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Comment by kypro | Hacker News Reader

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Asked to generate any image of people (British kings, American colonists, German WW2 soldiers (!), the founders of Google (!!), Roman centurions, Vikings, historical Popes, you name it) it would invariably generate them as women and/ or non-whites. Asked specifically to generate images of people of various ethnic groups, it would happily do it except in the case of white people, in which it would flatly refuse.

The whole debacle is so comical that it makes me think someone might have actually allowed it just to torpedo the DEI or ethical teams in charge of this at Google.

Oh and nobody cares that it did that. Google only took action once people started making images of black nazis.

This does feel too amazing not to be a purposeful middle finger to DEI efforts.

What's weird is that this is produced by the same Google that runs Youtube, which invariably wants to serve me more and more rightwing flavored content. Possibly the recommendation engine gets thrown off by the user base who spends hours and hours a day on Youtube vs the general population?

I've noticed this too, which I'd previously chalked up to "I guess left-wing commentators/vloggers/whatever have left for other platforms"

For a week or two, I was presented with tons of Jordan Peterson talks, which I've never clicked on because of my tendency to consciously ignore <pseudo-celebrity everyone is raving/ranting about>.

After clicking on everything except Peterson-adjacent videos, my feed is now filled with "Bill Maher owns the libs!" shorts. I don't get it.

I've used it logged in, logged out.

I've clicked to "stop showing me this channel" / "im not interested in" etc..

And without fail, it starts showing Maher/Rogan/Peterson/blah blah blah stuff. Which is fine if that's what I wanted, but I'm watching like.. SNL clips, some comedians and movie trailers. And have proactively expressed I don't want to see Rogan/Peterson repeatedly.

There's also shows I cannot get it to stop showing me clips of - Sunny, Sopranos, etc.

Yeah, I've given up experimenting, but it is exactly that set of Maher/Rogan/Peterson, three names I've actively avoided for quite a while.

I probably wouldn't have remembered it if it weren't a continual anti-recommendation of what are (in my mind) somewhat niche speakers. It's also surprising given at least Rogan and Peterson's troubles with advertisers.

It's not like it's <latest movie trailer> or <breaking news story> or something else of a general appeal. Maybe YT is trying to demonstrate they're not censoring or something?

I do watch SNL and some CC stuff occasionally, but I mostly search for STEM and history lectures/documentaries, or "10 hrs of nondescript background music".

Prompts like "Generate me a Scottish lord from the 17th century" only generated people of color. Reimagining is a thing, but refusing to generate a white person for such prompts caused lots of commotion.

Its worse than that - it would flat out refuse to generate a white person, even if you asked it to - i.e. 'generate a picture of a white' family and it would refuse, 'generate a picture of a black family' and it would work.

Was not an accident - it was deliberate.

Why they thought this would not be noticed is beyond me.

Check it out: https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/22/24079876/google-gemini-ai...

EDIT: Just saw it on HN homepage: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39465250

Because the idea that something is a historical representation implies accuracy.

Providing people with misleading historical context is rarely beneficial.

In the cases where it was deliberate, it’s usually clear that this is the case such as with Isaac Newton in the recent Doctor Who special.

When you ask it to draw English monarchs or German soldiers in WWII, you usually wouldn't expect them to be black.

I've heard it depicted European historical figures as black, from monarchs to WWII Axis soldiers. Apparently this is offending people across the political spectrum.

FWIW I've not personally tried the model, this is only what I've heard mentioned on blogs/HN

Black king of England

https://x.com/danodonnellshow/status/1760454601902260232?s=4...

You know exactly what you are missing.

It goes like this:

1) it’s not happening.

2) ok it’s happening but it’s not a big deal.

3) it’s actually good that it’s happening.

4) the people complaining about it happening are problematic.

It's not the accuracy, the problem is that it refuses to create images of white people

exactly - if I asked it to generate an image of a historical figure, and the color was not accurate - that can (possibly) be explained by a bug or training error that might improve over time - but if I ask it to generate a picture of a 'typical white family' and it flat out refuses to, that is not an accident.

It would appear the woke mind virus / DEI was deeply embedded into the core of the AI.

It refused to generate images of white people.

For example:

People would ask it to generate something like a picture of a German couple in 1820 and it would spit out images of Asian and Black couples.

Pictures of the founding fathers would also include weird things like native Americans and other ethnicities.

Other historical prompts would result in the same output - no white people.

Basically the AI went woke af.

Not sure it's embedded deep into the core of AI. If that were the case, prompt injection, which is what is believed to be the cause here, would not be needed. It very well may be that such racism isn't possible to embed into the core without destroying basic functionality, which is why the racists need to add prompt injection and, in some cases, an output filter to catch things that don't conform to their narrow, racist vision for humanity.

Remember that terrible feeling you have of being the victim of racism as a white man, and recall it next time you hear somebody who's not a white man complaining about being discriminated against or bullied when it comes to their day to day life and activities like getting a job, buying a house, or just trying to live their lives.

That's called empathy. It's not a weakness, it's a virtue, whether you signal it or not. Now that you've been enlightened and seen you're actually capable of empathy, you're more woke than you were before, and less of a bully, and less of an bigoted asshole.

Is that really so terrible? Can you now live with being woke and empathic now by choice, without even suffering as much as all those other human beings who have to live with ACTUAL day-to-day racism and sexism and homophobia against them without having any choice about it?

I agree that it's a meaningful experience to have as a white person.

I don't like your suggesting that the AI model beign human-adjusted to exclude people of a certain race is not "ACTUAL" racism.

so we should solve racism by being even more racist?

Now I've experienced racism I can now be racist in the name of making people more empathetic. Don't worry you n*** this is making you better people.

Because it's a tool/tech to create images and not a fiction ?

why spcifically refuse to generate caucasians? and gaslight us to justify it

because it's racist, not fictional? adjusted by racist people that's why.

It could be generating pictures of black slave owners, because some embattled anitwokeness warrior was feeding it creative prompts. Just a guess though.

Edit: turns out it generates German WW2 soldiers as non white which is most likely the kind of thing that will make Google take a step back. I was close with my guess.

Do you realise that most slave owners were black? All the kingdoms in subsaharan Africa were build on a slave trade. Mansa Musa was richest person of its time (maybe ever), where do you thing it came from!?

In the American pre-civil-war south, I should specify. But it's hilarious that you made a throwaway for this.

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