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It’s not really a quandary though is it? The friend is still insulting his brother. The parents and other people worried about good behaviour aren’t stupid and

It’s not really a quandary though is it? The friend is still insulting his brother. The parents and other people worried about good behaviour aren’t stupid and can apply the spirit of the rule. The problem (at scale) as ever is trying to fix a social issue with a barely working bit of tech.

vidarh 5y ago
The quandary is that it made it apparent that trying to block terms just creates a moving target. It demonstrated that completely innocuous terms could be weaponized by context, and it was not an issue that could be solved by blocking specific terms. The specific words don't matter, as any reaction would just shift the insult to another term. Ban cheeses? Start saying "I love you" ("mom, he told me he loves me! Tell him to stop it!"...). Or call him awesome. If anything, I think the brother missed a trick by not going straight to compliments - few things can be more cutting. Given the right context it'd be clear to the brother what the intent was no matter the term, but increasingly impossible for the parents to distinguish "legitimate" communications from the insults. For that matter, no words are necessary to achieve that once both sides know. Just a look is enough. We don't know how to fix this social issue with human censors, so it's much worse than just the state of the tech - it's an issue that's basically unsolvable without addressing why the speaker is intending to insult (if they are) and why the receiver takes offence (if they are). The best you can do is address a small proportion of the most blatant cases (and that might well be ok and enough if you can do it with few enough false positives, but getting the false positives to an acceptable level is in itself a momentous challenge).
- meheleventyone 5y ago
  Of course we know how to fix this kids aren’t magic and neither are adults. Explain the rules, explain why the behaviour they are exhibiting is unacceptable and punish them accordingly. I don’t know if you have kids but the one being insulted is capable of explaining things to the parents who then adjudicate. The same is largely true for communities as well. You get the community based on the norms you allow to establish and defend. Part of that is being involved enough to understand what’s happening. There of course isn’t a perfect solution and likely never will be.
  - vidarh 5y ago
    I do have kids, and I find your solution naive exactly because neither kids nor adults are magic. The problem is that unless you observe the behaviour yourself as it happens, with substantial context, the idea that you can reliably know whether the behaviour was unacceptable is fundamentally flawed. This is exactly what the choice of innocuous terms is for; to create plausible deniability. E.g. the word "camembert" thrown at someone out of the blue might be obvious because it stands out. But that's not the story you're going to get from the person who has used it as an insult. You're going to get a story about how they just talked about what they like to eat, or something like that. You might see through that, but what quickly happens - what indeed happened with the brothers in my example - was that the person making the insults quickly calibrates to know exactly what results in a reaction and what creates enough plausible deniability that the person deciding if this is sanctionable is unable to determine with any reliability whether what they're hearing genuinely is an insult or the "target" being oversensitive and misinterpreting things. I was bullied at school at times, and saw this first hand as a target myself - the bullies quickly learned which ways they could word themselves to make the insults clear to me while creating enough plausible deniability even when there was no conflicting claims about what exactly they'd said. Point being being that humans even with context and in the position to interrogate the people involved can't solve this with any kind of reliability. Then the notion that an AI at current state of the art without access to context or the ability to interrogate those involved doesn't stand a chance.
    - meheleventyone 5y ago
      > The problem is that unless you observe the behaviour yourself as it happens, with substantial context, the idea that you can reliably know whether the behaviour was unacceptable is fundamentally flawed. Yes but we're not trying to be perfect, we have to live and deal with this grey area. > Point being being that humans even with context and in the position to interrogate the people involved can't solve this with any kind of reliability. I disagree here, I think we can quite reliably do this a great amount of the time. There are absolutely bad actors who will get away with things in the short term but because context builds up over time it never lasts. And once you are aware they're trying to be subversive its much easier to spot earlier. It's not an attack with legs. > Then the notion that an AI at current state of the art without access to context or the ability to interrogate those involved doesn't stand a chance. I absolutely agree here. And I'm sorry the people in charge were rubbish at protecting you from bullying.

vidarh 5y ago

The quandary is that it made it apparent that trying to block terms just creates a moving target. It demonstrated that completely innocuous terms could be weaponized by context, and it was not an issue that could be solved by blocking specific terms. The specific words don't matter, as any reaction would just shift the insult to another term. Ban cheeses? Start saying "I love you" ("mom, he told me he loves me! Tell him to stop it!"...). Or call him awesome. If anything, I think the brother missed a trick by not going straight to compliments - few things can be more cutting. Given the right context it'd be clear to the brother what the intent was no matter the term, but increasingly impossible for the parents to distinguish "legitimate" communications from the insults. For that matter, no words are necessary to achieve that once both sides know. Just a look is enough. We don't know how to fix this social issue with human censors, so it's much worse than just the state of the tech - it's an issue that's basically unsolvable without addressing why the speaker is intending to insult (if they are) and why the receiver takes offence (if they are). The best you can do is address a small proportion of the most blatant cases (and that might well be ok and enough if you can do it with few enough false positives, but getting the false positives to an acceptable level is in itself a momentous challenge).

meheleventyone 5y ago
Of course we know how to fix this kids aren’t magic and neither are adults. Explain the rules, explain why the behaviour they are exhibiting is unacceptable and punish them accordingly. I don’t know if you have kids but the one being insulted is capable of explaining things to the parents who then adjudicate. The same is largely true for communities as well. You get the community based on the norms you allow to establish and defend. Part of that is being involved enough to understand what’s happening. There of course isn’t a perfect solution and likely never will be.
- vidarh 5y ago
  I do have kids, and I find your solution naive exactly because neither kids nor adults are magic. The problem is that unless you observe the behaviour yourself as it happens, with substantial context, the idea that you can reliably know whether the behaviour was unacceptable is fundamentally flawed. This is exactly what the choice of innocuous terms is for; to create plausible deniability. E.g. the word "camembert" thrown at someone out of the blue might be obvious because it stands out. But that's not the story you're going to get from the person who has used it as an insult. You're going to get a story about how they just talked about what they like to eat, or something like that. You might see through that, but what quickly happens - what indeed happened with the brothers in my example - was that the person making the insults quickly calibrates to know exactly what results in a reaction and what creates enough plausible deniability that the person deciding if this is sanctionable is unable to determine with any reliability whether what they're hearing genuinely is an insult or the "target" being oversensitive and misinterpreting things. I was bullied at school at times, and saw this first hand as a target myself - the bullies quickly learned which ways they could word themselves to make the insults clear to me while creating enough plausible deniability even when there was no conflicting claims about what exactly they'd said. Point being being that humans even with context and in the position to interrogate the people involved can't solve this with any kind of reliability. Then the notion that an AI at current state of the art without access to context or the ability to interrogate those involved doesn't stand a chance.
  - meheleventyone 5y ago
    > The problem is that unless you observe the behaviour yourself as it happens, with substantial context, the idea that you can reliably know whether the behaviour was unacceptable is fundamentally flawed. Yes but we're not trying to be perfect, we have to live and deal with this grey area. > Point being being that humans even with context and in the position to interrogate the people involved can't solve this with any kind of reliability. I disagree here, I think we can quite reliably do this a great amount of the time. There are absolutely bad actors who will get away with things in the short term but because context builds up over time it never lasts. And once you are aware they're trying to be subversive its much easier to spot earlier. It's not an attack with legs. > Then the notion that an AI at current state of the art without access to context or the ability to interrogate those involved doesn't stand a chance. I absolutely agree here. And I'm sorry the people in charge were rubbish at protecting you from bullying.