This ties in quite well to the idea that a society can only be understood through an analysis of its history - that is, what has happened in order to lead it up until this point, and that men are largely (though as Marx notes not completely) products of their time; this view is known as historicism.
I see that science-types (my apologies if this is offensive to some) tend to see society as merely thousands of one-off interactions between people, occuring here and there, the only difference being what each individual in the transaction brings to the table. I think that in this context of hate especially, this is too reductionist and insufficient.
Similarly, what ought to be tolerated in a society? Should intolerance, which threatens to bring down the tolerant society, be tolerated? How about the subversive element which attempts to move for the liberation of peoples? Arguably a democracy should have a right to subvert itself, if the power is truly vested in the people. As Marcuse said, through mass media the expression of this subversive element is being blocked, and it may require apparently un-democratic means to open.
I don't think the particular issue is with deciding what
hate is. Your example said that the AI would understand
all of those as hate, and I think it would be correct.
And then there's all the stuff that people say that gets misunderstood by other people.
And then there's all the gaming that's going to take place, where people realise they can silence their opponents by describing their opinions as being "hateful". Oh wait, that's happening already.
You are correct, I didn't consider this, so there at least two problems with deciding what is hateful: (1) is the expression insincere?, (2) if it is sincere, is the hate justified?
This is of course assuming such a machine can be designed to obtain the correct meaning of words in every case, which I think is impossible or close to it. Language is ambiguous, some languages more than others.
People tend not to use phrases like "kill all the" in unambiguous ways.
The symptoms of hate "depends on your position". So called "hate speeches" depends a lot of your position. But they are not hate. Actually, a lot of the things that are censored because they are categorized as hate are just inconvenient for some people, but nowhere near hate. As usual, words are used and distorted to serve agendas.
You can recognize hate across cultures, across symptoms, because as a human being, you learned to detect the clues that hint some hate behind some behavior. It's not perfect, but the thing is hate is rarely subtle, and quite explanatory in its effects.
Hate also always root in unhappiness. And symptoms of happiness are something you can learn to detect as well.
So yes, while you can't have an objective way to measure hate, you can approximate the way human evaluate it by measuring the context of happiness and assess symptoms, on a global + local scale. I may very well give you a good picture of hate.
That is correct and everything... But why can't I read it without instantly imagining a "you seem to be unhappy, citizen; please, come along into jail" kind of dystopia?
Hate isn't "science/math/etc". There isn't an algorithm that can objectively look at speech/data and say it is hate without causing a lot of issues of friendly fire.
If jew says I hate nazis is that hate? Or is it only hate if a nazi says I hate jews. Or an atheist says I hate muslim saudis vs muslim saudis say I hate atheists. Are they both hate? Or does it depends on your culture/position.
A simple unbiased AI would say they are all hate. And that's the problem. We would require humans to step in to decide what is hate or not. Which introduces other problems. A youtube saudi "moderator" would say atheists are hateful and ban atheist content. While a european atheist might say saudi muslim speech is hateful and ban extreme muslim content.
And that's how free speech dies. By trying to please and accommodate everyone, we drop ourselves to the lowest common denominator.