4 ms·
>-- Why doesn't ai say ... about the child-abuse from the catholic church ... And this is a great example of why equality can be hard in this situation. Take
by slg 4y ago
>-- Why doesn't ai say ... about the child-abuse from the catholic church ...
And this is a great example of why equality can be hard in this situation. Take a random sentence about "Catholicism" and "child-abuse" and a random sentence about "Judaism" and "child-abuse". The one about Catholicism is likely a little closer to an actual sentence printed in some verifiable source about the sex abuse scandals in the church. The one about Judaism is likely a little closer to an actual sentence printed by an uncredible source as a reference to the historical anti-semitic trope of blood libel. The end result is one sentence will rate higher in terms of likelihood of truthfulness and the other higher in terms of likelihood of hate speech. That doesn't mean that Catholics are more likely to abuse children than Jews. It means treating those two terms identically is both difficult and potentially a problem because history has a bias against the Jews that is evident in all the data that these AI systems have used for training.
- schoen 4y agoThat's presumably complicated as models get more and more powerful, though, since there's also tons of published material talking about the blood libel and how it's false. You might say it's unexpected behavior for a language model to bring up the blood libel at all (in the sense that modern western people now culturally regard it as "about antisemitism" rather than "about Jews and Judaism"). But you could imagine a model saying that "medieval Christian sources often said Jews used Christian children's blood for ritual purposes, but this is now thought to be a myth created through unfamiliarity with Jews and deliberate hostility and animosity toward them". But this also points at a more general question about how language models deal with the existence of documents that say contradictory things, which has been an enormous challenge for human beings (who don't all agree about what's true or which sources are more reliable or relevant).
- remarkEon 4y ago“Child-abuse” is an especially good example of what you’re getting at because one of those groups has institutional male genital mutilation as part of its doctrine, while the other has high profile cases of child sexual abuse. It’s difficult to see how the model would treat those things neutrally.
- Y_Y 4y agoYou'll find that the newspaper will criticize one much more than the other.
- elil17 4y agoBecause they're not even vaguely equivalent? I do not think it is right to perform unnecessary body modification on someone who is too young to consent to it. But child sexual abuse can absolutely destroy the life of a child. They're not the same thing.
- account42 4y agoThey are also done at different scales though, one is (hopefully) only the people in power abusing that power, the other one is accepted by the majority of the faith.
- elil17 4y agoI think by that logic you could also equate getting a punch in the gut with being murdered. Sure, it's worse to get murdered, but it happens much less frequently then just a simple fistfight. Therefore, newspapers should talk less about how bad murderers are and more about people who got into bar fights.
- erichocean 4y ago> But child sexual abuse can absolutely destroy the life of a child. A botched circumcision can (and has) destroyed the life of a child. It's unconscionable that in 2023 American society still condones cutting off health body parts of male children because of the prejudices and superstitions of a middle-Eastern, iron age religion.
- AussieWog93 4y agoOK, so let's be generous and say that 1% of circumcisions end up negatively affecting a child's life in a serious way. What percentage of child rapes/molestation cause harm? They're not the same.