6 ms·

I find Alex’s comments pretty openly inflammatory and sensationalist. It’s a pretty far throw from a system that predicts a face from a voice to transphobia.

ad404b8a372f2b9 6y ago
It's to be entirely expected that people who reject the concept of "normal" find themselves at odds with statistical models.
- Others 6y ago
  Who are the “they” here? I’m assuming you’re not calling trans people abnormal, right?
  - byecomputer 6y ago
    It's a joke about normal distributions
  - ad404b8a372f2b9 6y ago
    No I'm not talking about trans people, I'm talking about people who bring up the phobias and the -isms anytime a statistical model comes out. We're all abnormal, which is why it's important to be careful how we use statistical models, but the acknowledgment and exploitation of normality is not an attack against people who deviate from it, it is the foundation of statistics and all of science. Calling the authors bigots does nothing to improve these issues, rather the opposite.
elihu 6y ago
I agree to the extent that labeling something as "transphobic" is a stretch when the researchers probably didn't even think about transgender people at all. Maybe "transinconsiderate" would be a more accurate label? Or Alex could have just said "this research reinforces cultural stereotypes and prejudices in ways that could cause problems for people like me sometime down the line". On the other hand, I think it's legitimate to criticize research that has many obvious bad applications and few obvious good applications. (Perhaps an important factor is why this research was being done in the first place? Did they build a "reconstruct what a person probably looks like from their voice" just to see if they could, or did they have some real application in mind? For instance, suppose they were working with a group of oceanographers who wanted a system to infer the characteristics of orcas from their whalesong as part of a project to track their migration habits, and the researchers decided to test their system on people first because it's easier and less expensive. If a project was undertaken for a good reason, but it opens the door to a lot of bad applications as an unintentional side-effect, should the researchers get a free pass on the latter?)
- SilverRed 6y ago
  Or perhaps more likely, they did think about transgender people but their is simply nothing they can do about it because their tool does not have enough available input data to factor this in. Just like the tool can not know if I have long or short hair based on my voice, it also won't be able to know anything else that has deviated from the average.
- lordCarbonFiber 6y ago
  A mistake that a lot of people make when talking about bigotry is assuming it begins and ends with loud angry people yelling slurs. Building a system that genders people based on their voice isn't "inconsiderate" it's just a transphobic thing to do. Systematic biases don't require malice from any individual working within them to perpetuate; but that doesn't make them any less real and doesn't mean that we shouldn't just accept that all tech should also support them.
  - sillysaurusx 6y ago
    It's surprising you're getting hammered for this sentiment, since as far as I can tell, no sentence is mistaken.
    - lordCarbonFiber 6y ago
      Say anything positive about trans people on this site and the downvotes come ^_^;;
- gweinberg 6y ago
  Their mistake was just one of labeling. The software was not predicting gender identity, it was predicting biological sex.
  - mjg59 6y ago
    Please explain the difference.
- 6y ago

ad404b8a372f2b9 6y ago

It's to be entirely expected that people who reject the concept of "normal" find themselves at odds with statistical models.

Others 6y ago
Who are the “they” here? I’m assuming you’re not calling trans people abnormal, right?
- byecomputer 6y ago
  It's a joke about normal distributions
- ad404b8a372f2b9 6y ago
  No I'm not talking about trans people, I'm talking about people who bring up the phobias and the -isms anytime a statistical model comes out. We're all abnormal, which is why it's important to be careful how we use statistical models, but the acknowledgment and exploitation of normality is not an attack against people who deviate from it, it is the foundation of statistics and all of science. Calling the authors bigots does nothing to improve these issues, rather the opposite.

elihu 6y ago

I agree to the extent that labeling something as "transphobic" is a stretch when the researchers probably didn't even think about transgender people at all. Maybe "transinconsiderate" would be a more accurate label? Or Alex could have just said "this research reinforces cultural stereotypes and prejudices in ways that could cause problems for people like me sometime down the line". On the other hand, I think it's legitimate to criticize research that has many obvious bad applications and few obvious good applications. (Perhaps an important factor is why this research was being done in the first place? Did they build a "reconstruct what a person probably looks like from their voice" just to see if they could, or did they have some real application in mind? For instance, suppose they were working with a group of oceanographers who wanted a system to infer the characteristics of orcas from their whalesong as part of a project to track their migration habits, and the researchers decided to test their system on people first because it's easier and less expensive. If a project was undertaken for a good reason, but it opens the door to a lot of bad applications as an unintentional side-effect, should the researchers get a free pass on the latter?)

SilverRed 6y ago
Or perhaps more likely, they did think about transgender people but their is simply nothing they can do about it because their tool does not have enough available input data to factor this in. Just like the tool can not know if I have long or short hair based on my voice, it also won't be able to know anything else that has deviated from the average.
lordCarbonFiber 6y ago
A mistake that a lot of people make when talking about bigotry is assuming it begins and ends with loud angry people yelling slurs. Building a system that genders people based on their voice isn't "inconsiderate" it's just a transphobic thing to do. Systematic biases don't require malice from any individual working within them to perpetuate; but that doesn't make them any less real and doesn't mean that we shouldn't just accept that all tech should also support them.
- sillysaurusx 6y ago
  It's surprising you're getting hammered for this sentiment, since as far as I can tell, no sentence is mistaken.
  - lordCarbonFiber 6y ago
    Say anything positive about trans people on this site and the downvotes come ^_^;;
gweinberg 6y ago
Their mistake was just one of labeling. The software was not predicting gender identity, it was predicting biological sex.
- mjg59 6y ago
  Please explain the difference.
6y ago