| Stereotyping or abstracting is how we can generalise and reason about the world in absence of further specifics or details. Generalisation in itself is not a problem at all. We need it to be able to function in absence of 100% complete knowledge. It potentionally becomes a problem when we use generalisation without recognizing further information. additional detail and variation. Problematic stereotyping is ignoring or refusing all information about a specific instance presented, and persisting in treating the instance solely based on the prototype of the category according to your ontology. Many of the examples of stereotyping in the article demonstrated the former. Few are examples of the latter. Every model holds 'biases'. These correlate prompts with outputs. Without bias, the output would be a complete random sample of the target domain based on the training images regardless of their labels or descriptions. A picture of a duckling drinking water would be just as likely to be produced from the prompt 'a sunset over Jupiter' or 'a sportscar on a German autobahn' than from 'a baby duck drinking'. Most models let you play with parameters that losen the correlation. Look onto e.g. 'temperature' or 'prompt strength' parameters. Now we can of course argue about wether a particular model is biased in our preference. Should Midjourney more often depict a picture of a typical blond Caucasian woman when prompted for 'a Mexican'? This is not impossible. Some 'anime' specific models will produce a Japanese looking young female for that prompt because that is all they can produce. Some people argue that some models, 'general' models, should be more alligned with their specific ideological ontology. More often than not, the loudest voices in that space hold very particular viewpoints that more often than not advocate very rigid categorical reasoning, precisely committing harmfull stereotyping in the latter sense above, refusing to take into consideration instance features over categorical generalizations extrapolated from a very narrow dogmatic and local context. Most certainly a debate should be had. Is there enough model diversity, or is the space overly dominated by certain viewpoints? Should the 'market' (most often in this space this is driven by producer influence, not consumer choice) decide, or is some regulation required? ( but 'Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?') Probably decent concerns on al sides, but no good answers? |