If you wanted to design an AI that would enrage woke and anti-woke Twitter, you couldn’t do much better than Google Gemini. Within hours of its release, users discovered that it refused to answer questions about Tiananmen Square and January 6th, clarified that
I wonder if you followed this controversy: https://www.essence.com/news/ai-racist-stereotypes/ where a user asked AI for photos of black doctors treating suffering white children. AI was unable to generate any and kept generating pictures of black doctors with white children. The controversy was raised in a Microsoft AI training session I attended and according to Microsoft this bias against the presentation of black doctors treating white children is 100% the result of a lack of diversity in the stock range of photos available to AI. Nothing to do with history or reality, just an inexplicable bias in the world of photography.
Apart from the fact this explanation treats us all like idiots, how does obscuring history help facilitate positive change? Surely an unflinching ability to face up to the truth is the faster track.
I had some fun with Google Gemini and posted it on Facebook. It wouldn't do images of humans by then, not even George Washington playing cards with Abraham Lincoln, but it did animals. Sometimes. I asked for gerbil drinking a martini and it refused; it argued that alcohol is harmful to animals and would be depicting animal abuse. I said, "I"m not going to give a gerbil a martini, I just want a picture of one!" And it still refused. So I asked, "Show me a gerbil flying a World War I Fokker airplane," and it obliged, slightly imperfectly, but I got gerbils in Fokkers. I posted those on Facebook saying, "Oh fine, Google Gemini will send helpless little animals off to WAR but they won't let them enjoy a martini!" Then I got Poe AI to generate the image (it gave me no crap about a kitten drinking a Christmas martini a few months ago). And I posted in on Facebook. Okay, the martini glass was separated from the bottom of the stem and floating in air, but to be fair, that gerbil's paws were up in a way that *could* suggest magic so...whatever :)
I discovered later that GG will speak French with me and correct me when I get stuff wrong. Since Duolingo eliminated the questions section where someone else invariably asked that same question and others answered it, this is good to have.
This Gemini fiasco started out amusing, then became hilarious, then quickly became extremely concerning. By the time it started committing libel against Matt Taibbi I was ready to shut down all the world's electricity to keep it from ever operating again.
We're walking into a post-truth world in real-time.
Or...histoy is written by the victors. Jesus may not have been white and blue eyed but the victorious Christians have certainly made it that way. Today, we know Asian Nazis weren't real but tomorrow? Who would have thought we would be arguing over gender definitions twenty years ago? I suspect the future will be filled with all manner of historical inaccuracies thanks to AI and whomever is governing at the time.
I wonder if you followed this controversy: https://www.essence.com/news/ai-racist-stereotypes/ where a user asked AI for photos of black doctors treating suffering white children. AI was unable to generate any and kept generating pictures of black doctors with white children. The controversy was raised in a Microsoft AI training session I attended and according to Microsoft this bias against the presentation of black doctors treating white children is 100% the result of a lack of diversity in the stock range of photos available to AI. Nothing to do with history or reality, just an inexplicable bias in the world of photography.
Apart from the fact this explanation treats us all like idiots, how does obscuring history help facilitate positive change? Surely an unflinching ability to face up to the truth is the faster track.
"And the only way we can learn, the only way we can make tomorrow better than today, is by having the courage and the strength to look at all of it"
YES!
I had some fun with Google Gemini and posted it on Facebook. It wouldn't do images of humans by then, not even George Washington playing cards with Abraham Lincoln, but it did animals. Sometimes. I asked for gerbil drinking a martini and it refused; it argued that alcohol is harmful to animals and would be depicting animal abuse. I said, "I"m not going to give a gerbil a martini, I just want a picture of one!" And it still refused. So I asked, "Show me a gerbil flying a World War I Fokker airplane," and it obliged, slightly imperfectly, but I got gerbils in Fokkers. I posted those on Facebook saying, "Oh fine, Google Gemini will send helpless little animals off to WAR but they won't let them enjoy a martini!" Then I got Poe AI to generate the image (it gave me no crap about a kitten drinking a Christmas martini a few months ago). And I posted in on Facebook. Okay, the martini glass was separated from the bottom of the stem and floating in air, but to be fair, that gerbil's paws were up in a way that *could* suggest magic so...whatever :)
I discovered later that GG will speak French with me and correct me when I get stuff wrong. Since Duolingo eliminated the questions section where someone else invariably asked that same question and others answered it, this is good to have.
This Gemini fiasco started out amusing, then became hilarious, then quickly became extremely concerning. By the time it started committing libel against Matt Taibbi I was ready to shut down all the world's electricity to keep it from ever operating again.
We're walking into a post-truth world in real-time.
Artificial intelligence is mental Soylent green.
Or...histoy is written by the victors. Jesus may not have been white and blue eyed but the victorious Christians have certainly made it that way. Today, we know Asian Nazis weren't real but tomorrow? Who would have thought we would be arguing over gender definitions twenty years ago? I suspect the future will be filled with all manner of historical inaccuracies thanks to AI and whomever is governing at the time.