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Comment by apostacy | Hacker News Reader

Thank you for sharing that article. However, I don't see how the algorithm is itself racist.

That is like, if I give you glasses to put on, and through those glasses, you observe racism. That doesn't mean that the glasses made racism appear. And I don't think attaching blinders so that you can't see the racism would be helpful, either.

Word2vec is a lens that observes human output. And people saw things that they didn't want to see.

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This is the thing about "systemic" racism. No one thing is racist. No need for racist intent. Just a combination of systems producing an outcome unfair to a particular group.

Could a disease be racist if it only targeted one ethnic group?

If it was created by humans then that would constitute a racist act. This system was created by humans.

No disease is. No algorithm is. No specific policy is. Systems can exhibit systemic racism. Other than hateful extremism coming from an individual, most forms of injustices are emergent properties.

In a hypothetical world where evolution doesn't care about morals and therefore doesn't make sure to only create differences in morally insignificant features, how would you be able to tell what is "systemic discrimination" and what is the state of genetic differences across groups?

Is the second also systemic discrimination? Can Joe the Down syndromer talk about systemic discrimination in having no chance at being the POTUS?

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