4 ms·

There's no way this is a bug, right? There is no phonetic overlap between the words "racist" and "Trump", and the political implications seem too obvious for it

There's no way this is a bug, right? There is no phonetic overlap between the words "racist" and "Trump", and the political implications seem too obvious for it to be coincidence. Surely this was intentional, even if it wasn't sanctioned by Apple's leadership.

bell-cot 2y ago
Maybe. Or, maybe the substitution was "hallucinated" by an AI with a poorly-curated training set. And nothing resembling Actual Intelligence - as in human common sense - to realize that the substitution was both a mistake, and a PR disaster for Apple.
- techorange 2y ago
  PR disaster seems a bit much. I’m trying to think what I would do if something similar happened to Biden or Kamala and I can’t imagine being moved? I would think the right, being more pro freedom of speech, and pro-comedy would let it go. It’s kind of funny really.
  - bell-cot 2y ago
    President Trump is neither Biden nor Harris, and is nothing resembling a "free speech" ideological purist. He is an extremely powerful and temperamental man, who is extremely quick to use his power against those who he perceives to be his enemies.
hagbard_c 2y ago
[flagged]
- skyyler 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - InsideOutSanta 2y ago
    Phase 1: Replace "racist" with "Trump" Phase 2: ??? Phase 3: Profit
    - CivBase 2y ago
      Employees often are not particularly motivated by the company's bottom line. It isn't hard to imagine a lower-level developer adding an entry like this to a substitution database because they were particularly frustrated with Trump. And it isn't hard to imagine a change like that flying under the radar, especially if it was done as part of a large number of changes. That seems a much more plausible explanation to me than "phonetic overlap" or intentional direction from Apple's leadership.
      - skyyler 2y ago
        Just so you're aware, you're responding to a reference to a crude animated TV show featuring children that swear. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnomes_(South_Park) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnomes_(South_Park)
        hagbard_c 2y ago
        Nope, he was responding to my statement of this being done by an employee or a team without higher management order or approval.
        skyyler 2y ago
        Phase 1: Argue online Phase 2: ??? Phase 3: Profit
    - skyyler 2y ago
      How do the underpants fit into this?
  - hagbard_c 2y ago
    If you want to call these activist employees 'gnomes' that is up to you. As to their motives I think you know and I wonder why you feign ignorance. So be it but I think it better to walk around with my eyes open.
- techorange 2y ago
  By saying it was intentional are you applying some kind of insider knowledge? Seems like we should wait to judge until we have all of the facts.
  - hagbard_c 2y ago
    I do not have inside information but I do have common sense and I try to stay on the right side of Occam's razor. There are countless words with the 'r' sound in it but by pure coincidence it happens to be the word 'racist' which gets 'confused' with the name of the current president of the USA even though there isn't even that much of an 'r' in his name and what 'r' it contains has a markedly different pronunciation than the one in the president's name: racist: /ˈɹeɪ.sɪst/ trump: /tɹʌmp/ or /t͡ʃɹʌmp/ If I ever get to see definite and reliable proof that this inconceivable coincident actually was coincidental I'll (bake myself a pancake in the shape of a hat and) eat my hat.
theglenn88_ 2y ago
I feel this could also be Apple collecting common replacements from their customers devices and applying the suggestions to updated dictionaries. They must collect that data from devices, I would have thought.
- CivBase 2y ago
  But the point of the feature is to write the words the user dictates, isn't it? So if it correctly recognized the word "racist", why would it replace it with "Trump"? The application must know that's not what the user dictated. The most likely explanation to me is that Apple probably has a feature which automatically replaces expletives so that users don't accidentally send messages with offensive language that was not intended. It's probably a simple substitution which maps known expletives to suitable replacements. A disgruntled developer probably added this substitution and, for whatever reason, it didn't get caught until it hit production. I don't know if this is true, but it seems like a reasonable explanation to me.
aithrowawaycomm 2y ago
The only video I saw of this happening seemed to be in a text conversation where they were previously talking about politics. I don't know how Apple's transcription works but it might have jumped the gun simply because the guy talks about politics a lot + something about his voice. I see no indication that this is an ubiquitous issue.
- CivBase 2y ago
  The embedded TikTok video in the linked article shows someone replicating the issue. The video showed two attempts, with the issue only occurring on the second attempt. It isn't obvious how many attempts were made before the start of the video. The rest of the text conversation visible in the video did not appear to be political, but it's impossible to say what was discussed before that.
  - aithrowawaycomm 2y ago
    That is the video I am talking about.
techjamie 2y ago
It could be something like a small LLM helping the transcription do its job, and because "Trump" and "racist" appear frequently together in online discourse, they're tied closely together in the model. You can actually get something similar to happen yourself, too, if you transcribe enough text with Whisper. I've had Whisper reword sentences in ways that don't sound like source audio at all, but still work as what someone might actually say.
dqv 2y ago
> There is no phonetic overlap between the words "racist" and "Trump" This is true in a room full of people who aren't linguists just like it's true that the government doesn't use SQL in a room full of Elon orbiters. I don't even like Apple. /ˈtɹəmp/ /ˈɹeɪsɪst/ There is a plausible overlap right at the beginning. You just made incorrect assumptions. You seem to assume that English has a universal phonology, that speakers all pronounce things the same way every time (i.e. you failed to account for alternation[0] on an individual speaker level, let alone the variance between dialects), and the fact that small tongue movements have an outsized effect on the produced vowel sound. [ᵗ°ɹ] and /ɹ/ sound the same under the right environmental conditions. If the /t/ is quiet enough, then the /ɹ/ can easily "outcompete" the /t/. /ə/ and /e/ are close neighbors. With natural variance, they can sound similar under the right environmental conditions. And finally, many people who say /ɹ/ also introduce a very short, almost unvoiced /ə/ before transitioning to /eɪ/, since, again, /ə/ and /e/ are close neighbors. So yes, they do have phonetic overlap, maybe not for you, but for other people it's plausible... and probable. If you watch the original video, they're recording a very short clip which gives the STT engine very little context (and they had to do it twice to reproduce the behavior because one of the attempts did not replace "racist" with "Trump"). [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternation_(linguistics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternation_(linguistics)

bell-cot 2y ago

Maybe. Or, maybe the substitution was "hallucinated" by an AI with a poorly-curated training set. And nothing resembling Actual Intelligence - as in human common sense - to realize that the substitution was both a mistake, and a PR disaster for Apple.

techorange 2y ago
PR disaster seems a bit much. I’m trying to think what I would do if something similar happened to Biden or Kamala and I can’t imagine being moved? I would think the right, being more pro freedom of speech, and pro-comedy would let it go. It’s kind of funny really.
- bell-cot 2y ago
  President Trump is neither Biden nor Harris, and is nothing resembling a "free speech" ideological purist. He is an extremely powerful and temperamental man, who is extremely quick to use his power against those who he perceives to be his enemies.

hagbard_c 2y ago

[flagged]

skyyler 2y ago
[flagged]
- InsideOutSanta 2y ago
  Phase 1: Replace "racist" with "Trump" Phase 2: ??? Phase 3: Profit
  - CivBase 2y ago
    Employees often are not particularly motivated by the company's bottom line. It isn't hard to imagine a lower-level developer adding an entry like this to a substitution database because they were particularly frustrated with Trump. And it isn't hard to imagine a change like that flying under the radar, especially if it was done as part of a large number of changes. That seems a much more plausible explanation to me than "phonetic overlap" or intentional direction from Apple's leadership.
    - skyyler 2y ago
      Just so you're aware, you're responding to a reference to a crude animated TV show featuring children that swear. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnomes_(South_Park) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnomes_(South_Park)
      - hagbard_c 2y ago
        Nope, he was responding to my statement of this being done by an employee or a team without higher management order or approval.
        skyyler 2y ago
        Phase 1: Argue online Phase 2: ??? Phase 3: Profit
  - skyyler 2y ago
    How do the underpants fit into this?
- hagbard_c 2y ago
  If you want to call these activist employees 'gnomes' that is up to you. As to their motives I think you know and I wonder why you feign ignorance. So be it but I think it better to walk around with my eyes open.
techorange 2y ago
By saying it was intentional are you applying some kind of insider knowledge? Seems like we should wait to judge until we have all of the facts.
- hagbard_c 2y ago
  I do not have inside information but I do have common sense and I try to stay on the right side of Occam's razor. There are countless words with the 'r' sound in it but by pure coincidence it happens to be the word 'racist' which gets 'confused' with the name of the current president of the USA even though there isn't even that much of an 'r' in his name and what 'r' it contains has a markedly different pronunciation than the one in the president's name: racist: /ˈɹeɪ.sɪst/ trump: /tɹʌmp/ or /t͡ʃɹʌmp/ If I ever get to see definite and reliable proof that this inconceivable coincident actually was coincidental I'll (bake myself a pancake in the shape of a hat and) eat my hat.

theglenn88_ 2y ago

I feel this could also be Apple collecting common replacements from their customers devices and applying the suggestions to updated dictionaries. They must collect that data from devices, I would have thought.

CivBase 2y ago
But the point of the feature is to write the words the user dictates, isn't it? So if it correctly recognized the word "racist", why would it replace it with "Trump"? The application must know that's not what the user dictated. The most likely explanation to me is that Apple probably has a feature which automatically replaces expletives so that users don't accidentally send messages with offensive language that was not intended. It's probably a simple substitution which maps known expletives to suitable replacements. A disgruntled developer probably added this substitution and, for whatever reason, it didn't get caught until it hit production. I don't know if this is true, but it seems like a reasonable explanation to me.

aithrowawaycomm 2y ago

The only video I saw of this happening seemed to be in a text conversation where they were previously talking about politics. I don't know how Apple's transcription works but it might have jumped the gun simply because the guy talks about politics a lot + something about his voice. I see no indication that this is an ubiquitous issue.

CivBase 2y ago
The embedded TikTok video in the linked article shows someone replicating the issue. The video showed two attempts, with the issue only occurring on the second attempt. It isn't obvious how many attempts were made before the start of the video. The rest of the text conversation visible in the video did not appear to be political, but it's impossible to say what was discussed before that.
- aithrowawaycomm 2y ago
  That is the video I am talking about.

techjamie 2y ago

It could be something like a small LLM helping the transcription do its job, and because "Trump" and "racist" appear frequently together in online discourse, they're tied closely together in the model. You can actually get something similar to happen yourself, too, if you transcribe enough text with Whisper. I've had Whisper reword sentences in ways that don't sound like source audio at all, but still work as what someone might actually say.

dqv 2y ago

> There is no phonetic overlap between the words "racist" and "Trump" This is true in a room full of people who aren't linguists just like it's true that the government doesn't use SQL in a room full of Elon orbiters. I don't even like Apple. /ˈtɹəmp/ /ˈɹeɪsɪst/ There is a plausible overlap right at the beginning. You just made incorrect assumptions. You seem to assume that English has a universal phonology, that speakers all pronounce things the same way every time (i.e. you failed to account for alternation[0] on an individual speaker level, let alone the variance between dialects), and the fact that small tongue movements have an outsized effect on the produced vowel sound. [ᵗ°ɹ] and /ɹ/ sound the same under the right environmental conditions. If the /t/ is quiet enough, then the /ɹ/ can easily "outcompete" the /t/. /ə/ and /e/ are close neighbors. With natural variance, they can sound similar under the right environmental conditions. And finally, many people who say /ɹ/ also introduce a very short, almost unvoiced /ə/ before transitioning to /eɪ/, since, again, /ə/ and /e/ are close neighbors. So yes, they do have phonetic overlap, maybe not for you, but for other people it's plausible... and probable. If you watch the original video, they're recording a very short clip which gives the STT engine very little context (and they had to do it twice to reproduce the behavior because one of the attempts did not replace "racist" with "Trump"). [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternation_(linguistics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternation_(linguistics)