doesn't recommend it as much and often demonitizes it.
- ramblerman 6y ago
  Would that not be based on the fact that, that content is somehow generating less revenue? Or you believe there is a more sinister reason?
  - tobr 6y ago
    Videos with titles with certain words might be flagged and can’t have ads. As I understand it they’re trying to prevent pornographic content from being monetized, and their list of dirty words include neutral LGBTQ+ terms like “gay” and “lesbian”. This has been verified by experiments where people upload the same video with different titles. [1] So it’s yet another opaque system that might not have a sinister intention, but has a pretty sinister outcome. 1: https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/10/10/20893258/youtube-lgbtq-censorship-demonetization-nerd-city-algorithm-report https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/10/10/20893258/youtube-lgbt...
    - Nasrudith 6y ago
      Reminds me of another case of the opposite with Xbox Live where "gay" and "lesbian" were being censored to try to prevent the then prevalent use as a term of abuse. To be frank to me the algorithim seems to be a scapegoat for society's own fucked up norms and practices. It isn't a moral process and expecting it to act like one isn't reasonable - it would be like demanding a cargo value calculator stop listing concentrated drugs as the most profitable commodity by to transport per mass and volume because addiction ruin lives and overdose ends them. It is terrible but it is accurately describing the status quo.
  - blaser-waffle 6y ago
    Off the top of my head, reasons could be: - LBGTQ populations are small, about 4-7% (usually quoted at 5%) of the US, and are generally clustered in big urban areas. Like, if you're a queer kid in rural TN you're moving or Nashville or NYC otherwise you gonna have bad time. But that also means it's a niche demographic that's in a few areas. That's a big deal if I'm buying ads for Miami or Denver or The Castro, but it's not broad appeal across the country. - LBGTQ isn't uniform in context and content; not a ton of lesbians are into boy-meets-boy stories, and not a lot of gay men are watching videos about Andrea Dworkin and S.C.U.M. - Not a lot of crossover appeal -- I know a few straight bourgeoisie white ladies that are all about queer culture, trying hard to be allies and all, but other than that there is little crossover. Even my wokest, Bernie-Sanders loving friends aren't watching LBGTQ vids and related content on the regular. Again, it's niche thing. - Serious flak from conservatives, be they Christian, Muslim, or Hindu, or a Communist Chinese government that's not especially LBGTQ-friendly. I can post e-sports videos that will garner millions of views, from Pakistan to China to Nigeria, but a queer critique of Harry Potter or League of Legends characters might be flagged or banned in most of those countries. There may be aggressive pushback and demonetization as well via lobbyists or religious groups. - As another poster said, flagging words like "gay" or "lesbian" as pornographic and blocking or demonetizing them accordingly.
- m0zg 6y ago
  Could it be that _advertisers_ do not want their ads shown next to LGBTQ+ content? For the same reason why men don't see ads for high heel shoes and facial creams, and women don't see ads for Cialis. If that's the case, you'll need to take it up with advertisers, not Google. If you want to make a clearer example, here's one: Google's ad classifiers used to almost always classify you as a man if you frequent engineering websites, much to the chagrin of many female engineers working at Google. I don't know if that's still the case, as I'm not a woman myself.
- danielscrubs 6y ago
  To be totally honest. How much depth can it be in articles that focus on which groups you have sex with?
  - baddox 6y ago
    LGBTQ+ content is not limited to that.
    - collyw 6y ago
      It doesn't make a lot of sense to lump these groups together in my opinion. LGB seems quite different to T.
      - Nasrudith 6y ago
        They are lumped together because society has done so already. They are outside of the norms and are sexual minorities that challenge the old assumptions and frameworks like men always marry women and the only men without testicles are eunuchs. It is true that LGB are orienation while T is gender identity but they face the same issues. In a societal context where they were all essentially "equally normal as cis-straight" there wouldn't be much of an association just separate categories.
cambalache 6y ago
Ah you see but this is the right kind of political posturing, it is based on leftist ideology and managed to quote a feminist and top of it a BLACK feminist. Good luck trying to posture with the help of a white,right-wing male. Sorry Ted Kaczynski. I liked your manifesto. The other ironic thing is the author talking about privilege by publishing in Nature and working at Stanford. Sorry Pratyusha, but you are at the belly of the beast, you are as establishment as it comes, no matter your gender or ethnicity.
thundergolfer 6y ago
The very next sentence is: > Our network emphasizes listening to those who are marginalized and impacted by AI, and advocating for anti-oppressive technologies. So do you disagree with the idea that power is problematically unevenly distributed, and disagree that listening to the marginalized and being anti-oppression is good? If not, and you merely disagree with being explicit about the politics of technology, why? The status-quo politics of AI is "how can we make lots and lots of money from this?". Challenging that politics is good, even if you agree with amoral capital accumulation.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  I disagree that this is the status-quo politics. The vast majority of AI research papers don't discuss making lots of money at all.
- logicchains 6y ago
  >So do you disagree with the idea that power is problematically unevenly distributed, and disagree that listening to the marginalized and being anti-oppression is good? None of this is science. Science does not and can not make value judgements; it cannot say that any distribution of anything is "bad", it cannot say that any particular outcome is good or bad. This has been known for over two thousand years, as the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regress_argument https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regress_argument (mentioned by Sextus Empiricus, the father of empiricism). Moral judgements are the realm of politics and philosophy, and there are plenty of journals dedicated to that. Nature is supposed to be dedicated to science.
  - GaryNumanVevo 6y ago
    Science is inherently normative. It doesn’t exist in a vacuum without norms or values. Science is ultimately in the service of people, if some distribution is harming individuals, it’s bad. That’s the relativistic moral framing of our society.
  - mnky9800n 6y ago
    It's like you are ignoring science is theory driven and theories are created by people. It's like that nonsense paper in nature that says data is so plentiful we can give up on theories and just find correlations. Except that data isn't objectively delivered to scientists from the universe. The choice of how you measure a phenomena is as theory laden as the explanation.
abdullahkhalids 6y ago
This is a world-view article [1]. Plenty of them are political. Let me copy some descriptions from the top few posts there > Conservation could be part of the toolkit for diplomacy between China and India. > How environmental racism is fuelling the coronavirus pandemic > Reducing your own carbon footprint is not as powerful as calling governments and companies to account. > Remember what science owes to child refugees [1] https://www.nature.com/nature/articles?type=world-view https://www.nature.com/nature/articles?type=world-view
- blaser-waffle 6y ago
  What is environmental racism?
anandrm 6y ago
I think any technology cannot be created fair from roots. As the technology evolves more fairness will be incorporated , as it would have feedbacks from all sorts of people. I feel this is premature accusation.
voldacar 6y ago
I find this part particularly bothersome: > the root problem is that power is distributed unevenly As if that's some kind of sacred unquestionable axiom that doesn't require supporting argument.
- jariel 6y ago
  I think it's pretty safe to say this is true, and it always has been since the dawn of time in almost every culture. It certainly has been for the last few thousand years in Western history. I don't think there is anything controversial or political about the quote in the article, and certainly not about the impetus to consider the moral application of AI. I think maybe people are a little worried of what's supposed to be a 'culturally secular' journal, turning over to the groups demanding social reforms in other areas (i.e. CNN yesterday indicating that the term 'Master Bedroom' is 'racist' etc.) The article is fine, it's on point, very fair. The author is within reason to quote her inspiration.
- pelliphant 6y ago
  It is a central part of my personal philosophy, so, for me it's pretty much an axiom. That being said, sure, sometimes you have to explain why you consider something to be an axiom. But at the same time, if you where to explain your axioms all the time you wouldn't get very far. So, I guess the question here is: Is it reasonable to assume this axiom in this context? And I would argue that it is reasonable, otherwise it would be an entierly different text, about a very different subject, and for me personally, it would be a less interesting article.
  - Nasrudith 6y ago
    I can see several logical counter examples of power on a basic level that the thesis isn't consistent or sensible. "Equality" would rely upon too many circumstances to be universal or solveable. Take 7 bigotted against Y of power X each and add an 8th Y person of power X as well. They could be lynched by them trivially. If they had 7X power he could only be matched if the bigots worked in perfect unision to combine. Otherwise he would be the effective leading power. If we are dealing with counterfactual root solutions why not use a hypothetical world where violence is literally impossible? It would be more self consistent and just as possible.
RajivMalhotra 6y ago
Just read your Nature article and loved it. I would like to speak with you to see ways we can help. My new book comes out this year and deals SPECIFICALLY on the asymmetry of power caused by AI. Pls send me details on how we can participate in your work: RajivMalhotra2007@gmail.com

xmprt 6y ago

The article is low on examples which doesn't lend it much credibility but I can sort of understand where she's coming from because Google's AI has had similar issues in the past. Namely YouTube classifies LGBTQ+ content as not advertiser friendly and therefore doesn't recommend it as much and often demonitizes it.

ramblerman 6y ago
Would that not be based on the fact that, that content is somehow generating less revenue? Or you believe there is a more sinister reason?
- tobr 6y ago
  Videos with titles with certain words might be flagged and can’t have ads. As I understand it they’re trying to prevent pornographic content from being monetized, and their list of dirty words include neutral LGBTQ+ terms like “gay” and “lesbian”. This has been verified by experiments where people upload the same video with different titles. [1] So it’s yet another opaque system that might not have a sinister intention, but has a pretty sinister outcome. 1: https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/10/10/20893258/youtube-lgbtq-censorship-demonetization-nerd-city-algorithm-report https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/10/10/20893258/youtube-lgbt...
  - Nasrudith 6y ago
    Reminds me of another case of the opposite with Xbox Live where "gay" and "lesbian" were being censored to try to prevent the then prevalent use as a term of abuse. To be frank to me the algorithim seems to be a scapegoat for society's own fucked up norms and practices. It isn't a moral process and expecting it to act like one isn't reasonable - it would be like demanding a cargo value calculator stop listing concentrated drugs as the most profitable commodity by to transport per mass and volume because addiction ruin lives and overdose ends them. It is terrible but it is accurately describing the status quo.
- blaser-waffle 6y ago
  Off the top of my head, reasons could be: - LBGTQ populations are small, about 4-7% (usually quoted at 5%) of the US, and are generally clustered in big urban areas. Like, if you're a queer kid in rural TN you're moving or Nashville or NYC otherwise you gonna have bad time. But that also means it's a niche demographic that's in a few areas. That's a big deal if I'm buying ads for Miami or Denver or The Castro, but it's not broad appeal across the country. - LBGTQ isn't uniform in context and content; not a ton of lesbians are into boy-meets-boy stories, and not a lot of gay men are watching videos about Andrea Dworkin and S.C.U.M. - Not a lot of crossover appeal -- I know a few straight bourgeoisie white ladies that are all about queer culture, trying hard to be allies and all, but other than that there is little crossover. Even my wokest, Bernie-Sanders loving friends aren't watching LBGTQ vids and related content on the regular. Again, it's niche thing. - Serious flak from conservatives, be they Christian, Muslim, or Hindu, or a Communist Chinese government that's not especially LBGTQ-friendly. I can post e-sports videos that will garner millions of views, from Pakistan to China to Nigeria, but a queer critique of Harry Potter or League of Legends characters might be flagged or banned in most of those countries. There may be aggressive pushback and demonetization as well via lobbyists or religious groups. - As another poster said, flagging words like "gay" or "lesbian" as pornographic and blocking or demonetizing them accordingly.
m0zg 6y ago
Could it be that _advertisers_ do not want their ads shown next to LGBTQ+ content? For the same reason why men don't see ads for high heel shoes and facial creams, and women don't see ads for Cialis. If that's the case, you'll need to take it up with advertisers, not Google. If you want to make a clearer example, here's one: Google's ad classifiers used to almost always classify you as a man if you frequent engineering websites, much to the chagrin of many female engineers working at Google. I don't know if that's still the case, as I'm not a woman myself.
danielscrubs 6y ago
To be totally honest. How much depth can it be in articles that focus on which groups you have sex with?
- baddox 6y ago
  LGBTQ+ content is not limited to that.
  - collyw 6y ago
    It doesn't make a lot of sense to lump these groups together in my opinion. LGB seems quite different to T.
    - Nasrudith 6y ago
      They are lumped together because society has done so already. They are outside of the norms and are sexual minorities that challenge the old assumptions and frameworks like men always marry women and the only men without testicles are eunuchs. It is true that LGB are orienation while T is gender identity but they face the same issues. In a societal context where they were all essentially "equally normal as cis-straight" there wouldn't be much of an association just separate categories.

cambalache 6y ago

Ah you see but this is the right kind of political posturing, it is based on leftist ideology and managed to quote a feminist and top of it a BLACK feminist. Good luck trying to posture with the help of a white,right-wing male. Sorry Ted Kaczynski. I liked your manifesto. The other ironic thing is the author talking about privilege by publishing in Nature and working at Stanford. Sorry Pratyusha, but you are at the belly of the beast, you are as establishment as it comes, no matter your gender or ethnicity.

thundergolfer 6y ago

The very next sentence is: > Our network emphasizes listening to those who are marginalized and impacted by AI, and advocating for anti-oppressive technologies. So do you disagree with the idea that power is problematically unevenly distributed, and disagree that listening to the marginalized and being anti-oppression is good? If not, and you merely disagree with being explicit about the politics of technology, why? The status-quo politics of AI is "how can we make lots and lots of money from this?". Challenging that politics is good, even if you agree with amoral capital accumulation.

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
I disagree that this is the status-quo politics. The vast majority of AI research papers don't discuss making lots of money at all.
logicchains 6y ago
>So do you disagree with the idea that power is problematically unevenly distributed, and disagree that listening to the marginalized and being anti-oppression is good? None of this is science. Science does not and can not make value judgements; it cannot say that any distribution of anything is "bad", it cannot say that any particular outcome is good or bad. This has been known for over two thousand years, as the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regress_argument https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regress_argument (mentioned by Sextus Empiricus, the father of empiricism). Moral judgements are the realm of politics and philosophy, and there are plenty of journals dedicated to that. Nature is supposed to be dedicated to science.
- GaryNumanVevo 6y ago
  Science is inherently normative. It doesn’t exist in a vacuum without norms or values. Science is ultimately in the service of people, if some distribution is harming individuals, it’s bad. That’s the relativistic moral framing of our society.
- mnky9800n 6y ago
  It's like you are ignoring science is theory driven and theories are created by people. It's like that nonsense paper in nature that says data is so plentiful we can give up on theories and just find correlations. Except that data isn't objectively delivered to scientists from the universe. The choice of how you measure a phenomena is as theory laden as the explanation.

abdullahkhalids 6y ago

This is a world-view article [1]. Plenty of them are political. Let me copy some descriptions from the top few posts there > Conservation could be part of the toolkit for diplomacy between China and India. > How environmental racism is fuelling the coronavirus pandemic > Reducing your own carbon footprint is not as powerful as calling governments and companies to account. > Remember what science owes to child refugees [1] https://www.nature.com/nature/articles?type=world-view https://www.nature.com/nature/articles?type=world-view

blaser-waffle 6y ago
What is environmental racism?

anandrm 6y ago

I think any technology cannot be created fair from roots. As the technology evolves more fairness will be incorporated , as it would have feedbacks from all sorts of people. I feel this is premature accusation.

voldacar 6y ago

I find this part particularly bothersome: > the root problem is that power is distributed unevenly As if that's some kind of sacred unquestionable axiom that doesn't require supporting argument.

jariel 6y ago
I think it's pretty safe to say this is true, and it always has been since the dawn of time in almost every culture. It certainly has been for the last few thousand years in Western history. I don't think there is anything controversial or political about the quote in the article, and certainly not about the impetus to consider the moral application of AI. I think maybe people are a little worried of what's supposed to be a 'culturally secular' journal, turning over to the groups demanding social reforms in other areas (i.e. CNN yesterday indicating that the term 'Master Bedroom' is 'racist' etc.) The article is fine, it's on point, very fair. The author is within reason to quote her inspiration.
pelliphant 6y ago
It is a central part of my personal philosophy, so, for me it's pretty much an axiom. That being said, sure, sometimes you have to explain why you consider something to be an axiom. But at the same time, if you where to explain your axioms all the time you wouldn't get very far. So, I guess the question here is: Is it reasonable to assume this axiom in this context? And I would argue that it is reasonable, otherwise it would be an entierly different text, about a very different subject, and for me personally, it would be a less interesting article.
- Nasrudith 6y ago
  I can see several logical counter examples of power on a basic level that the thesis isn't consistent or sensible. "Equality" would rely upon too many circumstances to be universal or solveable. Take 7 bigotted against Y of power X each and add an 8th Y person of power X as well. They could be lynched by them trivially. If they had 7X power he could only be matched if the bigots worked in perfect unision to combine. Otherwise he would be the effective leading power. If we are dealing with counterfactual root solutions why not use a hypothetical world where violence is literally impossible? It would be more self consistent and just as possible.

RajivMalhotra 6y ago

Just read your Nature article and loved it. I would like to speak with you to see ways we can help. My new book comes out this year and deals SPECIFICALLY on the asymmetry of power caused by AI. Pls send me details on how we can participate in your work: RajivMalhotra2007@gmail.com