[Khaine]

I’m not an expert in this, but I think racists call black people apes, not just because they think they are stupid, but because they think they are sub-human.

Blacks don’t reach the intelligence and blah to be human. I think that’s what racists drive at when they call someone a monkey, and that’s why it’s so offensive.

It would also make your theoretical AI racist, as it identified blacks as not human.

Honestly, at the end of the day that is what is so difficult about much of this. It’s mostly subjective

[AnthonyMouse]

> It would also make your theoretical AI racist, as it identified blacks as not human.

That isn't how racism works. It's like saying that an AI that misclassifies a bat as a bird is racist. It's not racism, it's just error.

And it's not a race-specific error, it's a general error for which someone cherry picked the instances that imply a racially motivated intent that doesn't actually exist.

Calling it racism is pointless and misleading because there is no race-specific cause or solution to the problem. The solution is completely identical to the one for the same error in the general case, i.e. get more training data.

[not2b]

This isn't theoretical: Google Photos was identifying Black people as gorillas, and they didn't fix it, they worked around the bug by removing "gorilla" as a possible label in 2018. Some here seem to be saying that we can't call this racist unless someone specifically intended to do this because of hate. It's not subjective when someone's own face is so flagged.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/12/16882408/google-racist-go...