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“Badness” is not a property of the object, it is created by the perceiving subject. What AI does is an attempt at scaling the prevention a particular notion of

“Badness” is not a property of the object, it is created by the perceiving subject. What AI does is an attempt at scaling the prevention a particular notion of “badness”, that suits its masters. In other words Twitter is just pushing another value judgement to the entire world. Even the value of “no one should get offended” is subjective, and in my opinion makes a dull, stupid world. Ultimately it is a cultural power play, which is what it is, just don’t try to dress it in ethics.

bastawhiz 5y ago
Badness is indeed a property of the output of this algorithm. A good image crop frames the subject of the photo being cropped to fit nicely in the provided space. A bad image crop zooms in on boobs for no obvious reason, or always prefers showing white faces to Black faces. You're attempting to suggest that the quality of an image crop cannot be objectively measured. If the cropping algorithm changes the focus or purpose of a photo entirely, it has objectively failed to do its job. It's as simple as that: the algorithm needs to fit a photo in a rectangle, and in doing so its work cannot be perceived as changing the purpose of the photo. Changing a photo from "picture of woman on sports field" to "boobs" is an obvious failure. Changing a photo from "two politicians" to "one white politician" is an obvious failure. The existence of gray area doesn't mean there is not a "correct" or "incorrect". > Even the value of “no one should get offended” is subjective, and in my opinion makes a dull, stupid world. You'd agree with the statement "I don't care if my code does something that is by definition racist"?
- acituan 5y ago
  > If the cropping algorithm changes the focus or purpose of a photo entirely, it has objectively failed to do its job. You just changed the problem formulation to an objective definition of “purpose” and a delta of deviation that is tolerable. That’s just kicking the can.

bastawhiz 5y ago

Badness is indeed a property of the output of this algorithm. A good image crop frames the subject of the photo being cropped to fit nicely in the provided space. A bad image crop zooms in on boobs for no obvious reason, or always prefers showing white faces to Black faces. You're attempting to suggest that the quality of an image crop cannot be objectively measured. If the cropping algorithm changes the focus or purpose of a photo entirely, it has objectively failed to do its job. It's as simple as that: the algorithm needs to fit a photo in a rectangle, and in doing so its work cannot be perceived as changing the purpose of the photo. Changing a photo from "picture of woman on sports field" to "boobs" is an obvious failure. Changing a photo from "two politicians" to "one white politician" is an obvious failure. The existence of gray area doesn't mean there is not a "correct" or "incorrect". > Even the value of “no one should get offended” is subjective, and in my opinion makes a dull, stupid world. You'd agree with the statement "I don't care if my code does something that is by definition racist"?

acituan 5y ago
> If the cropping algorithm changes the focus or purpose of a photo entirely, it has objectively failed to do its job. You just changed the problem formulation to an objective definition of “purpose” and a delta of deviation that is tolerable. That’s just kicking the can.