AI’s white guy problem isn’t going away | Hacker News Reader

AI’s white guy problem isn’t going away

technologyreview.com

4 pointsMaysonL9 comments

> This tends to underestimate other systemic disadvantages that prevent women and minorities from staying in the field, such as harassment, unfair compensation, and imbalances of power.

I worked at a place that made a push to hire minorities (it would seem). However, these minorities would leave faster then they could be hired. If a minority "opened their mouth" they would likely be terminated - only white men were allowed to have an opinion or be passionate. Other minorities would just leave after a few months and the white male leadership would always make happy excuses for why that person left (e.g. "Oh she didn't like X" or "he didn't really think Y worked for him"). In the mean time I sat there and watched as white new hires were coddled and treated well while minorities were gossiped about in the most horrible way if they made what appeared to be even a simple mistake. I say "what appeared to be a mistake" because in these gossip sessions (that conveniently only happened when only white people where in the room) it didn't seem that anyone ever asked the minority anything about the apparent mistake. It was almost like they were trying to convince themselves that the person was unqualified and didn't want to take the chance that they could be wrong - so they didn't inquire in the least.

Also in competitive video games, there's almost zero minority or female representation (except Asian guys but they dont count because reasons).

And basketball is extremely racist. Most basketball players in the world are Asian and they have very little representation in the NBA.

I'm not sure anybody used the word "racist" except for you. No offense, you seem kind of bitter. Comparing bias in tech to the fact that most NBA players are black is quite disingenuous given 23% - 25% of NBA players are white compared to 2% of tech personnel being black. But based on the content of your post logical reasoning doesn't seem to matter. I can see you in a basement wearing a maga cap and posting on hacker news while alternating between listening to trump rallies and fox news.

We are conflating problems with non representative training data and the demographics of ai practitioners.

No we're not. Quite frankly, given how many times already science and technology has failed to work for all kinds of people given the narrow view of the people that practice and create it, this kind of response is incredibly flippant.

Just to name a few:

* heart attack research failing to distinguish between different warning signs for males and females

* sensors failing to detect darker skin

* sensors at TSA being unable to scan the hair of black people because it's thicker

I agree with you but just one point - I didn't know African hair is thicker. Do you mean that African's tend to have more hair follicles on their head, or do you mean that the hairs themselves are thicker? I'm not sure if either is true. Do you have a reference.

Not sure if they mean their hair styles tend to be thicker or if their hair itself is thicker.

https://www.propublica.org/article/tsa-not-discriminating-ag...

Are you saying they are not related? When Apple release the Apple Watch, they pushed the health features. However, they didn't think to account for women's menstural cycles and how it can affect physiological indicators.

It would never occur to a guy that that type of data is missing, because it is not something he has to deal with on a monthly basis.

So, yes, the two issues are related.

I think its being conflated because the author thinks they are one in the same and is trying to make the point that they are. I happen to agree with her. However, thank you for the classic white male deflection defense.

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