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I don't think that's an alternative perspective, just a different (nicer, but related) topic. Recently, Bonaventure Dossou learned of an alarming tendency in a
by chefandy 2y ago
I don't think that's an alternative perspective, just a different (nicer, but related) topic.
Recently, Bonaventure Dossou learned of an alarming tendency in a popular AI model. The program described Fon—a language spoken by Dossou’s mother and millions of others in Benin and neighboring countries—as “a fictional language.”
This result, which I replicated, is not unusual. Dossou is accustomed to the feeling that his culture is unseen by technology that so easily serves other people. He grew up with no Wikipedia pages in Fon, and no translation programs to help him communicate with his mother in French, in which he is more fluent. “When we have a technology that treats something as simple and fundamental as our name as an error, it robs us of our personhood,” Dossou told me.
While increased access is a huge win, it won't stop cultural homogenization. I don't think it's unique to generative AI, but like many other things on the net, it's accelerating it.