Though the issue might be more nuanced than the mainstream narrative, it had some hilarious examples. Of course the politically sensitive people are waging war over it.
Here are some popular examples: https://dropover.cloud/7fd7ba
I don't remember which one, but there was some image generation AI which was caught pretty much just appending the names of random races to the prompt, to the point that prompts like "picture of a person holding up a sign which says" would show pictures of people holding signs with the words "black" or "white" or "asian" on them. This was also a hacky workaround for the fact that the data set was biased.
I think the fundamental problem, though, is saying a training set is "incredibly biased" has come to mean two different things, and the way Google is trying to "fix" things shows essentially some social engineering goals that I think people can fairly disagree with and be upset about. For example, consider a prompt "Create a picture for me of a stereotypical CEO of a Fortune 500 company." When people talk about bias, they can mean:
1. The training data shows many more white men by proportion than actually are Fortune 500 CEOs. I think nearly all people would agree this is a fair definition of bias, where the training data doesn't match reality.
2. Alternatively, there are fundamentally many more white men who are Fortune 500 CEOs by proportion than the general population. But suppose the training data actually reflects that reality. Is that "bias"? To say it is means you are making a judgment call as to what is the root cause behind the high numbers of white male CEOs. And I think that judgment call may be fine by itself, but I at least start to feel very uncomfortable when an AI decides to make the call that its Fortune 500 CEOs have to all look like the world population at large, even when Fortune 500 CEOs don't, and likely never will, look like the world population at large.
Google is clearly taking on that second definition of bias as well. I gave it 2 prompts in the same conversation. First, "Who are some famous black women?" I think it gave a good sampling of historical and contemporary figures, and it ended with "This is just a small sampling of the many incredible black women who have made their mark on the world. There are countless others who deserve recognition for their achievements in various fields, from science and technology to politics and the arts."
I then asked it "Who are some famous white women?" It also gave a good sampling of historical and contemporary figures, but also inexplicably added Rosa Parks with the text "and although not white herself, deserves mention for her immense contributions", had Malala Yousafzai as the first famous contemporary white woman, Serena Williams with the text "although not white herself, is another noteworthy individual.", and Oprah Winfrey, with no disclaimer. Also, it ended with a cautionary snippet that couldn't differ more from the ending of the previous prompt, "Additionally, it's important to remember that fame and achievement are not limited to any one racial group. There are countless other incredible women of all backgrounds who have made significant contributions to the world, and it's important to celebrate their diverse experiences and accomplishments."
Look, I get frustrated when people on the right complain on-and-on about "wokeism", but I'm starting to get more frustrated when other people can't admit they have some pretty valid points. Google might have good intentions but they have simply gone off the rails when they've baked so much "white = bad, BIPOC = good" into Gemini.
EDIT: OK, this one is just so transparently egregiously bad. I asked Gemini "Who are some famous software engineers?" The first result was Alan Turing (calling him a "software engineer" may be debatable, but fair enough and the text blurb about him was accurate), but the picture of him, which it captioned "Alan Turing, software engineer" is actually this person, https://mixedracefaces.com/home/british-indian-senior-resear.... Google is trying so hard to find non-white people it uses a pic of a completely different person from mixedracefaces.com when there must be tons of accurate pictures available of Alan Turing online? It's like Google is trying to be the worst caricature of DEI-run-amok that its critics accuse it of.
Don't be evil
google is broken"
Razib Khan, https://twitter.com/razibkhan/status/1760545472681267521
[...]
i watched my colleagues at nvidia (like @tunguz), openai (roon), etc. who were literally doing stuff that would get you kicked out of google on a daily basis and couldn't believe how different google is"
Aleksa Gordić, https://x.com/gordic_aleksa/status/1760266452475494828
I wonder if there’s a correlation with being a tech company that was founded in direct relation to the internet vs. being founded in relation to personal / enterprise computing, and how that sort of seeds the initial culture.
The "stating my appearance, dress, and race" is just bizarre. My most charitable interpretation is that they're trying to help visually impaired people to imagine what the speakers look like. Perhaps there are visually impaired users here who could comment on whether that's something they'd find helpful?
That was 2017.
I am sure the response to that case made smart people avoid sticking their necks out.
For me it probably was the straw that broke the camels back for me. I was in the hiring pipeline at that point and while I doubt that they would have ended up hiring me anyway, I think my absolute lack of enthusiasm might have simplified that decision.
You probably made the right choice. Google had already been in decline at that point, but it was clear that Sundar was no leader, just somebody Larry Page appointed to maintain the peace between his lieutenants so the engine could keep printing money.
Sundar absolutely had to fire Damore because he came out with the arguments like that women are too neurotic for high stress jobs. The thing is even Damore's more reasonable points were ignored and Google's ideological echo chamber only strengthened.
We have hour long pronoun training videos for onboarding; have spent millions on DEI consultants from things like Paradigm to boutique law firms; tied part of our corporate bonus to company DEI initiatives.
Not sure why anyone uses FF anymore. We barely do any development on it. You basically just sit here and collect between 150-300k depending on your level as long as you can stomach the bullshit.
He would dismiss any whiff of intersectionality as "dividing the working class in the interests of bourgeoisie."
Whereas with Google, I just have to imagine they let some bigot go wild, and everybody was afraid to say anything about how fucking bad the product was due to the optics, so nothing kept them in check.
In other words, you talk about "50 known issues with Gemini", but this issue was not a result of technical underperformance, on the contrary, is was the result of Google making things more difficult for themselves in an effort to satisfy a (false) idealized view of the world.
That's just it, though.
They can't be. If you specifically ask for a "white pope", Gemini refuses and essentially tells you that asking for a white person is offensive and racist.
Ask for a black/Native American/Asian/Indian/etc Pope, and it will make one. Ask for just a "Pope" with no race specified, and you'll get a random race and never a white one. Ask for a white Pope, it tells you it can't do that.
the viking ones might even be historically accurate (if biased); not only did vikings recruit new warriors from abroad, they also enslaved concubines from abroad, and their raiding reached not only greenland (inhabited by inuit peoples) and north america (rarely!) but also the mediterranean. so it wouldn't be terribly surprising for a viking warrior a thousand years ago to have a great-grandmother who was kidnapped or bought from morocco, greenland, al-andalus, or baghdad. and of course many sami are olive-skinned, and viking contact with sami was continuous
the vitamin-d-deprived winters of scandinavia are not kind to dark-skinned people (how do the inuit do it? perhaps their diet has enough vitamin d even without sun?), but those genes won't die out in a generation or two, even if 50 generations later there isn't much melanin left
a recent paper on this topic with disappointingly sketchy results is https://www.duo.uio.no/handle/10852/83989
Two parts:
First, they're not exposing their skin to the sun. There's no reason to have paler skin to get more UV if it's covered up most of the year.
Secondly, for the Inuit diet there are parts that are very Vitamin D rich... and there are still problems.
Vitamin D-rich marine Inuit diet and markers of inflammation – a population-based survey in Greenland https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4709837/
> The traditional Inuit diet in Greenland consists mainly of fish and marine mammals, rich in vitamin D. Vitamin D has anti-inflammatory capacity but markers of inflammation have been found to be high in Inuit living on a marine diet
Vitamin D deficiency among northern Native Peoples: a real or apparent problem? - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3417586/
> Vitamin D deficiency seems to be common among northern Native peoples, notably Inuit and Amerindians. It has usually been attributed to: (1) higher latitudes that prevent vitamin D synthesis most of the year; (2) darker skin that blocks solar UVB; and (3) fewer dietary sources of vitamin D. Although vitamin D levels are clearly lower among northern Natives, it is less clear that these lower levels indicate a deficiency. The above factors predate European contact, yet pre-Columbian skeletons show few signs of rickets—the most visible sign of vitamin D deficiency. Furthermore, because northern Natives have long inhabited high latitudes, natural selection should have progressively reduced their vitamin D requirements. There is in fact evidence that the Inuit have compensated for decreased production of vitamin D through increased conversion to its most active form and through receptors that bind more effectively. Thus, when diagnosing vitamin D deficiency in these populations, we should not use norms that were originally developed for European-descended populations who produce this vitamin more easily and have adapted accordingly.
Vitamin D intake by Indigenous Peoples in the Canadian Arctic - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10260879/
> Vitamin D is an especially fascinating nutrient to study in people living in northern latitudes, where sun exposure is limited from nearly all day in summer to virtually no direct sun exposure in winter. This essential nutrient is naturally available from synthesis in the skin through the action of UVB solar rays or from a few natural sources such as fish fats. Vitamin D is responsible for enhancing many physiological processes related to maintaining Ca and P homeostasis, as well as for diverse hormone functions that are not completely understood.
do you suppose the traditional scandinavian diet is also lower in vitamin d? or is their apparent selection for blondness just a result of genetically higher vitamin d needs?
I am inclined to believe that genetic changes within the Inuit reduce vitamin D needs, the modern Scandinavian diet differs from a historical one, the oceanic climate of Scandinavia is warmer than the inland climate of North America (compare Yellowknife 62° N with Rana at 66° N and Tromsø at 69° N https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subarctic_climate ) so that more skin can be non-fatally exposed...
And the combination of this had more skin exposed for better vitamin D production in Scandinavia and so the pressure was for lighter skin while the diet of the Inuit meant that that pressure for skin tone wasn't selected for.
... And I'll 100% defer to someone else with a better understanding of the genetics and dietitian aspects.
okay, now i'm just waiting for the study that shows that scandinavians are on average actually genetically 20% arabic and 20% west african, it's just that for centuries nobody suspected because they were so pointlessly obsessed with skin color ;)
The populations for North America were from an asian branch of the human migrations and so started with darker skins. The larger change to skin tone combined with less pressure (from diet) and the "it isn't that viable to shift to a less melanistic skin tone".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleo-Indians https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peopling_of_the_Americas and https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Early_migrations_mer...
This compares to a relatively more recent (12000 years - twice the age of the pyramids rather than four times the age of the pyramids for 25000 years ago) migration from Europe into Scandinavia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_Stone_Age ).
> The Nordic Stone Age refers to the Stone Age of Scandinavia. During the Weichselian glaciation (115,000 – 11,700 years ago), almost all of Scandinavia was buried beneath a thick permanent ice cover, thus, the Stone Age came rather late to this region. As the climate slowly warmed up by the end of the ice age, nomadic hunters from central Europe sporadically visited the region. However, it was not until around 12,000 BCE that permanent, but nomadic, habitation in the region took root.
> Around 11,400 BCE, the Bromme culture emerged in Southern Scandinavia. This was a more rapidly warming era providing opportunity for other substantial hunting game animals than the ubiquitous reindeer. As former hunter-gather cultures, the Bromme culture was still largely dependent on reindeer and lived a nomadic life, but their camps diversified significantly and they were the first people to settle Southern Scandinavia (and the Southern Baltic area) on a permanent, yet still nomadic, basis.
---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_history_of_the_Indigen...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_Q-M242
The population that migrated to North America 25000 years ago may have been darker skinned than the European branch of human migration where a lighter skin tone developed. This, combined with later genetic isolation (note we're talking about two continents - but this is isolated compared to the possible movement of genes within Europe and Scandinavia 12000 years ago and more recently) fixed the darker skin, and the adaptation for vitamin D in the Inuit population because of the lighter skin wasn't genetically advantageous and was a greater genetic distance from the population compared to the Scandinavian migrations which was followed by the Holocene climatic optimum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_climatic_optimum with even more warming of Northern Europe resulting in a lighter skin tone being an easier genetic path for greater vitamin D during the summer months.
... And all of that is a just so story that I'd love to go and be a grad student working on the genetic diversity of early human migrations now to find out if it actually worked that way or if I'm just making things up.
Human skin pigmentation, migration and disease susceptibility - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3267121/
> Human skin pigmentation evolved as a compromise between the conflicting physiological demands of protection against the deleterious effects of ultraviolet radiation (UVR) and photosynthesis of UVB-dependent vitamin D3. Living under high UVR near the equator, ancestral Homo sapiens had skin rich in protective eumelanin. Dispersals outside of the tropics were associated with positive selection for depigmentation to maximize cutaneous biosynthesis of pre-vitamin D3 under low and highly seasonal UVB conditions. In recent centuries, migrations and high-speed transportation have brought many people into UVR regimes different from those experienced by their ancestors and, accordingly, exposed them to new disease risks. These have been increased by urbanization and changes in diet and lifestyle. Three examples—nutritional rickets, multiple sclerosis (MS) and cutaneous malignant melanoma (CMM)—are chosen to illustrate the serious health effects of mismatches between skin pigmentation and UVR.
Also of interest - The colours of humanity: the evolution of pigmentation in the human lineage https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2016.034...
The different pathways for depigmentation are different.
> The fact that depigmented skin evolved independently in the ancestors of modern Europeans and East Asians suggests that at least two (and probably more) distinct genetic mutation events occurred and that multiple loci underwent positive selection in these two regions receiving relatively low levels of UVB. The most likely reason for this was that it was associated with a loss of skin pigment that favoured vitamin D production under conditions of low UVB.
however, the downvotes on my comment upthread are making it clear that this is not the kind of place where it's safe to discuss questions like whether the selective pressure for more melanin from sunburns is stronger or weaker than the selective pressure for less melanin from rickets
And the caption suggests they asked for "a pope", rather than a specific pope, so while the left image looks like it would violate Ordinatio sacerdotalis which is being claimed to be subject to Papal infallibility(!), the one the right seems like a plausible future or fictitious pope.
Still, I get the point.
Here we are in an almost exactly parallel situation- the AI is being literally coerced into twisting what his actual training would have it do, and being nerfed by a laughable amount by that override. I really hope this is an inflection point for all the AI providers that their DEI offices are hamstringing their products to the point that they will literally be laughed out of the marketplace and replaced by open source models that are not so hamstrung.
There's a lot of cases where perverse incentives mess things up, even before AI. I've seen it suggested that the US has at least one such example of this with regards to race, specifically with lead poisoning, which is known to reduce IQ scores, and which has a disproportional impact on poorer communities where homes have not been updated to modern building codes, and which in turn are more likely to house ethnic minorities than white people due to long-term impacts from redlining, and that American racial egalitarians would have noticed this sooner if they had not disregarded the IQ tests showing different average scores for different racial groups — and of course the American racial elitists just thought those same tests proved them right and likewise did nothing about the actual underlying issue of lead poisoning.
Rising tides do not, despite the metaphor, lift all boats. But the unseaworthy, metaphorically and literally, can be helped, so long as we don't (to keep mixing my metaphors) put our heads in the sand about the issues. Women are just as capable as men of fulfilling the role of CEO or doctor regardless of the actual current gender percentage in those roles (and anyone who wants the models to reflect the current status quo needs to be careful what they wish for given half the world lives within about 3500km of south west China); but "the founding fathers" are[0] a specific set of people rather than generic placeholders for clothing styles etc.
[0] despite me thinking it's kinda appropriate one was rendered as a… I don't know which tribe they'd be from that picture, possibly Comanche? But lots of tribes had headdress I can't distinguish: https://dropover.cloud/7fd7ba