[FirmwareBurner]

> If the focus of Google's technology is identity rather than reality, it is inevitable that they will be surpassed.

They're trailing 5 or so years behind Disney who also placed DEI over producing quality entertainment and their endless stream of flops reflects that. South Park even mocked them about that ("put a black chick in it and make her lame and gay").

Can't wait for Gemini and Google to flop as well since nobody has a use for a heavily biased AI.

[christophilus]

> put a black chick in it and make her lame and gay

TIL South Park is still a thing. I haven’t watched South Park in years, but that quote made me laugh out loud. Sounds like they haven’t changed one bit.

[pocket_cheese]

Fortune 500s are laughably insincere and hamfisted in how they do DEI. But these types of comments feel like schadenfreude towards the "woke moralist mind-virus"

But lets be real here ... DEI is a good thing when done well. How are you going to talk to the customer when they are speaking a different cultural language. Even form a purely capitalist perspective, having a diverse workforce means you can target more market segments with higher precision and accuracy.

[FirmwareBurner]

Nobody's is against diversity when done right and fairly. But that's not what Disney or Google is doing. They're forcing their own warped version of diversity and you have no choice to refuse, but if you do speak up then you're racist.

Blade was a black main character over 20 years ago and it was a hit. Beverly Hills Cop also had a black main character 40 years ago and was also a hit. The movie Hackers from 30 years ago had LGBT and gender fluid characters and it was also a hit.

But what Disney and Google took from this is that now absolutely everything should be forcibly diverse, LGBTQ and gender fluid, whether the story needs it or not, otherwise it's racist. And that's where people have a problem.

Nobody has problems seeing new black characters on screen, but a lot of people will see a problem in back vikings for example which is what Gemini was spitting out.

And if we go the forced diversity route for the sake of modern diversity argument, why is Google Gemini only replacing traditional white roles like vikings with diverse races, but never others like Zulu warriors or Samurais with whites? Google's anti-white racism is clear as daylight, and somehow that's OK because diversity?

[pocket_cheese]

Not trying to be combative - but you do have a choice to refuse. To me, it seems like they wanted to add diversity to account for bias and failed hilariously. It also sounds like this wasn't intended behavior and are probably going to rebalance it.

Now, should Google be mocked for their DEI? ABSOLUTELY. They are literally one of the least diverse places to work for. They publish a report and it transcends satire. It's so atrociously bad it's funny. Especially when you see a linkedin job post for working at google, and the thumbnail looks like a college marketing brochure with all walks of people represented.

[FirmwareBurner]

>It also sounds like this wasn't intended behavior

You mean it's not something a trillion dollar corporation with thousands of engineers and testers will ever notice before unveiling a revolutionary spearhead/flagship product to the world in public? Give me a break.

[pocket_cheese]

How about Apple maps, windows 8, the Samsung Galaxy with the exploding batteries, the entire metaverse.

[lupusreal]

Except for maybe the exploding batteries, those examples and Gemini's absurd racial bias weren't unnoticed before release. In all of these cases, people noticed but stayed silent because they believed the corporate environment would not tolerate anything less than yesman cheerleading. Do you really think the people working on metaverse couldn't smell the stink? They smelt it, but who was going to stick their neck out and tell Zuck to abort it?

[FirmwareBurner]

Those products did not openly discriminate certain people.

https://images7.memedroid.com/images/UPLOADED277/65d7d17ae4f...

[mlrtime]

It was unintended backlash you mean... it was 100% intended behavior.

[jakeinspace]

In the case of Disney, how much of the frustration comes from the fact that their entire success was built on “borrowing” European folk tales? So that now when they lazily remake those same stories with non-white casting, it causes an uproar? I’m not saying that they shouldn’t be focussing more on actually storytelling over DEI, but I also don’t think white people get as upset over movies based on non-white source material, or created whole-cloth.

[gitaarik]

So we need commercial insentive to be diversity accepting? I think it should just not matter where you are from, what your background is. We should be treated to our skills. If your skills are not required, people shouldn't have to hire you because of DEI reasons.

[8note]

"done well" is really hard to define, and its also very hard to attribute back to one thing when you do have success.

Did you get the sale with the customer because you invested in DEI? Or because you made something they want by accident?

Customers can also talk in different languages, and as a result of historic oppression, minorities tend to be able to code shift. Assuming your potential customers are unable to become customers because of their limitations might not be right

[chucke1992]

DEI should grow naturally.

[zdbrandon]

That's a bit like saying that if you want to sail from Europe to America, you should jump in a boat and let the wind take you there naturally. Don't touch the sails.

The entire hypothesis behind a formal DEI program -- whether or not you agree with it -- is that DEI doesn't happen naturally. Humans tend to gravitate toward (I.E. hire) people similar to themselves for various reasons, and that has to be purposely shifted if the organization is aiming for diversity. If they don't care where they end up, that's a different story.

[chucke1992]

If population of one group of people grow, then it will naturally have bigger representation. That works for everything.

I find it more fascinating that it applies only to areas that either not require hard work (physical) or have high pay. Like I do not see movements towards hiring more male nurses or female oil drillers. Even taxi drivers.