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by charlescearl 2024 days ago
Yes, we can use data science to discern the values (i.e. politics) inherent in AI research [1]. Also, "beyond the pale" [2] stems from the area enforced during the tsarist era of Russia (1791 - 1917) beyond which Jews were not allowed settlement. Tsarist apartheid in other words.

[1] Values of Machine Learning, William Agnew, Abeba Birhane, Dallas Card, Ravit Dotan, Pratyusha Kalluri at Resistance AI Workshop 2020, https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tjrm3Bf1hxV8iuPSiCcM1IazITG...,

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_of_Settlement

2 comments

This is a cool example of how difficult life can be if every figure of speech is interpreted to try and find offense, somehow, whether historically accurate or not.

I agree with sister comment that the English history probably informs the etymology of an English phrase, especially given that the phrase was in use by the mid-17th century, before your timeframe.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/beyond_the_pale

Anyways, that paper scans more like a sociological research piece about data scientists, based on how they write, than an examination of how 'biased' generated speech is or is not, in case passer-bys are curious. Their conclusion is that most papers write about the neat things you can do with a new technique and don't always include a section on societal impact. It's more an absence of politics (I've got GPT-2 ready with your reply to this sentence ;)).

It's also worth taking into account that given their methods involved a bit of subjectivity, what bias did they bring. That said, it's easy to believe lots of papers were like "here's this thing i did!" without including a section on societal impact.

> Also, "beyond the pale" [2] stems from the area enforced during the tsarist era of Russia (1791 - 1917) beyond which Jews were not allowed settlement. Tsarist apartheid in other words.

This doesn't seem to be true based on pretty much every source I've seen.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pale